Tundra Vision

TundraVision Heading Over To Cheesehead TV

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 00:04:00 +0000

Well, it finally happened.

Had a nice meeting with the omnipresent Aaron Nagler, who extended the invite for me to come on over and write for CheeseheadTV. Against what you might believe, it wasn't an easy decision. There's a bit of independence that I've gotten over the years just writing at my little blog, nice to not have deadlines or feeling like you might be pulled directions you weren't planning on being pulled in. And CHTV is big, and I predict it is going to get even bigger. That's cool and daunting at the same time, but I have a ton of faith in Corey's drive to keep pushing the envelope of what fan-based Packer coverage can do, and in Aaron's sheer force of will to keep CheeseheadTV at the forefront of the blogosphere.

In the end, it was Aaron's honest discussion of what he wanted me to do for CHTV. The plan is for me to be a feature writer, which is really what I've been here. The only problem is that when you put out two or three five-page-long articles a week (at best), you don't get a lot of traffic compared to the sites that are pumping out and tweeting 5-10 articles a day. I realize I'm never going to be that guy who scours the news and quickly puts out a report citing the latest move and offering a quick two cents on it. I'd love to, but the 9-5 job and family of five simply doesn't allow me to do it, and I am very thankful for both.

So, my goal has always been to "write a lot about a little", to try and tie different stories together and get a pulse not only on what's going on with the Packers, but with what is going on with the fan base, too. Like it or not, we are a part of the story, because Lambeau Field would be pretty darned quiet without all those folks lining the seats. CHTV is offering me the opportunity to write those longer, thoughtful articles without having to worry if people forgot the URL for TundraVision in the gaps between.

Believe it or not, Aaron, Corey, and I have gone back and forth on this for almost a year now. Seems like the right time, and I'm glad to be an official part of the CHTV family. I'm joining some fantastic talents that I've been honored to work with in the past: Corey, Aaron, Brian, Holly, Max, John, Jayme, and Andrew (who I actually haven't worked with yet, but look forward to it). It also brings pretty much all of Cheesehead Radio under one roof, too.

In the next few weeks, the tundravision.com URL will redirect to CHTV, but the tundravision.blogspot.com will remain right here. I'm superstitious enough that I like a permanent repository for all that I write, and so I will copy my articles back over here, as well as anything else I write that may not be CHTV-ready.

For those of you who have followed my writing over the last six years or so (whether you liked it or not), thank you for giving me the encouragement (or a chip on my shoulder) to keep at it. Please bookmark Cheesehead TV and look for my first article there this upcoming Sunday.

2011 Packers Shareholders Meeting Pics and Videos

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 15:40:00 +0000

Hey gang, thanks to the illustrious Jersey Al Bracco, I was able to attend my first Packer Shareholder's Meeting this year. I didn't get in a whole ton of pictures, but I did get in a couple. Here you go:

We sat over in the corner, somewhat away from the staging area, but very close to the player's tunnel, which was nice as folks would come out of the tunnel and we would get glimpses of them. Before the game, Kevin Greene was standing there, and we found out later that his wife was singing the National Anthem for the second year in a row (apparently, she was good luck last year). Estmated, almost 12,000 people were in attendance, and I was joined by what became an unofficial tweetup with TommyKGB, AlexTallitsch, jrehor, KelKelKelKel (though I didn't actually get to see her), LambeauJoe, PeteSeroogy, Hammen, and KyleCousineau.

Finally, the gentlemen in suits departed the players' tunnel to make their way to the staging area. Check out the reception garnered when Ted Thompson makes his way onto the field. Given the reception he got here three years ago, I don't blame him a bit for not looking out way when we shouted his name, but trust me, there wasn't a Ted Hater in the house (and if there were, I think the Hater would have been facing off against 11,999 folks who sincerely wished to issue their displeasure with him/her).

Was asked on Twitter as to the condition of the field, which was rather diveted after the concert a month or two ago. It still has a couple of spot that are bare, but not as much as a few weeks ago. It will be interesting to see the condition at Family Night. If you open this picture and look just to the right of the white signs in the middle of the picture, you'll see one of the divets still there.

It's always a good day when Jason Wilde joins you. Got to meet him for the first time, thanks to Alex Tallitsch browbeating him out of the bowels of Lambeau Field. I posted this picture on Twitter, prompting Steve to respond: "and @KyleCousineau09".

Of course, I respond: Well, yeah. But everyone knows who Kyle is."

True dat.

After the meeting, Dan Lauria came out to do the reading from "Lombardi", which was a treat. Some folks were a little disappointed it wasn't longer, but listening to Dan do the "you get a seal here, and a seal here" line sent chills down my spine.

Complete random segue, but I once joined my cousin, who was a professional actor, on his film shoot in Arizona years ago. I was an extra in the film, and appeared in a scene with H Richard Greene, who played Winnie Cooper's father on The Wonder Years. So, was a little "Six Degrees" for me seeing Lauria come through the tunnel.

Not the best of quality, but here's a little video snippet of Lauria's reading from a distance.

Here's a little video of Mr. Lauria leaving the field. I am really not sure who is picking the music for Lambeau Field this year, but I am not sure "Glee" should be the album they pick most of their music from.

And finally, as the meeting concluded, here is a pic of Uncle Ted. For someone like myself who's been an unabashed Thompson Critic over the years (who often got lumped in with the far more vitriolic Thompson Haters), it was very nice to see the extended standing ovation Thompson received during the meeting. Well deserved, and while I don't plan on discontinuing my criticism of Ted (or any other player or coach who has earned it), I definitely stood with all of Packer Nation in thanking Ted for putting together a team that earned another Super Bowl trophy.

Barnett and Colledge: Why One Left and One Should Stay

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 23:36:00 +0000

Yesterday, Nick Barnett ended his eight-year tenure as a Green Bay Packer, a productive and boisterous career that certainly made him a presence both on and off the field. In the next few days, offensive lineman Daryn Colledge might follow him into the uncharted waters of free agency in this new world in the NFL.

I'm certainly sad to see Barnett go. He was an emotional leader of the team and was one of the first accessible players on Twitter. He was one of the first big guests on uber-fanshow CheeseheadTV, and was, overall, a class act. He had his blemishes, too. He disappeared for long stretches, seemingly reliant on his own emotion to be at a fever pitch to overcome dominant blocking. He had a prolonged bout with the city of Green Bay over issues at his downtown nightclub. And he has quit and rejoined Twitter several times over some TMI tweets, not the least of which was publicly complaining he was to be left out of the official Super Bowl team picture last February.

None of that matters, however, because the real reason he left can be summed up in two words: Desmond Bishop. Many in the media and the blogger fan base had called for Bishop to get his break for years, usually to try and supplant fellow MLB AJ Hawk. Barnett's spot, however, was always safe, and he never seemed to have to compete for his position.

It what might be the premier crucible story of the 2010 Green Bay Packers: injury-decimated team found they usually had equally, if not more competent talent waiting on the bench. Bishop walked onto the field with solid production and far less theatrics. While Aaron Rodgers won the Super Bowl MVP, Bishop has to be considered a close runner-up because of the heroic forced fumble to start the fourth quarter. Without that one play, I don't know if the Packers own a Lombardi Trophy today.

So, Barnett, who entered the McCarthy era back in 2006 as the de facto starter and never once had to seriously accept a challenge to his position, found himself the odd man out. Salary cap savings were more important than that emotional leadership, which the Packers also managed to find out they could come up without Mufasa.

Switch now to the curious case of Daryn Colledge, a guy drafted in 2006 to be the integral cog in the new Zone Blocking Scheme, and has had his ups and downs over that time. He's gone from being the promising rookie to the underachieving veteran that was due for an upgrade, seemingly every single season. Nearly every year he has been pencilled out of the projected starting lineup, even benched once during the regular season.

But, each and every time, Colledge has fought and earned his place back. Every. Time.

Look, Colledge may never reach Pro Bowl status as a guard in the NFL. Hey...how many Packer guards have over the last forty years? But Colledge has lived through his whole Packer career under the microscope and proven the doubters wrong...at least until the following year.

For your viewing pleasure, Ted Thompson has drafted the following offensive players in his time in Green Bay as GM:

1. Junius Coston
2. Wil Whittaker
3. Daryn Colledge
4. Jason Spitz
5. Tony Moll
6. Allen Barbre
7. Josh Sitton
8. Breno Giacomini
9. TJ Lang
10 Jamon Meredith
11. Bryan Bulaga
12. Marshall Newhouse
13. Derek Sherrod
14. Caleb Schlauderaff

Now, Thompson has drafted enough guys over his tenure to make almost three full squads of offensive lines. And, as we enter Thompson's seventh season as general manager, 40% of the offensive line positions are still, barring injury, being manned by Mike Sherman holdovers.

That's a big deal to me, especially how after nearly every single draft, pundits and armchair quarterbacks around the Packer Blogosphere had every one of these guys, at one point or another, penciled in as a starter in the near future.

I've made the point many times in the past how 60% of the offensive line had been unable to be "upgraded", that the threesome of Clifton, Tauscher, and Wells were still better than the talent brought in to replace them.

And now, out of fairness and common sense, I'm going to apply the same point to Daryn Colledge. You see, unlike Barnett, the Packers were never afraid to challenge Colledge at his position. And let's face it: at one point or another, both Barnett and Colledge had some underwhelming games. But Barnett kept his spot, year in and year out, and when an injury finally made him sit the sidelines, the coaches realized that Bishop was ready and willing to not only equal Mufasa's production, but exceed it.

Yet Colledge has been written off, time and time again, with one of those names on that list. Many of the names that were the presumed heir apparent are no longer with the team, and Colledge has always taken his guard spot back. Now, I understand the logic: the Packers have a ton of young talent and could use the salary cap room. Colledge has been steady-but-not-spectacular, and perhaps we have the OL version of Desmond Bishop on the roster already.

Perhaps.

And perhaps not.

Daryn Colledge might take his Super Bowl Ring and head off to some other ZBS team and cash in, finishing his career someplace other than the one where he's always had to prove himself. Colledge himself said that he doesn't think the Packers want him back.

"The Packers have had a lot of years to re-sign me if they wanted to, so it looks like they might just let me go to free agency," Colledge said. "Whether that’s a business decision or a personal decision, I don’t know."

Sometimes, when you've had so much doubt in a player and hoped to upgrade them over and over again, there's a point where it is just best to part ways and give the player a shot with a clear slate. Maybe Daryn is tired of always having to fight for his job, too.

But if the Packers are smart, you keep the guy whose proven himself again and again. After all, why are Clifton and Wells still starting ahead of all those guys Thompson has picked to replace them?

Mason Crosby: Supply and Demand

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:38:00 +0000

Nobody should have been surprised when Mason Crosby was inked to a new 5-year deal with the Green Bay Packers. You might have been surprised when you eyeballed the contract details.

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Crosby's new pact will pay him $14.75 million with $3 million guaranteed.

