October, 18 2011 | Lori Nickel | the Journal Sentinel
Linebackers A.J. Hawk (50) and Desmond Bishop have a good partnership on the field. Photo by: Rick Wood
Green Bay – Not a whole lot in common between these two Green Bay inside linebackers.
Desmond Bishop is a great, opinionated talker from California who reads novels and writes movie scripts and exhibits a pretty colorful sense of humor on Twitter.
A.J. Hawk is a homebody with a wife, a baby and a now semi-famous family of dogs. He’s a weight room nut with a fairly typical reserved Midwest personality – that is, when he’s not dropping jaws with that totally out of character obscene gesture Sunday.
They don’t hang out together much off the field, since they’re really in different stages of their lives.
But on it?
Starsky & Hutch, Ashford and Simpson, Stockton to Malone.
The Packers’ most recent victory against the St. Louis Rams demonstrated the symbiotic play between Hawk and Bishop and how it can hold a weak opponent to a field goal. Hawk had 19 pressures in one of his best blitzing games, which also yielded a sack.
Bishop had 14 tackles on the stats sheet (the coaching staff counted 20) and knocked running backs backward.
“Might have been their best game in terms of their production,” said Green Bay defensive coordinator Dom Capers. “They were all over the field. They affected both the run and the pass game. A.J. had the sack. Bishop has been playing very good football.”
Their partnership within Capers’ 3-4 defense works basically like this: Hawk sets the stage and Bishop steals the show.
Hawk’s first role is so important he was named a defensive playoff captain – with cornerback Charles Woodson – by his teammates during the playoffs last season because he makes sure everyone on the defense is in the right position.
That might not sound like much.
It is.
“It’s a big playbook and sometimes some guys can hear one thing and some guys can hear another thing and you’re not on the same page,” said Bishop. “People line up wrong all the time.”
Even him?
“Of course. Or, sometimes the coach can call the play and we could totally call another play. We have the mentality that even if we’re all wrong, if we’re all wrong together, we’re all right. It happens. That’s what A.J. does – get everybody in position to make plays.”
Said Hawk, “We seem to do a really good job pre-snap. We kind of have to.”
Being in position as a group allows the defense to prepare for everything, even a hurry-up offense, and sets up each individual to win his one-on-one battle.
“That’s huge,” said Bishop. “Because before you can even begin to be successful, you’ve got to be in position. Now everything you do from that point on is whatever individual talent allows you to do.”
Hawk may have had the best blitz against the Rams, but that distinction for the season overall probably goes to Bishop. By really selling the blitz, Bishop can get a lineman or other blocker to open up his hips and that gives Bishop an edge.
“Much easier to power them back inside or shake them back inside,” said Bishop.
He used to rely on his basketball background to beat his man one-on-one and chase down the quarterback. But lately he’s been working on new moves by visiting the Packers offensive linemen when they’re conducting one-on-one pass-rush drills.
“I kind of have the basketball moves down, so now I’m trying to practice on my strike and disengage,” said Bishop. “A lot of offensive linemen are athletic and they can grab you. It’ll take just a little luck to be honest. I’m still working on it.”
In addition to his 57 tackles – third-most in he NFL, best in the NFC – Bishop has three sacks.
“A.J. sets it up for me. He kind of goes first,” said Bishop. “He draws attention and sometimes Clay Matthews on the outside draws attention. Then I kind of sneak up in the middle through the cross dogs. Really, there’s no way you can stop it – somebody is going to get to the quarterback. Or should.”
The blitz provides an opportunity for Bishop and Hawk to work together. A quick glance over, and they know where the other is going.
“We’re not changing our paths, whether we’re blitzing or how we’re covering guys,” said Hawk. “Just, how to be more efficient with it, to get there quicker, whether we’re hitting it, whether we’re walking up or hitting from deep depending what we see. We see the offensive line, how they’re turning, the backs, how they’re blocking, and we can kind of figure out the best way.”
Though their lockers have been side by side for five years, the two players have only regularly started playing side by side since Week 5 of last season.
Hawk has played in all 86 games of his six-year career, but Bishop waited for about four years before he was asked to step in last season after longtime veteran Nick Barnett was lost due to a wrist injury.
“Bish and I complement each other really well,” said Hawk. “We felt right at home. We felt like we had been doing it forever – because we had, in practice, just not in games very much until last year. We didn’t have anything to get used to – we’ve been sitting next to each other in meetings, watching film together every day and talking through what we see. It wasn’t an adjustment.”
Just as the safeties have to talk in the secondary, the inside linebackers have to cover for one another, too. Last year during a run play, both Hawk and Bishop hit their gaps, but it so happened Bishop slid over just in time to help cover Hawk. Swallowed up by the line, Hawk managed to yell, “Thanks Bish!”
“It was one of those cases where even when we were wrong, we were still right if we work together,” said Bishop.
Two rights make for a solid inside linebacking unit and both players should be around for a while. Bishop signed a contract extension in January that would bind him to the club through the 2014 season; the deal is worth $19 million over four years. The Packers released Hawk from his $10 million guaranteed salary in March so they could re-sign him the next day to a five-year deal ironed out for around $35 million.