Crosby, who will turn 27 in September, has spent each of his four NFL seasons with the Packers. He connected on 22-of-28 field goal tries and all 46 point- after attempts for 112 points last season.

The Colorado product has made 107-of-137 field goal attempts and all but one of his PATs over his career. He's also kicked at least two 50-plus yard field goals in each of his four seasons and is 10-of-21 lifetime from at least 50 yards.

Now, I realize we've moved a long ways away from the time that Ron Wolf let Craig Hentrich walk because he couldn't see paying a punter....any punter....a million dollars a year. Hentrich left and signed a veteran's minimum contract with the Titans, had a twelve-year career post-Packers, and was respected as one of the best at his position. And yes, he finally got paid his worth with Tennessee.

Meanwhile, the Packers went into a cesspool of punters, a revolving door of mediocrity that finally seemed to come to an end in 2007 when the Packers picked up Jon Ryan...only to cut him two years later and again have indecision at the position until present-day punter Tim Masthay established himself last season.

In other words, kickers and punters are often looked at as interchangeable, dime-a-dozen players...that is, until you don't have a good one on your roster.

Crosby's statistics are probably best summed up as average. For all the ballyhoo about the strength of his leg, his long-distance kicks have been below 50% for his career. At the end of the 2009 season, special teams coach Shawn Slocum decided to, mid-season, completely break his kicking mechanics down to square one. Last year in training camp, interventions to his kicking style began all over again.

His 2010 campaign was, at least, an improvement over the drama from the end of 2009 and the 2010 offseason. However, he finished with a field goal percentage of 78.6%, right around his career average and has never hit that elusive 80% mark, a Mendoza Line of sorts for kickers. That percentage placed him 30th overall in the NFL last year during the regular season. His 50% percentage from 50+ yards ranked him in a tie for 17th overall.

In other words, when it comes to kicking field goals, we're still working on the theory that Crosby is still a work in progress and is going to eventually develop into the kicker we felt we drafted...because his stats don't back up a contract that places him in the top five kickers in the NFL.

But, we go back to the punters. Thompson already went through this once with Jon Ryan, thinking he could find something better on the waiver wire and brought in Derrick Frost to replace him. While this isn't the time in Thompson's career to be throwing poo towards him for his prior mistakes, you can't deny that the Frost-over-Ryan move was perhaps one of the most poorly thought-out moves Ted has ever made.

So, you have a stable kicker in Crosby, one still with a world of potential (and you get the feeling with proper coaching, he's start reaching that potential). What are the other options out there? Some undrafted rookie like Dan Bailey, who ended up in Cowboys training camp? Some castoff from another team, like Kris Brown, and hope it isn't Derrick Frost all over again?

The Packers, perhaps moreso than any other team in the NFL, have learned some pretty hard lessons on letting talented specialists go and not having a decent replacement waiting in the wings. I've been pretty hard on Mason over the past few years (although far rougher with his coach, Shaun Slocum), but recognize this is simply a case of supply and demand. There's no one out there that you can count on to kick better than Crosby, and when you can't count on a kicker to do better than 75%, you stick with what you know.

The difference is that now we've given Crosby the kind of money that you give kickers who consistently make field goals at a clip in the mid-80's and low-90's. It's a smart move by Thompson, who has likely learned from his own mistakes, to keep a relatively solid guy in the fold. By not keeping him at a hometown discount, however, Crosby will have more of a microscope on him over the next few years.

It's up to Slocum and Co. to make Crosby into that kicker we hoped we'd get when we drafted him in the 6th round in 2007.

2010 Packers: Charmed?

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 22:43:00 +0000

As I watched the Women's World Cup, I was haunted by a feeling, almost like I had seen this show before. Something eerily familiar about all this, I kept thinking.

* Strong team players, with a particularly charismatic team leader.

* Slow starters, almost needing to have their backs against the wall before waking up.

* Despite outplaying their opponents, often relied on big, heroic plays at the end to pull out a win.

Who am I talking about? Well, sure, I'm talking about Hope Solo and the Women's National Team, but we could also easily be talking about the 2010 Green Bay Packers. And we almost....almost....saw a complete repeat of last February's cardiac events, with near-misses and heroic finishes needed to pull out game after game.

Almost.

Yes, the margin of victory for the Women's World Cup was pretty slim, coming down to penalty kicks that never should have had to happen in the first place. Missed opportunities came back to haunt them in the final game against Japan: shot after shot taken on goal with nothing to show for it was the story of the first half.

But, you say, these were the Cardiac Girls, the ones who fought back against Brazil with a man down on an amazing header by Abby Wambach and penalty kicks to win. And the ones who looked to be in trouble against France until two late-game out-of-a-hat goals by Wambach and phenom Alex Morgan prevented another overtime.

As someone who doesn't even watch soccer, both of those games took me out of my seat and cheering loudly, and the decider against Japan was no exception. But waiting until the last minute didn't blossom for the Americans against a team with perhaps more destiny and fate on their side than themselves.

And the defeat was crushing. While we can be proud of Team USA for making it so far, you still had a feeling that something was stolen from us, that after so many emotional, come-from-behind wins that there was nothing we couldn't do.

Notice my involuntary pronoun shift in that last paragraph? I was about to go back and fix it, but then I realized that it was exactly those emotional climaxes that shifted ownership of the American team from "them" to "us". "We" were going to win the World Cup, because we had fought through so much adversity together.

And why it was such a disappointment to "us" in the end.

We were saved from a similar disappointment this year when the Packers didn't fade away with Aaron Rodgers throwing the ball 20 feet above a receiver's head in overtime. But let's be honest: the table was set for it.

The Packers went on the most amazing six-game winning streak in the history of the NFL, and you can mark that down. But ever since the start of the Mike McCarthy Regime, I've often noted a reliance on the Big Play to pull games out at the end. The Packers putting a team away early (or vice versa) is a pretty rare event.

Now, is that a bad thing? I suppose not. It certainly makes watching games more interesting and exciting when the Packers are protecting a narrow lead against a surging offense late in the fourth quarter. Hey, anybody leaving the game early to beat traffic usually missed something big.

And that is what is the biggest difference between this team we are celebrating now and the the one that won the 1996 Lombardi Trophy. The 1996 team was a slow, steady build, eventually evolving into a team that was expected to win, and did. They won by building a lead in the first half, then allowing Dorsey/Edgar to grind out the second half along with the defense. That team demoralized opponents and we expected nothing less than a Super Bowl win.

This team? Nobody other than a couple of cocky players looking for T-Shirt slogans really predicted the Packers to win it all, and once the MASH unit of injuries hit, the playoffs looked bleak, much less making the title game. Games were won or lost by narrow margins, often in the final moments. Following the loss to the Lions, Packer fans were calling for the firing of Mike McCarthy and Ted Thompson again, despite the fact that a mere two months later they would be Super Bowl Champions.

That is the life as a fan of the Cardiac Pack, a team that capitalized on opportunities, with perhaps a little help from destiny.

The streak started on the heels of a late-game collapse in which a win looked certain against the mighty Patriots, but the Packers defense gave in and fell behind by four points with seven minutes left to go, concluding with a Matt Flynn sack-and-fumble to end the game deep in Patriot territory.

From then on, the Cardiac Pack never put anyone away, and always seemed to come up with a way to win in spectacular fashion.

* The Packers hosted the Giants, and held a narrow lead until the final 19 minutes, when three fourth-quarter interceptions and short-field scores sealed the game, following a lull in the offense in the second- and third-quarters.

* In the season finale, the Packers beat the Bears in a game that might be described as a battle to see which team would lose the least. The Packers' offense was a near no-show, and the defense had to pile on Jay Cutler to keep the Bears at bay. Even so, Cutler led a late drive that would have knotted up the score, only to be thwarted by Nick Collins' heroic interception.

* In what would be Aaron Rodgers' first playoff win, the Packers went to Philly and dealt the Eagles a loss, in which once again both team played sloppily. Again, a Packer lead was once again threatened with a touchdown drive in the fourth quarter, and then Michael Vick pitched a pass into the end zone, down by only five points. Tramon Williams made the game-sealing interception, and the Packers' advanced by the skin of their teeth.

* Against the Falcons, who had beaten the Packers earlier in the year, Green Bay fell behind early after several miscues. With their backs against the wall in a playoff game, the Packers fought back with four interceptions and 48 points, crushing the Falcons almost out of necessity to bring themselves out of the funk they were in to start the game.

* In the NFC Championship game, the Packers went out and established themselves early against the Bears, knocking Jay Cutler out of the game and looking like they would finally cruise to a win. Could it be that easy? No way. The Packers' offense once again looked rattled, with Rodgers having his worst game in recent memory. Protecting a 21-14 lead with an exhausted defense, the Bears almost pulled off a late-game drive to tie up the score with their unknown third-string quarterback. And, once again, Sam Shields made the critical last-second heroic interception that sealed the game against a team that probably should have been dismissed long before.

* Finally, in the Super Bowl itself, the Packers established themselves early and looked to cruise to an easy Lombardi Trophy, but a series of injuries to some key players (Driver, Woodson, Shields) took all the air out of their sails and gave the momentum back to the Steelers. The Packers looked like zombies on both offense and defense until the end of the third quarter, seemingly in need of a wake-up call to remind them that this was the Super Bowl. They got it, with a heroic forced fumble by Desmond Bishop at the start of the fourth quarter, that set up a set of lead-preserving drives by Rodgers (a touchdown and a field goal). However, it was now the defense that faltered, allowing a long touchdown and two-point conversion that kept the Steelers within a touchdown with two minutes left to go. The gassed and depleted defense reached as far down as they could and ended what could have been a game-winning drive with 49 seconds remaining...on a gut-check stop by, of all people, Jarrett Bush.

Now, before you start flooding my comments with accusations of negativity and "why can't you just be happy the Packers won", let me assure I am nothing less than thrilled that they won. My point is that this victory was one of heart-pounding emotion, with nothing guaranteed week-to-week and requiring extraordinary efforts late in nearly every game to finish the drive to the trophy.

While the 1996 Super Bowl win was glorious, it was the end of a five-year journey marked by steady improvement. Our present-day Packers have been nothing less than a roller coaster, taking us from season to season, and often, game to game, with ups and downs and fantastic heights and demoralizing lows. The streak through the post-season was never an easy task, and there were doubts in each and every game.

Some of us believe that Fate and Destiny are nothing more than the names of dancers down down at the local gentleman's club, but the Packers have been bitten by seasons of destiny gone wrong. You only need to look back at the charmed post-season of 2003 following the death of Irv Favre to know how you thought miracles would happen every week, and how the disappointment of 4th-and-26 ripped the team apart over the following two years.

Perhaps the Packers were, like the USA Women once believed, a team of destiny. Perhaps you believe that they were nothing more (or less) than a scrappy team that willed itself to victory. Either way, the look on the faces of Hope Solo and Abby Wambach illustrate the impact of those emotional wins going unfulfilled at the very end, when you need it most. Certainly, watching Brian Dawkins intercept Brett Favre's pass in overtime in 2003 was crushing for a team that thought the magical ride would go on forever.

The 2010 Packers got to ride the magic carpet all the way to the end, and certainly, it had as much to do with Ted Thompson's talent acquisitions as well as the ability of McCarthy to spit-and-wire a team together after it was decimated by injuries.

But, if you believe in magic, or fate, or destiny...the 2010 Packers were rode it all the way to the end. In some ways, it makes this team just a little more endearing than that 1996 team, that one that was built with Hall of Fame bookends on each side of the ball and the perfect game plan every week. This team of injury fill-ins and wondering what team would show up each week had us rooting for our underdog, and they rewarded us each week with miracle endings....and a Lombardi Trophy.

Guess Who I Used To Lift Weights With?

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 18:15:00 +0000

I read with enormous....well, ambivalence...the series of articles over at All Green Bay Packers by the esteemed Adam Czech on the Packers and Professional Wrestling. Not, of course, because I find Adam's material normally disinteresting--on the contrary. I just don't particularly follow professional rasslin' like I did back in the glory years of the early 1980's.

But, I must chime in with an anecdote of my own, and the reason why when Adam does bring up the old school wrestlers on Twitter that my ears perk up.

I had just moved to Green Bay in seventh grade, and that was when my obsessive passion for the Green Bay Packers took off. Each day after school, I'd walk over to my Green Bay Press-Gazette paper route drop off point and spend 15 minutes meticulously going over the sports section before actually getting my peeps their papers. I bought a guy's single season ticket off of him in 1983 and attended every home game by myself.

But, as I approached high school, I began to dream of my high school football career. Now, going to a very small parochial school in Green Bay, the most contact sport we offered during my middle school years was soccer, and I had never even put on pads before my freshman year.

During the 1982 season, I had stopped at the downtown YMCA on my way back from the Gold Mine at Port Plaza mall and saw the answer to all of my prayers: a "Lift Weights with the Packers" brochure. I was in heaven. Not only could I rub shoulders with Lynn Dickey and James Lofton, but I could get myself in playing shape under their expert tutelage.

I paid my own fee with my paper route money, and walked myself down from my old house on Monroe Street to the YMCA, all ready to get ripped. I walked in, waiting to see which superstar would be in charge of my complete physical transformation. Mark Murphy? Johnnie Grey? Larry McCarren?

There before me sat two extremely large guys, and in later years, the irony of the television show "Newhart" would only have made me stifle a laugh at the fact that they were both named Larry. Where's Daryl?

Yes, Larry Rubens, a backup center behind McCarren, and Larry Phohl, a former CFL offensive lineman on injured reserve, were the two lucky guys who would be guiding my journey into muscles.

Rubens was a an understated guy, who did seem to come into the program with a serious attitude about working with the youngsters. I didn't know then (as I know now) that each player has a requisite number of hours they must do for community service, but if Rubens had drawn the short straw, he didn't seem to mind. He saw that I was far from the gym rat he was probably hoping to work with, and while the other teens in the program seemed to already know what they were doing, Rubens started me off from scratch and often took me aside to go through the basics.

Pfohl, on the other hand, was a jovial guy whose voice always seemed just a little louder than it needed to be. He always had a smile on and didn't mind razzing the kids, something that took mickey out of the 120-pound weakling that was me. He certainly wasn't a bad guy, but I always looked back and thought Rubens sensed that I was pretty self-conscious and Pfohl's playful banter set me back a bit.

Out of the ten sessions, I went to about six. I remember a day where Pfohl had made an off-cuff remark to the guys about how they needed to work harder or they'd end up like me, and I chose to take a few sessions off after that. When I came back a few weeks, later, both Larrys called me by name and welcomed me back. I finished the session and got my little certificate. I never got an autograph from them, but that was a personal choic e.

Fast forward about six years. I had moved from Green Bay and finished high school in a small town in southwestern Wisconsin, and my football career was something far from stellar, despite my six weightlifting sessions with real-live Packers. I had started my undergrad degree at UW-Platteville, which at the time proudly hosted the Chicago Bears training camp.

In the summer of 1988, having worked with the university housing department as an RA, I got a call in July that they needed a shuttle bus driver for the players to go from their dorm to the practice field. At that point, I didn't have a summer job, so I was thrilled get out of my parents' house and live in the dorm for the rest of the summer. I drove a little mini-coach bus back and forth each day and transported players that today we still remember by name: Singletary, Tomczak, and Harbaugh...as well as any number of little-known to unknown players trying to make the roster.

One day, I perused the training camp roster and was astounded to see a very familiar name: Larry Rubens. He got on the bus, looked a little older but still the same face. One day, I initiated conversation (which was a no-no for us anyway) and asked him if he remembered doing a weight lifting program back in Green Bay in 1982. He looked it me with a puzzled look, nodded "sure" and went to sit down. Pwned.

The next day, though, he got on the bus with a big smile and said, "Hey...I do remember you!" (that was cool). We shook hands and I thanked him for putting up with a scrawny kid in the weight room and being patient with him.

He then said, "Hey! Do you remember that other guy that did the program with us?" I nodded, remembering the loud, somewhat obnoxious Larry Pfohl.

"Do you know what happened to him?" asked Rubens.

"Actually, I did try and follow you guys for a while," I responded, trying my best to not sound like a stalker. "You guys were both playing for Memphis in the USFL last I had checked." This was true, and why I was surprised to see Rubens on the roster for the Bears.

"Yup," replied Rubens, "But do you know what he does now?"

I shook my head.

"He's a professional wrestler." Visions of small-time wrestlers in Georgia or Minnesota came to mind. In this corner, the Crusher, Larry Pfohl.

Rubens went on, "Do you know what name he goes by now?" I shook my head.

"Lex Luger."

I was astounded. Even at that point I had stopped watching professional wrestling, but Luger was a name everyone knew. Here was Rubens, the nice-guy who helped a dorky kid learn to lift 25-pound weights without killing himself still fighting for roster spots in the NFL, while Pfohl, the cocky guy who never played a down for the Packers, was now world-renowned.

I followed Luger's career as closely as I could without actually getting back into watching wrestling as a whole, amazed that he eventually squared off against the guys I once loved to watch, like Hulk Hogan and Randy "Macho Man" Savage; and with even more intense jealousy, watched him have an on-stage AND real-life relationship with Miss Elizabeth.

To this day, I can honestly state that I used to lift weights with Lex Luger. The statement itself sounds a lot more impressive than the actual story, but now, you have both.

Bloggers Can't Have Their Cake And Then Bite The Hand That Feeds Them

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 02:04:00 +0000

At the time this article was published, the foregoing belief on Twitter was the Anthony's Smith's Twitter Jail time was due to being reported (in fact, as I learned this halfway through writing the article and included this information). Soon after it was published, we learned that Smith was auto-banned due to tweeting too much in a time period.

I included an immediate post-script acknowledging this, and said I would republish the article with the information corrected. I removed three instances claiming that "somebody reported Smith" to the Twitter, as well as my firm belief that Alex had nothing to do with it.

I have included the original article in the comment section of this one.

**************************************************************************

If there was no other reason to plead with the players and owners to settle the work stoppage and get everyone back to football, tonight's blowup between CheeseheadTV's Alex Tallitsch and Green Bay Packer Anthony Smith left many heads shaking.

In short: Smith, the boisterous and confident tweeter, decided to spend much of Saturday afternoon coming up with his own responses to the trending hashtag #fourwordsaftersex, apparently offering many of his own off-color one-liners while interacting with other Tweeters who were doing the same thing.

Tallitsch, longtime Packer blogger, took umbrage to seeing a Packer representing the Green and Gold with street-alley humor and told Smith straight out he didn't like it. This set off a war of words between the two, resulting in Smith's pre-emptive block of Tallistch's Twitter account before Tallitsch could unfollow Smith.

Now, I know Alex. And I am fortunate enough to have shared a beer with him. Alex was one of our original hosts of Cheesehead Radio last year and is an incredible talent. There's a reason that he has 6,700 followers on Twitter and has tweeted 22,000 times. He has a passionate following among Packer bloggers, and it is well-deserved. He has also aired his displeasure with Anthony Smith several times on his blog, so no one should have been too surprised when he took exception to some below-the-belt humor from Smith.

I also had the pleasure of having Anthony Smith on Cheesehead Radio last week. He's a boisterous personality, a Packer, and a Super Bowl Champion. Now, mind you, after he publicly announced pre-show that everyone should "loosen their jocks and panties" for the show, I was half-expecting to be censoring out a couple of words post-show to avoid a "Mature" rating on iTunes. On the contrary, Smith was a total professional (if not a gentleman) on the show and gave a great interview.

There's a lot of emotions and "stances" on this issue. Should Packers be squeaky-clean at all times when they are in the public eye? Should fans judge players on their personalities or based on their play on the field? Does Smith have his First Amendment rights to free speech? Likewise, does Alex have those same rights, too?

All of the questions are worthy ones, and all can be debated. But, I want to address the one that weighs most on my mind: his #fourwordsaftersex brainstorming session--that while offensive to many, was no different from hundreds of thousands of other Tweeters who regularly post offensive subject matter to trending topics.

I mean, there's a reason it was a trending topic, and it wasn't Anthony Smith that started it. Now, maybe Smith crossed a line that a professional football player shouldn't, but under normal circumstances, that would be Aaron Popkey's job to supervise and discuss it with players that are getting a little too jiggy with their tweets.

But Alex's actions in how he handled Popkey's job in lieu of the lockout has repercussions for all bloggers. You see, what's happened in the last year or so, especially for Packer bloggers, has been nothing short of revolutionary.

Last year at this time, while being a part of the also-revolutionary Packer Transplant Blogcasts, Aaron Nagler and Corey Behnke often called for the credentialing of bloggers, so that we would have the same access to players and coaches that professional journalists do. It was a rather radical idea, not one that endeared bloggers to media writers, who justifiably protected that perk from the start-ups that wanted equal access.

But, with Nagler's persistence, several writers at CheeseheadTV were partially credentialed for the Super Bowl and the NFL Draft. Don't second-guess what Aaron and many other bloggers have fought for and how powerful it is in the evolution of sports coverage. It's amazing.

But even Nagler's access in major market issues doesn't allow all of us bloggers being able to have locker room access after every training camp practice. And when it comes down to it, being credentialed means you simply get the same access as the media...the same carefully worded responses to questions in press conferences, the same avoidance of bulletin board gunpowder.

Enter the next revolution: Twitter. Over the course of the season and subsequent offseason lockout, the number of ring-toting Packer players on the social network has boomed. And what we're finding is that they aren't commercial or politically correct. Some of them pick and choose what they send out into the Twittosphere, such as @AaronRodgers12, but many of them use Twitter as if it were their own text messaging service.

On any given day, you can see a conversation between @RyanGrant25 and @Quinn_Johnson45, or @JermichaelF88 and @stickyshields9 as they decide where they are going out to eat that night, or what they did the night before, or how/where they are working out over the offseason. In many ways, this is the access, the public access, that allows all fans (and bloggers) access to the players we love.

But, it is uncensored. It is untempered. It's exactly what the media usually doesn't get to see and often doesn't report: the guys being themselves, and sometimes, saying stuff they wouldn't say in an interview. There's a reason we always have a Twitterverse segment during our Packer News on Cheesehead Radio: many times it isn't even just a tweet from a Packer player or a fan, its a result of a conversation between a Packer player and a fan.

Last year at this time, I wouldn't have even imagined Cheesehead Radio being able to land a player on the show. We simply didn't have access to them, as Nagler opined often last summer. Now, we do, and as a result we've been lucky to have some great Packer players on the show in the last month: Tom Crabtree, Daryn Colledge, and Smith.

As bloggers, we've gotten one of the greatest gifts we could have ever ask for: insight into the daily lives and thoughts of the players we strive to write about, and often, actual interaction with them. We are no longer solely dependent on media sources for what's going on. We can get it from the players themselves, and if that isn't revolutionary, I don't know what is.

But we have to accept that not every Packer is a choir boy. Smith has always been boisterous and not known for his personal filter before he speaks, but that is who he is. Whether you believe he is a bubble player or a solid backup in 2011 is irrelevant. He's a Packer, wearing Green and Gold.

Does that put him on some sort of higher plane than everyone else, meaning a Packer can get away with anything? Of course not. Just ask Fuzzy Thurston. At the same time, I take issue with Smith being vilified for making the same kind of crass comments as hundreds of thousands of other tweeters, simply because he is a Packer.

Sometimes we get a gift that is far more than we would have ever expected. We go from 2010 and having no access to 2011 and seeing many Packer bloggers with credentials and all of us with Twitter "inside access" to the lives of the players we are passionate about. The stupidest thing we can do is to bite the hand that feeds us and drive them off of Twitter because of the hassles they endure from the people that follow them.

As Tweeters, we have the option to follow or not to follow. Mr Chang said it best: "I have no fantasy that football players are a bunch of boy scouts. That why I don't follow a lot on twitter. My Packer people are the fans"

Was Alex "wrong" to stand up for his beliefs? No, but there are other ways to deal with it other than going directly on to Twitter and starting a real-time flame war.. Hey...as bloggers, we've been writing critical articles about players for years. Perhaps that is the smarter venue to voice our concerns about a player, instead of engaging them toe-to-toe in a real-time public throwdown.

As a blogger, I value the access I have to the players through Twitter, even if Randall Cobb won't follow me back (hint, hint). The reality of the situation is that players are human beings and not all of them will view wearing the Green and Gold in the same vein as wearing a purity ring, even if we think it should.

Did I find any entertainment value in Anthony's contributions to #fourwordsaftersex? Nope. I'm a parent, and take a lot of pride in making sure my blog and Cheesehead Radio are suitable for my kids to read and listen to. (Of course, they don't. *sigh*) But my kids don't have Twitter and I don't let them read my Twitter, either. So, in the end, I'm not worried about censoring my timeline from any no-no words because my kids aren't reading them, and in the end, that's who I worry most about. Personally, I didn't find the entire #fourwordsaftersex hashtag entertaining, period, because that's not what makes me laugh.*

But that's no reason for me to become the Packer Police. I have a choice, and it is to follow or unfollow, just as I have to make that decision with many other people whose tweets I may find irritating, offensive, boring, or just plain stupid. Sometimes, the person who is irritating/offending/boring/stupefying me is someone whose tweets I highly value, and I live with some of the garbage between the tweets that I enjoy reading.

And I enjoy being a Packer blogger and reading the tweets of the players, and I want to keep it that way. And when other Packers see their teammates getting hassled, they will once again start censoring themselves and limiting our access to them.

-----

* What makes me laugh, if raunchy trending topics don't? Jon Stewart, Wipeout, and old videos of my kids eating their first birthday cake.

My Off-Again, On-Again Love Affair With The Wide Receiver Position

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 15:39:00 +0000

I used to be the guy that loved the wide receiver. You see, when I began as a fanatical follower of the Packers back in the 1980's, there were two guys that I was enamored with. Their names? James Lofton and John Jefferson.

They opened my eyes to what explosive offensive football could actually be. Hey, before the acquisition of Jefferson, the running joke was Bart Starr's gameplan consisted of four plays: 1. Run 2. Run 3. Pass 4. Punt

But when Lynn Dickey was able to open up with Lofton, Jefferson, and tight end Paul Coffman, it was electrifying. Images of that era are forever burned into my memory: seeing Coffman hurdle a defender for the first time. It was something I never imagined happening on a football field, and it blew my mind as to the boundaries of human limitations.

I remember Lofton running in open space, sometimes just baiting people in and maneuvering around them. With the game clock ticking away, Lofton caught a pass and made a dash for the sideline with a defender closing in. Just as he reached the sideline, he stopped short, allowing the now-relaxed defender to waltz by him, then turned on the jets up the sideline for a long gainer.

And I remember Jefferson, who was unfortunately never used as much as he should have been, often acting as the decoy drawing double coverage to open up the field for Dickey favorites Lofton and Coffman. Every now and then, however, he would do something amazing that made you remember his glory days with the Chargers. I remember Dickey throwing up a jump ball to Jefferson, who was standing in between three defenders. All four went up for the ball, with JJ snatching it away mid-air, then landing with his wheels turning, squirting out as all three were still returning to the ground and into the end zone.

The television commentator: "Well, three-on-one: that's an even matchup for John Jefferson!"

There something about the position of wide receiver, working out there in open space--relying on speed and grace and agility instead of pure power. Those players inspired me to play wide receiver in high school.

Caveat #1: My high school team didn't actually have a WR position, but a wing-back position in a wishbone offense, so the position was never really thrown to very often.

Caveat #2: the term "play" when I say "play wide receiver" might be better defined as "pretended" moreso than "actually saw time on the field". Just sayin'.

No, given my lack of size, speed, strength, agility, coordination, and athletic ability, I'd never follow in the footsteps of my heroes, but I would continue to idolize them. And I don't think there was a player I idolized more than when the Packers drafted Sterling Sharpe.

Again, he was graceful and speedy, but brought a new level of strength and cockiness to the position. He dared people to stop him, not afraid to run through them as much as around them. And, it didn't hurt that he wore the same number that I had when I played in high school (again, see Caveat #2 above).

He made Don Majkowski look a heck of a lot better than he was. And he was Brett Favre's crutch in his tumultuous formative years, when having Sharpe there to catch 100+ balls a year might have been the difference between Holmgren sticking with Favre and not going with Mark Brunell.

He demanded the ball. This was also something new that I hadn't seen before in my wide receiver heroes, but heck...he was darn good, and good things happened when he had the ball. He had an infectious smile and made it look like he was having a blast on the field. I still remember the play against the Lion in the playoffs one year where he caught the ball so far ahead of every defender, he walked up to the goal line and tried to just reach over the plane of the goal line. A Lion defender snuck up behind him, and an uncomfortable instant replay was averted when Sharpe picked the ball up himself in the endzone, smiling like the cat who had caught the canary.

But my adoration of Sharpe--and my love affair with the wide receiver position in general--came to a screeching halt in 1994. Sterling Sharpe's neck injury ended his playing career, and no one was giving the Packers a chance to even reach 8-8 without their Most Talented Player. I fiercely defended Sharpe from his detractors and also believed the Packers were going to suffer a huge setback without him.

But 1995 was the year everything changed. The Packers weren't a worse team without Sharpe, they were a better team without him. Favre, no longer pressured to feed the ball into a WR who kept demanding the ball, saw his quarterback rating jump nearly ten points. The ball was spread out evenly between new team leader Robert Brooks, Mark Ingram, and the running backs and tight ends...basically, whomever was open.

If you can remember back to that time when the Packers (unexpectedly) made the playoffs, you might remember a feature by NFL Countdown where Favre, Brooks, Bennett and all the gang openly talked about how Sharpe had held the team back with his "me-first" attitude. They gushed about the team-first attitude that had propelled them into being perhaps the only team with a chance to prevent the Cowboys from making it a three-peat that year. There wasn't even an inkling that the players remotely missed Sharpe.

Chris Berman cut to Sharpe, who had been a part of the studio team in his first year away from football, and you could see the tension and anger in his face and body language. He yelled his response (surprise!), saying he wasn't a me-first player and he had always been committed to the team above all. The words seemed to echo in the empty studio where was was being filmed.

At the end, Berman attempted to mend the fences by telling Sharpe, "Sterling, all the guys I talked to miss you, wish you the best, and they wish you were there to be a part of this." It was in stark contrast to everything we just heard the players actually say in their interviews.

I wanted to rise up to defend my old hero, Sharpe, whose jersey I proudly wore and cheered every time he caught a pass. But reality set it, as the Packers went deep into the NFC playoffs that year, farther than they had ever gone with Sharpe. And, of course, the next year the Packers won it all with guys like Antonio Freeman and Andre Rison playing at the wide-out position.

Meanwhile, this coincided with the time when the me-first wide receiver began taking over the league. Guys like Michael Irvin, Terrell Owens, Randy Moss, and Keyshawn Johnson made no bones about being "the guy" and demanding the ball. The showboating, the grandstanding, the obnoxious behavior all started turning me off to the "Highlight Wide Receiver" that ESPN now seemed to love and give 24/7 attention to.

But ever since the departure of Sharpe, the Packers have employed the team-oriented wideout. Who can forget the day after Favre's father passed away, when Donald Driver, Javon Walker, and even Robert Ferguson (of all players) swore that whatever Favre threw that Monday Night against the Raiders, they would catch for him? And they did it.

Wideouts with attitude problems (Koren Robinson, Terry Glenn, Bill Schroeder, even Walker) were quietly excised from the team. The Super Bowl-winning stable of receivers--Donald Driver, Greg Jennings, Jordy Nelson, and James Jones--were a case study of ego-less, team-oriented talent. When Jennings, the clear primary threat, was essentially a non-factor early in the 2010 season, many rushed to his interview podium to ask how upset he was at not getting the ball enough.

Naturally, even if Jennings was upset, he never let on. And as the season progressed, and the injury-riddled Packers found their footing offensively, Jennings again assumed his role as the #1 receiver. Had that been Sterling Sharpe (or Owens, or Keyshawn), that lull in production could have exploded on the field and in the locker room.

So, no longer have I been that "WR guy" that I was as a kid. Perhaps, like my musical tastes, my appreciation for the game of football has matured. Just as I have put my Debbie Gibson cassettes into the storage unit and downloaded The Best of the Eagles on iTunes, I no longer have solely WR jerseys in my Packer closet. I value the impact of a running game, dissect the ins and outs of Dom Capers' 3-4 defense, and have measured the impact of special teams on a win or loss.

Hey, 20-Year Old Me would have taken umbrage with 2010 Me for all of those articles I wrote petitioning Mike McCarthy to quit throwing the ball so much and commit to the running game. But, 2010 Me has realized that it takes more than that explosive Dickey-to-Lofton passing game to win a championship. Perhaps, in the dark decades of the 70's and 80's, when my formative years as a Packers fan were established, finished 8-8 and having an exciting passing game was the best we could hope for.

But with two Lombardi trophies under our belt since those days, you realize the impact of what a complete team effort requires. Oh, don't think I've totally lost my WR fettish. When I wore my Packer jersey each week from the Patriots game through the Super Bowl (without washing it), it was none other than my #85 Jennings jersey. But I would have been just as happy wearing my Rodgers, Hawk, Matthews, or Bulaga jersey.

The reason I write this, however, is that WR passion from my youth was stirred just a bit this past draft when the Packers took Randall Cobb in the second round. Ted Thompson has made it a habit of drafting some talented, team-oriented wideouts in almost all of his drafts, but Cobb brings just a bit of swagger to the position.

Normally, that bit of bravado would throw some yellow flags up for me, because heaven knows I've learned my lesson. But Cobb has already established through the media and his Twitter account that, despite bringing some of that electrifying agility to our return game and offense, he has sought out the team veterans to create relationships with them...nothing required during offseasons when there isn't a lockout.

A players who hit it big in college, both as a returner and a receiver, but also as a Wildcat quarterback, could easily step into the big leagues believing the spotlight should be on him, and we've seen it over and over again through the years. But it's been noted that at Kentucky, where his pure athleticism would have been enough to warrant his playing time, he established himself as a team leader, needing no prodding to put in the extra time watching tape or conditioning. He bonded with his coaches, viewing them as family, not as "the Man busting my hump".

And coming into perhaps one of the healthiest team environments in the NFL will seal the deal that this kid will be a playmaker, an electrifying player who has awakened the hope in me of looking forward to a wideout that will awaken my childhood passions for seeing the wide receiver dominate the field again.

No, I don't expect Cobb to supplant Jennings as the #1 receiver, but I do hope that he can enter the game and make cornerbacks desperately call for safety help over the top. I'm hoping he's a guy who can stretch the field and force defenses back, creating for room for guys like Ryan Grant and James Starks to find a hole.

But, yes...there's an immature part of me that longs to see Cobb catch a ten-yard slant and dip and bob, shift and weave through defenders for a long touchdown, just like I used to cheer for in awe with James Lofton and Sterling Sharpe. There's a part of me that, despite every effort I've made to wean myself away from glorifying the wide receiver position, wants to see this corps have the kind of season that will help Aaron Rodgers challenge Tom Brady's 2007 campaign and 50 passing touchdowns.

When we saw the Packer offense sputter several times at the end of the season and into the playoffs this past year, relying on the defense to pull out the game for them, the addition of Cobb could be the difference between nail-biting finishes and putting inferior teams away early.

Is that wishful thinking on my part? It could be. Cobb hasn't even put a jersey on yet and run in shorts, much less taken an NFL hit.

But that's 20-Year-Old Me talking. Now, where is that storage unit with my Debbie Gibson tapes again?

Tempering Our Highest of Expectations for 2011

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 20:47:00 +0000

I've been commissioner of my football fantasy league for 14 years. We were one of the first leagues to use Commissioner.com long before it was bought out by CBSSportsline (a fact I remind them of every year I negotiate my league fee). After all that time, I've come to a conclusion.

You see, I've won my league three times in that time period, and in each of those championship seasons not once did I actually win my division crown. Yep, in all three championships, I was a wild card who just happened to be the team to win both games in the playoff weeks. Teams that had dominated, gone the whole season with perhaps just one loss, often fell apart in the final weeks as their players were rested for the playoffs, or suffered injuries late in the season.

Thus, my conclusion: winning a championship is all about who's hottest, lastest.

At least in fantasy football: the real game is obviously a far more complicated animal not driven purely by statistical number-jumping. But, looking closely at the Packers' over time, being the hottest team lastest may have equaled a Super Bowl trophy, and give us pause before anointing any "dynasty" labels.

You see, I've long noticed that the Packers under Mike McCarthy have been an up-and-down team, with streaks of wins and streaks of losses. I surmised in the past that McCarthy's Packers seem to need to have their backs against a wall in order to truly get it together, and if you really think about the end of last season, with every game over those last six essentially an elimination game (on the road, nonetheless), it only adds to my theory.

Prior to the 2010 season, the Green Bay Packers had put up streaks as follows over McCarthy's tenure as coach:

4-8
16-2
5-4
2-7
4-4
7-1

Breaking down last season as a microcosm, the streaks (fully aided and abetted by injuries) continued the pattern.

2-0
1-3
4-0
1-3
6-0

What's my point? Well, you can take it however you like, but if you are a streaky team, there's something to be said for going on one of your hottest streaks in January. In fact, that's probably the best time to do it. And, the Packers did that last year.

Not that there's anything derogatory about it in the least...and if the streak equaled a Super Bowl trophy for the Green Bay Packers, it's the greatest streak in the world. In fact, just like most of the season, many of those games were never put away until late in the fourth quarter, requiring a herculean interception on a game-tying or game-winning drive to restart our arrested hearts again.

The New And Improved Cardiac Pack, indeed.

The interesting question for 2011 is going to be if the Packers are going to swagger onto the field like defending champions, or if this will continue to be the same streaky club we've seen over the last five years. You can make a case for it either way.

On the former's argument, the Packers have been perpetually one of the youngest teams in the league since McCarthy took over as coach, which may factor in to the Packers previous streakiness. With a Super Bowl victory, a lot of these young players have grown up fast, seeing what the fruits of their labor can bring. The Packers return a matured core group of players who led the team to the Super Bowl last year, including most of the team leaders. More importantly, they return their GM, Coach, and defensive coordinator that built and guided this team to that Super Bowl.

Not to be overlooked, of course, is that the Packers won the Super Bowl with a M*A*S*H unit on the field. In addition to returning those starters who were on the field in North Texas, the team will be bringing many key veterans off the IR and back into training camp. How much more lethal could the Packers have been with Ryan Grant, Nick Barnett, Jermichael Finley, Morgan Burnett, and Brad Jones on the field? We will soon find out, giving the Packers plenty of options in shaping their starting lineup, as well as allowing Mad Scientist Dom Capers even more ingredients to experiment with in his kitchen.

However, looking at the "glass-half-empty" side of it all, the Packers will continue to be a young team, and frankly, a team that had a hard time putting together complete games, even in their final six-game winning streak. Aaron Rodgers had plenty of rough games later in the season, and the offense disappeared for quarters at a time. On many occasions, I used the word "ugly" to describe a Packer late-season win. The Packers won, but this isn't necessarily a team that consistently fires on all cylinders.

And, while I look forward to seeing many of our injured veteran players back, there are many who wonder if the Packers weren't actually better off with Ryan Grant and Nick Barnett out of the lineup. Losing Grant meant that the Packers had every excuse to keep the ball in Aaron Rodgers' hands, and many of us at least quietly admit that Desmond Bishop appears to be a better fit in Capers' 3-4 scheme than Barnett. Bringing back Grant in a "backfield by committee" means forcing carries to keep everyone happy, and there aren't enough middle linebacker positions for the starting caliber MLB's we have.

Heck, even veteran backup Charlie Peprah has earned his spot next to Nick Collins. Now we're going to bring back Burnett? And, there are some journalists who have tossed it out there than Finley's subtraction may have actually added to the offense, that he was too much of a focal point for Rodgers before his injury.

Now, before you pile on and accuse me of heresy with assorted colorful adjectives, my goal is not to rain on our Packers' victory parade, nor to be overly negative as we approach a highly-anticipated 2011 season, already with the high expectations of being a "dynasty" season. Not my point, not my intent.

However, I would gently remind each of us that there is no greater feeling that the slow build from zero expectations to the mighty heights of supreme victory, something we've felt twice in the last twenty years under two different GMs. But, there is no greater disappointment than watching our highest expectations fall apart, either. The eventual decline of a team can be torn apart even faster by the emotion and anger than comes from disappointed fans. You've invested your emotion on nothing less than a Super Bowl, and to not get a return on that investment is hard to take.

As the Packers (hopefully) square off in the season opener against the one team we were most happy not to face in the playoffs last year, we're going to hope for a convincing 1-0 start to 2011, and many will quickly extrapolate that to mean we're Super Bowl-bound again. I'm reminding all of us that every team is 0-0, and it will take a long seventeen weeks before we know who is even in the playoffs, much less the Super Bowl.

The Packers are in as good of a position to make it back to the Super Bowl as any team in the league. They said the same thing about the Saints last year at this time, too. The important thing is to cherish our Super Bowl win and our tenure as defending champions but, as McCarthy preached so much to his players last year, to take each game as they come instead of looking ahead.

Every season starts our with hopes, dreams, an aspirations of greatness, and this year is no different. I fear, however, for the number of people who will scream, wailing and gnashing teeth, if the Packers don't suddenly start out 4-0 and sit atop the NFL rankings each week. I've learned many times over the last few years that what happens early in the season is far from a predictor of how the season will turn out.

In the case of Mike McCarthy's Packers, you can likely count on a dizzying roller coaster ride that will hopefully end up at the highest point, just like last year. Sit back, enjoy the journey.

My Humble Opinion: Ted Thompson > Ron Wolf

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 03:15:00 +0000

We were doing the post-Super Bowl gushfest episode of Cheesehead Radio when we had a caller, the inevitable victory cry not only for the Packers, but a taunt for those who had doubted the master plan of the General Manager.

"So," said the caller, "what do all those Thompson Hater have to say now? Super Bowl Champs, baby!"

In turn, Jersey Al, Holly, John, and Jayme all went around the table (truthfully) stating that they had never been overly critical of Ted Thompson, much less a Hater. A silence settled on the broadcast as they waited for my response. If we were all live in the same room, I have a feeling that five sets of eyes (including those of the caller) would have been squarely on me.

And, I gave my mea culpa...with qualifiers. I said that I had never been a "Thompson Hater", but had been a pretty consistent Thompson Critic over the years. Now, someone could do a little history, whether it be here on the blogs or on the Packerchatter forums and might have found the "not a Hater" claim a bit dubious (and, thanks to a couple server crashes, some of my most venomous Thompson criticisms from 2005 no longer exist in cyberspace).

But I have been a critic of Thompson for quite some time. Some of it stemmed back to my disapproval of how he handled certain situations, such as leaving lame-duck head coach Mike Sherman in the lurch until late August before signing him to an extension. I thought it further eroded his credibility after having just been stripped of his GM duties to begin with, and was further inflamed when he was fired just five months later.

I stated that summer, that following January, and still state now: he should have let him go right away. Clean break, let Sherman get a fresh start somewhere else. Instead, he became the fall guy for a miserable 2005 campaign which we now recognize as a cap-clearing year.

And I criticized him for stating he was "in it to win today" in 2005, when a certain quarterback was essentially running for his life behind "starters" named Klemme and Whitaker, while handing the ball off a guy named "Gado" and throwing to a guy named "Taco".

I also criticized him for Favregate, and while I completely supported his decision to "move on" in March of 2008, I thought he unnecessarily created a schism among the Packer fan base by allowing the story to drag out throughout the summer instead of finding a quick and quiet end to it all. Not to say The Quarterback Formerly Known As #4 was clear of any blame, completely the opposite. But Thompson had the ability to pull the pin, grant a release right away, and let the chips fall where they may.

While many disagreed with me then, and still do today, it's pretty clear that giving Favre his release when he first requested it likely would not have added any Lombardi Trophies to the Vikings' display case, nor removed the one the Packers just won this past season. And the momentum from 2007 might have carried over to 2008 instead of imploding.

And, of course, I criticized Thompson's approach to building a team. I questioned the draft-only mentality, the eschewing of free agents, and the proclivity to sign people off the street...rather than invest a draft pick in trade for known value. And I thought I was right.

And I was wrong.

Oh, I still won't cry defeat on how Ted handled some in-house personnel moves, and I think even he would be gracious enough to admit that he probably wishes he could go back in time and do some things differently. But when it comes to building a team, I have to admit that Thompson broke the mold...specifically, the mold that I had set as the ultimate measuring stick that should obviously equal a Super Bowl victory: the measuring stick of Ron Wolf.

And I'm here to tell you that I believe, despite all of my previous ambivalence towards the job he's done, that Thompson not only lived up to the long shadow cast by Wolf, he may have exceeded it. What irony, when so many of us thought the longest shadow was going to the one left by Brett Favre for Aaron Rodgers. In the end, I was far more accepting of Rodgers not being Brett than I was forgiving of Thompson not being Wolf.

And in the end, Thompson may actually have accomplished more in getting his Super Bowl ring. Oh, time will tell the final tale in a decade or so, but in my opinion, Thompson changed the rules and succeeded in a far more difficult set of circumstances.

Looking back on the great Ron Wolf, there is a reason his name is emblazoned on the stadium wall at Lambeau Field. He was the mastermind who brought together some of the biggest Packer Legends Of All Time via trade and free agency, and built a solid core through the draft. A Lombardi Trophy sealed the culmination of his five-year plan.

But...

...what if Wolf actually underachieved, given the hand he had been dealt. Oh, I know, this is heresy, but I have long been of the opinion that if it weren't for the dastardly Dallas Cowboys choosing that exact moment to have a dynasty in the early 1990's, the Packers might have more than doubled their Lombardi Trophy count.

You see, Wolf was a great GM, but he took over the Packers during the perfect storm. [If I ever write a book about Wolf's dominant GM skills, that would be the title of it: The Packers' Perfect Storm]. Green Bay had, for decades, been the Siberia of the NFL, in a league without free agency, a salary cap, or revenue sharing. The Packers would draft players in the top ten of the first round who would jump to the CFL rather than play with the unlovable losers of Green Bay. The Packers were long chided for sitting on a pot of money, refusing to break the bank to bring in top-notch talent.

The shifts in fortune actually started with the 1987 NFL strike, which ended with a favorable ruling for the owners that would have kept the Packers in their cycle of being the NFL's AA farm club. But, subsequent decertification of the players union and class action lawsuits brought the two parties back to the table in 1989. The two sides agreed to fundamentally change the structure of the league, allowing free agency after a delay of a few years. They also agreed to revenue sharing, a salary cap, and perhaps most importantly for the Packers, a salary floor.

Plan B free agency started right away, but soon evolved after litigation by players and became full unrestricted free agency in 1992. And, as we all know, this was the first year Ron Wolf took the reins for the Green Bay Packers.

The Packers were forced to spend their money now, and with revenue sharing, had the cushion to open the coffers and do it. Wolf was an expert at finagling his draft picks and attracting free agents, but with a clean salary cap (and few big contracts), they were in prime position to make a run for the biggest name in free agency: Reggie White.

Within a few short years, Wolf put together a team that never missed the playoffs after his first season. But, it was the Cowboys who ended the Packers' playoff drives in 1993, 1994, and 1995. The Packers continued to sign veteran free agents to get them over the "Cowboy Hump". In 1996, the Cowboys finally declined, and the team that Ron Wolf built to beat the former dynasty easily ran roughshod through the regular season and through the playoffs.

In a way, that time period from 1992 (the beginning of unrestricted free agency) to around 1997 (when salary cap hell began decimating teams) was the perfect time to be a smart general manager for the Packers. Wolf had the capital, the salary cap room, and was able to sell the storied tradition to potential free agents. The question is, could the Packers have done even more?

When you look at the 1995 team that lost to the Cowboys in the NFC championship game, you see a team that was on the verge, that (without Dallas in the way) would have likely beaten the Steelers in the Super Bowl. Conversely, the Packers could of (and in many of our minds, should have) beaten the Broncos in 1997, too. Both the 1995 Dallas loss and the Denver Super Bowl loss were very winnable games, with a late Favre interception setting up the game-sealing Dallas touchdown. And, some questionable strategy in in the Super Bowl allowing Terrell Davis to score late in the game was a hole the Packers couldn't dig themselves out of.

Who knows what might have been if the Packers had selected Barry Sanders instead of Tony Mandarich. The Packers had at least a three-year window from 1995-1997 and took one Super Bowl trophy out of it.

Now, on to Thompson. For years, I evaluated Thompson by what he didn't do as Wolf had done. He didn't sign a huge free agent to build the team around. He didn't trade away draft picks for stars of the future. And most of all, he traded down in the draft to bring in quantities of players that were supposed to compete and allow the cream to rise to the top.

All it is going to do, I said, is turn the Packers into a team that would never do particularly poorly, but would never have what it takes to get over the hump and go deep into the playoffs. And had you asked me about six months ago, I would have repeated it again convincingly.

But Thompson matched Wolf in what would have to be considered the most imperfect storm. He took over a bloated roster from Mike Sherman that, while not in salary cap "hell", didn't allow much wiggle room. The league has normalized unrestricted free agency through trial and error, resigning the best of the best to cap-friendly deals, while allowing only flawed players to actually reach the market, making them far greater risks for the money.

But, most of all, the league has far more parity. While you can win a Super Bowl with far less talent than the dynasty-level teams of the past, it's a lot harder to get there (and often requires a bit of good fortune along the way).

Hey, you put the 1996 Packers up against the 2010 Packers, who do you honestly think would win? Reggie, Gilbert, Sean, and Santana going up against our offensive line without a consistent running game? The 90's were the last of the dynasty teams: Dallas, Green Bay, Denver, and New England.

In retrospect, Thompson didn't have nearly the tools Wolf did, yet he won a Super Bowl in his sixth season just the same. Wolf wrote the script. Thompson reviewed it, kept just the parts he wanted, and then rewrote it to make it contemporary with the times.

Wolf took advantage of free agency and cap space. Thompson avoided the risks that modern-day free agency came with and built a team almost purely through the draft. Just when you thought you had him pegged as a conservative glorified scout, he blew your mind by trading the farm to take Clay Matthews in the first round in 2009. No, not every pick or move has worked out, and the number of times he left positional groups woefully understaffed has been the cause of some justified consternation over the years.

But, in the end, and despite overwhelming odds, Ted Thompson matched Ron Wolf's Lombardi Trophy total. No matter how you slice it, you can't emphasize how much more difficult of a job this was in today's times, that in an era designed to prevent dynasties, the Packers now appear to have the makings of one.

The years leading up to Ron Wolf's Super Bowl were a slow build, each year improving on the last until 1996 hit with a fever pitch with expectations so high anything less than a Super Bowl would be a disappointment.

Ted Thompson's prelude to a Trophy was anything but a slow build, with amazing highs and disappointing depths. While the Packers may have come in to this season with predictions of "Super Bowl or Die", they were quickly muted when a slough of injuries decimated the team. Super Bowl teams were supposed to dominate their games against mediocre opponents, not win or lose them by single-digits week after week.

But the team that Thompson built was designed for this era: a flexible, fluid team with interchangeable parts and a coaching staff willing to redraw the schemes week-to-week to accommodate the players filling the roles. In the end, season-ending injuries were compensated for with a long bench of talented young players once overlooked.

If the 1996 Packers had, early on, lost their starting playmaking tight end (Keith Jackson), their starting MLB (George Koonce), their starting strong safety (LeRoy Butler), their starting running back (Edgar Bennett), their veteran starter right tackle (Earl Dotson), and starting weak-side linebacker (Brian Williams), would they have persevered to the end with backups? And having to win all their playoff games on the road?

It's hard to say, because these are two different teams, from two different eras. But in the end, both teams brought impassioned fans a trophy (though it was more of a pleasant surprise this past year). It's a testament to the foresight and planning that Thompson had to break the mold and traditional road map the many Packer fans had in our heads, and created a team that could survive parity with depth.

The Packers are poised with the return of many injured players (and a strong draft) to come back even better than they were last year. But, as we've done with Ron Wolf, we can't evaluate a man's legacy until we can look back on it with an unbiased eye a decade or so later.

But I will put it on paper now: even if Thompson's Packers don't win another Super Bowl, he achieved the same outcome against far greater odds than Wolf had. I may never admit to "liking" Thompson, but I have a ton of respect for what he's done as the GM of the Green Bay Packers.

WhatIfSports.com: Fantasy Sports Simulation -- Football Boxscore

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 02:22:00 +0000

WhatIfSports.com: Fantasy Sports Simulation -- Football Boxscore

Just Say No To A Lockout, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Sun, 29 May 2011 18:54:00 +0000

Had a nice response to my plea to the masses to stage an intervention on the NFL from JuiceLaw over at Archie Manning's Bastards. In his piece, Juice offers the defense that, regardless of our feelings, nothing we do will be able to impact the efforts of corporate interests.

Gigantic corporations don't care what you think, because they provide a product or service that nobody else does. In this case, there isn't another NFL. The idea that caring or not caring about the lockout is going to fix anything or change anyone's mind is ludicrous. I am personally not enabling anything. Sure, collectively I may be part of the problem, but the only way to truly affect a billion dollar business would be for EVERYONE to not have anything to do with the NFL until they fix the labor issues, and THEN to not embrace them when they came back. And this is impossible. Unless or until there is somewhere else to get the Green Bay Packers. And there is not. Nothing is going to change regardless of what I do.

And I will give Juice some props on this point. The NFL was able to survive a season by giving us replacement players....and we PAID MONEY to sit in Lambeau Field to watch them. Since those days, despite that egregious move on the part of the owners, the NFL has continued to grow into the most-watched sport in the nation.

In other words, the NFL may be too big to fail.

I may be idealistic and big-picture sometimes, so I do understand his point that, in the grand scheme of things, my personal opinion isn't of major concern to the gods that control our nation's economy. And just because I am unhappy with funneling money out of my local Wisconsin economy to fund Bentonville doesn't mean I stop going to Wal-Mart to save some money, also.

But I have a tough time buying in to the "we have no control" theory: ergo, we may just as well sit back and accept it. Maybe it's a little populist of me, but I don't like believing that the customers of this league have no power. Because, in reality, we do.

The problem is that we are reactive instead of proactive, but make no doubt that public opinion can create (and has created) major sways in the corporate world. As a result of the NHL lockout, the advances hockey had made in America, including a $600M network deal with NBC, was wiped out. Now, you might find the NFL on Versus, if you're lucky (or interested). The NHL has become primarily funded through attendance again, and that's no path to prosperity in today's sports world.

The NHL suffered from acute disinterest, but MLB suffered true fan backlash, with many fans acting out by "striking" against baseball. Incidents across the nation made headlines, with fans running out on the field and throwing money at players, throwing sticks onto the field, and, certainly not the least of the grievances, booing loudly throughout the games. More importantly, baseball suffered financially, with over a 20% drop in attendance post-strike, and after losing $300M by not playing, operating revenue was cut from $1.87 billion in 1993 to $1.2 billion in 1994 and didn’t reach its former mark until 1997.

Remember Bob Uecker begging us to "Come On Back" to the stadium? Yes, the fans had a voice and impacted the corporate world of professional sports.

The problem comes in that we, as fans, wait to have the worst happen to us. We beg, we plead, we threaten...but we never let the sports world forget that we revolve around them, not the other way around.

But, take a look at the major sports' work stoppages in chronological order:

Yes, in 1987, the NFL cancelled part of the season, and survived for the most part.

But in 1994, MLB had a strike and cancelled a season, and it took them years to recover financially.

In 1998, the NBA had a lockout and cancelled just part of a season, and ticket sales and television ratings took three years to recover.

In 2004, the NHL had a lockout and cancelled an entire season, and never recovered.

Seeing the pattern? Fans aren't putting up with it anymore. NFL (and NBA) are you paying attention? We don't WANT the backlash, but as society has changed over the last twenty years, so have what we have come to expect from our teams we support.

My point is that while I may agree with JuiceLaw that it would very difficult (if not impossible) to send a message NOW to the league that they will suffer if they cancel games, I disagree that a collective fan base cannot have a major impact.

But, going back to my original post, the first step would be to stop begging the players and owners that we will do ANYTHING for football. The longer that message is sent, the longer this will go on...until both sides realize they have to agree to save what they have, not holding out for that extra billion dollars.

Shortened or Cancelled Season? I Say: Bring It On

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Sun, 29 May 2011 01:30:00 +0000

It's time to have an NFL intervention.

Maybe you've seen the show on A&E, where some drug-addled person is confronted by their loved ones to convince them to stop destroying themselves. The important line to take from that is "We love you too much to let this continue." Tough love at its finest.

And that sentiment is what we, as Packer and NFL fans, need to send to the NFL owners and NFLPA in a clear, concise, and consistent message: go ahead and cancel games. We can live without you.

Hard to do, telling the Packers and football that we really don't care that much if they decide to postpone or cancel the season? Absolutely. And do we really believe it? Of course we don't, just like people in an intervention don't WANT that person out of their lives to face a grim fate alone. But you have to say it and make them believe it in order for them to save their own lives.

My analogy may be a bit of a stretch, but let's face facts. There's nothing in these prolonged negotiations that revolves around anything else but money. Sure, the players have a passion for the game, and the owners love building up their fan base and giving us a product that we'll love. But in the end, this is a business, and a corporate business at that. Despite our burning passion for our football team, in the end, the Packers know that we'll continue to pay top dollar to be a part of the experience.

I can just take a stroll through my Twitter timeline and find, at least once a day, someone who cries out, "Come on NFL! Get the deal done! I can't live without my Packer football!!!". And it is that constant drumbeat, the demand from the fans and media throughout the nation that--no matter what--we will still be here when this is resolved, that keeps the standoff between players and owners without an end in sight.

We're enablers, except the drug of choice isn't cocaine or alcohol: it's money, pure and simple. In essence, the players and owners are fighting over which side will get that last billion dollars, and the more we demand that they get the season done at all costs, the more likely both sides will get their billion dollars...at our expense.

Just looking at the bleacher seats at Lambeau Field, the bowl itself seats 62,713. Now, if you raise every ticket price in the bowl by $10, and multiply that by 8 home games and two preseason games, you get $6,271,000 in additional revenue. Now multiply that by 32 teams and you get about $200,000,000.

In other words, the more we protest, the more likely we will price real fans out of the stadium. And in actuality, there's more than enough revenue right now to ensure the existence of the NFL (and the Packers) for eternity. This is no more a desirable outcome than postponing the season.

So, in the end, what do we want? We want the two sides to come together and barter a deal over the already ridiculous amounts of money they are making based on our fanatical passions, and keep the game going without any more delays than we've already had.

And if you really, really care about the NFL, you have to not care about it. As long as both the owners and players feel like their customers are willing to wait and pay anything to see the product back on the field, the more strength both sides feel they have in their justification to not negotiate. The minute they feel their trump card is slipping away from them, the quicker they're going to rush to save what they have, instead of capitalizing on our blind passions.

Having lived through two strikes already in my lifetime, it is a hardship to go without Packer Sunday, even back when the Packers were barely worth watching. But, the flip side of the coin is going to come down to us paying more for the product we already enjoy overpaying for, and worse, seeing that product change in order to win fans back.

The NHL is a perfect example of what owners and players not being willing to hammer out a deal can do to you. Frankly, hockey was always "that Canadian sport" to us in America, and when it started gaining popularity in the late 1990's and early 2000's, there was a somewhat artificial feel to all the hype. It was almost like the owners and networks were looking for another cash cow, and we were told repeatedly how much we should love hockey, especially now that half the teams had relocated to the U.S. It was almost hypnotic, and even I started watching some games on TV.

The NHL tried to emulate the other major sports, inflating their salaries and signing lucrative television deals. But when push came to shove in 2004, the resulting lockout cancelled the season and drove fans away, many permanently (myself included). If you asked NHL players and owners that, if they knew cancelling the season would result in their permanent demotion from the major sports pantheon, don't you think they would have been more willing to hammer out a deal?

However, football has little in common with hockey, as the NFL is (by far) the most popular sport in the nation. It has far more in common with the NBA during the Jordan Era, or the timeless devotion the MLB once enjoyed. And both have suffered setbacks in their fan base due to lockouts.

The NBA players and owners thought that their unprecedented popularity would continue forever, despite the breakup of the mighty Bulls franchise in 1998 and the retirement of The Face of the League, Michael Jordan. But the NBA no longer had the ambassadors it once had in Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, or Jordan, and assumed that a new generation of selfish streetballers would continue to capture the imagination of the fans. In the end, a lockout-shortened season turned off the long-time casual fans who tuned in every Christmas to watch the Bulls play "some other team", and the NBA has never since recaptured the magic it once had in the 80's and 90's.

Major League Baseball had so much more to lose, already a obsolescent game competing against other sports that had evolved into more exciting, flashy experiences. Yet, the traditionalist fanbase was rabid and dedicated, sitting in the stands and continuing to score the game in a book in their laps. But the cancelling of the 1994 season proved to be devastating not only to the casual fan, but those diehard fans as well. Baseball was tarnished forever, and further damaged themselves with juiced balls and unregulated steroid use to attract the fans back.

Of all of those three sports, the NBA has survived their lockout the best, but is still nothing compared to the status it enjoyed in the 1980's, when it stood atop of even the NFL as the nation's most popular sport. But in each case, the players and owners thought that the money train would continue, and that the short-term repercussions would disappear quickly once the game resumed.

But in each case, when the casual fan was lost due to the work stoppage, the league had to alter its game to try and draw them back. Baseball encouraged home runs, basketball encouraged one-on-one streetball that degenerated into foulfests. Hockey never recovered, regardless of what they tried.

As the NFL owners and players continue their hard line, they are falling into the same trap. And every time we declare that we will die without football, every time we beg for them to do whatever it takes to continue football uninterrupted, every time we pledge to pay more for the same product, the more likely it is that we will be without football and end up paying more for the same product later on.

It's insanity. Plain and simple, it's insanity. We're promising the players and owners that nothing they do will change our passion, and they're believing us. We're falling right into the same pattern we've seen over and over again in the last twenty years.

Heck, the NFL themselves thought we were so passionate about the game that they put a bunch of replacement players in NFL uniforms and trotted them out on the field in 1987. They even made the games count, and unfortunately, the drop in revenue was far less than they had expected. If you were like me, you watched those scab games, too.

But this is a different time, and cheap tricks like replacement players will not be so easily tolerated by a fan base that is already paying top dollar to enjoy the game they love.

The time has come, Packer fans and NFL fans, to save the game by doing the opposite of what is our nature to do: let the players and owners believe that we actually don't care if they cancel the season. Love the game, hate the lockout. Enrapture yourself with your local college football teams. Mention how you're excited to have your Sundays to watch the Brewers playoff drive. Spend time with your family and loved ones.

But don't let the players and owners know they have us over a barrel. In the end, it is all of us who will suffer the consequences of our enabling of their selfish self-destructive behaviors.

As hard as it is to say, if you love the game of football, love it so much that you're not willing to see it destroy itself.

Join Cheesehead Radio LIVE for the Packers' #1 Pick!

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 01:12:00 +0000

Hey, by the end of the first round, we're all going to be a little sick of Berman and PermaHair blathering on about everyone else's teams' picks. As the Packers' pick at #32 gets closer, turn down the volume on the television and listen to Holly, Jersey Al, C.D., John, and Jayme talk about THE PACKERS pick. We'll give you instant reactions and catch you up on who Ted Thompson made Green Bay's latest first-round pick, even as ESPN goes off the air until Friday.

We're not exactly sure what time we'll start the show, but when the picks start getting around the mid-twenties, check Twitter and see if we've gone live! (We only have two hours we can be on-air, so we want to have a good amount of time to talk about who we think the Packers will be picking, and time enough to talk about it afterwards.)

Bookmark this link at BlogTalkRadio and listen in as we bring you the Packers #1 pick with your favorite Packer bloggers!

Bo Ryan: A Man Worth Rooting For

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:02:00 +0000

Since the NFL is on break, I will break from Packer blogging to talk about my excitement over this years' Wisconsin teams in the Sweet Sixteen, particularly Bo Ryan and the Wisconsin Badgers.

I've been a big fan of Bo Ryan for a long time, long before he became a head coach at Madison. When I graduated from high school, I planned out my freshman year at UW-Platteville. One of the classes I registered for most quickly was one of my phy ed credits: a 9:00AM Basketball class, taught by the man who was entering his third year as head coach of the Division III school. I was thrilled. Excited. Bo was already a household name in my hometown, not too far from Platteville, and the thought of being "one of his players" was exhilarating.

Of course, reality sets in for many a high school graduate, and two things were pretty apparent right away. Ryan wasn't actually AT class every day, often having an assistant or another teacher covering his class; and I was surrounded by guys (and girls) who had been strong players on their high school teams. I, as I quickly realized, had been a benchwarmer, at best.

Soon, a class pecking order reared up, with the strongest players somehow making sure they were together each day. The rest of us switched off trying to take them out, with the whole "we got next" concept meaning half of us were always watching.

Once or twice every two weeks, though, Ryan would be there and watching things over. Of course, the most testosteroned of players would jack it up even more, in an attempt to show off for the head coach (perhaps hoping he would notice them and offer them a scholarship).

Interestingly enough, in my sophomore year of college, things changed for me. The coordination, balance, and physical togetherness that had abandoned me ever since I grew eight inches in seventh months in eighth grade manifested itself again...and all those years in-between I had spent dribbling and driving paid off. Unfortunately, that didn't help me in my freshman year, where I was still painfully awkward. A year later, I'd be playing point guard and shooting three's for my intramural team, and jumping so high on my layups I could finger-roll the shot just over the rim. But not that day in Bo Ryan's gym.

No, that one Monday morning, I was struggling, as usual. The "cool kids" were running up the score, and making sure we knew it...especially since Ryan was watching...and for some reason, even more closely that day.

At the end of class, we were nearly shut out. We probably had thrown up a couple of three's along the way and made them, but it was a blowout, make no doubt about it. Ryan had been observing, occasionally stepping in to coach a player on an inside move or how to move along the perimeter, but hadn't intervened.

As the bell rang, I was cross-checked by a kid while trying to dribble to the right side of the arc, and for the first time, Ryan blew his whistle instead of having us argue about whether or not we were fouled. He grabbed me and put me on the line, and made everyone else line up for the free throw. Again, this was out of the norm, as we never shot free throws, instead giving the fouled player's team the ball at the top of the key.

Ryan looked around at the players, handed me the ball, and said, "If he makes it, his team wins. If he misses, you guys win." And he walked away. Now, nothing in the world terrified me more than shooting free throws. A year later, I could shoot them (literally) with my eyes closed, but at that moment I thought only of the one free throw attempt I had in high school: an air ball.

Of all the players to put all the pressure on, he made the worst possible choice: me.

I stood a the free throw line, took only a second to think about it, and made my patented two-handed push shot. The ball sailed on a flat arc, tonged against the back of the rim, and went straight down through the net. Ryan again blew the whistle and said, "See you Wednesday!" and left.

Any smile I had was quickly silenced by the menacing glares of the "cool kids" who saw what was likely a 40-6 victory snatched away from them by the least likely of players. I took a couple more shoulders as I grabbed my shoes and headed to Biebel Hall for my 10:00 class.

What was interesting over the next couple of years at UW-P is that Ryan seemed to have my face memorized. No, I doubt he ever knew my name, but he always kind of lit up when he saw me and said, "Hey, how you doin'?" Of course, maybe in my own mind, I exaggerate his reactions, but our passing conversations were always something I looked forward to.

On one occasion during my junior year, I met Ryan on the rec fields behind Pickard Hall. I shouted out, "Hey coach! Just so you know, I'm coming out for the team this year!" Again, he lit up and replied, "Hey, come on out. We need you!" Another passing quip, but one I didn't mind mentioning to my girlfriend and the guys on the wing.

I never realized it, probably not until I was coaching basketball myself, but I think he picked the worst player on the floor that day for a reason: to show that anybody can beat you and that you can never allow humility to escape your game. He sat that day watching a bunch of prima donnas who once-upon-a-time were the big men on campus chest-thump each other in a college phy ed class, eschewing any semblance of sportsmanship. You could never argue that those kids weren't the better athletes, but it didn't mean they were better people, or even the better team.

Was I Bo Ryan's David that one day, showing the Goliaths that they weren't quite as cool as they thought they were? Who knows. But, I do know that after notching four Division III National Championships, it didn't take long for Milwaukee and Madison to take notice, and no one cheered louder when Ryan became a Badger in 2001. Since those days, Wisconsin, once the laughing stock of the Big Ten, never finished below fourth place in the conference, never missed a Big Dance, and Bo will now be coaching his fourth Sweet Sixteen appearance.

All the while, he's done it without the incredible raw athletes you see at other programs. Most of the names he's had success with haven't gone on to NBA success. No, names like Brian Butch, Kirk Penney, Greg Stiemsma, Alando Tucker, and Mike Wilkenson have been the cornerstone players of a defense-minded teams that have surround some talented point guards, like Devin Harris, Trevon Hughes, and now, Jordan Taylor...aggressive, defense-minded point guards just like Bo Ryan was in his day.

When I think of Ryan's teams, I think of that quote by Jerry Kramer, who insisted that Lombardi's Packers were not successful because they had better athletes than everyone else. "We had the best team...T-E-A-M...in NFL history." Perhaps those Packers were less than the pinnacle athletes of their day, but there was no greater show of synergy in which all those players complimented each other and played as one cohesive, ego-less unit under one great head coach.

I guess that's what I like about Bo Ryan. He values work ethic over raw athleticism, teamwork over self-promotion, and defense above all. He's not about the show. He's about wins...wins as a team. We Wisconsinites have learned that lesson well over the last ten years he's been head coach of the Badgers.

But I learned that lesson a long time ago...directly from the man himself.

Packer Fans Cheated Out Of Offseason of Gloating

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 03:20:00 +0000

I want my money back. Is there some place we can go to get a refund?

I clearly remember last February that the Packers won the Super Bowl. Yep, pretty sure. And as I recall, we went through a season of plenty of doubts, with plenty of abuse from Bears fans along the way. Heck, I think the Lions beat us once, too.

It's the Super Bowl season that shouldn't have been, but was. It was the "Holy Cow They Did It!" season that no one really saw coming once the MASH helicopters settled upon Lambeau Field to remove the injured players.

Now, given the complete and utter shock that we won the Lombardi Trophy to begin with, we needed a little time for it to completely settle in. Then, we needed to search and target every Viking and Bear fan who had mocked us over the last few years and return it in spades.

But, we never got the chance. Not really. The Super Bowl win, to many people, seems like a long time ago already. For one brief shining week, the population of Wisconsin and Packer fans around the world stood united in glory, a shared bond that brought together everyone who wore Green and Gold.

Then, in an instant, the world shut it down. First of all, the good folks of Wisconsin were quickly distracted, then completely polarized by a partisan budget plan that pitted the same folks who sat next to each other on the aluminum bleachers in Lambeau only a month before. The conversations in every local diner across the state no longer debated Thompson, McCarthy, and Rodgers, but Walker, Fitzgerald, and absent senators.

The Super Bowl celebration time we Packers fans were owed was being squandered.

Then, a series of very unfortunate events took place around he world, overshadowing the victory. It's hard to feel all that comfortable congratulating yourself on being a Packer fan when you see people in deep suffering: a tsunami in Japan, civil wars in Libya and Yemen...all these things make us step out of our self-absorbing Super Bowl Hangover and spend time debating the merits of nuclear energy versus its dangers.

And then, of course, the ultimate in betrayals: the NFL itself locked itself down, saw a players union decertify, and in the midst of all these very real human events, enact a very public pissing match about how to divide billions of dollars amongst themselves.

Yes, it is disheartening to hear Adrian Peterson describe his situation as "slavery". Not when there are folks making far less than his $10M salary taking hefty pay cuts. When there are Japanese citizens fleeing their country in droves while scientists literally sacrifice their lives in broken-down reactors. When our country has engaged in another foreign war, when the last two have dragged on for going on at least six years.

And in the midst of all of this global chaos, the Packers won a Super Bowl. This is a time we're supposed to be enjoying the fruits of our fanaticism. We're supposed to be smugly reminding everyone that we pick 32nd in the draft and flock to every public appearance a player makes. Only problem is, the players can't make any appearances on behalf of the team. And, there's no Fan Fest to look forward to. Draft Party? None of that, either.

I feel cheated. We're supposed to be celebrating this team, and in a way, ourselves, for being Super Bowl champions. That month or two of pure glee has been preempted by nearly every form of politics and tragedy. Yes, it's selfish. And I know that the events in the world, in real life, are more important than a sport. In many cases, they are affecting the lives of people we know and love, if not our own lives.

But, thinking back to 1996 and the wave of emotion that rode all the way through into the next season, you have to wonder if not only is our own celebration been muted, but the momentum a team might get from an offseason when you finally don't have to think, "Wait until next year". The Packers could be a dynasty team, in all seriousness...but what impact would a delay to the season, much less canceling the season, have on that potential legacy?

This is our time to celebrate, and let all those Viking and Bear fans in the next cubicle get what's been coming to them. I have no doubt that those Viking and Bear fans have to privately chuckle at having the carpet chucked out from under us.

I'm Back

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 11:45:00 +0000

I'm back.

Oh, crap. The NFL isn't. I just can't seem to get this timing thing down, can I?

I've been away for a month or so, minus an off-season episode of Cheesehead Radio (and a must-listen, if you haven't already). And it's time to get back into the swing of things, as there is plenty to comment on, and many draft picks to obsess over.

It may come a surprise to you, but writing is one of my greatest passions. Match that up with my passion for the Green Bay Packers, and you may wonder why in the world I've been away for a while. Well, in all honesty, I've been caught up in some real-life drama, and it was too difficult for me to separate what was going on in my life/profession and my Green Bay Packers. Politics and Packers don't (and shouldn't mix), and the former has been my focus (if not my obsession) over the last month or so.

But, a very wise woman (namely, my wife) has helped me to come to grips that one of the best ways I relieve my stressors is to write, and that I have been neglecting the passion that not only keeps me focused, but keeps me connected with the greatest fans on the planet. And despite all of the difficult weeks I've been through, there is something that connects all of us together, regardless of who we are, where we live, and what we do: we're all Green Bay Packer fans. And this wise woman told me to get back to work.

Thanks, ma'am.

As Kris Burke stated pretty clearly on the offseason episode of Cheesehead Radio, there's been enough in the news lately to divide us. It's time to focus on things that bring us together, and the Packers should be one of them...even if us coming together to demand the owners and players come together is how it must be.

So, as my "getting back behind the keyboard" gift to Jayme, who has petitioned for this on numerous occasions, check out Cheesehead Radio on iTunes for a bonus track of all the 2010 Show Intros. The cost to you? None, because A) we're all Packer fans, and B) I have no head for business or marketing, anyway.

Keep it tuned here at TundraVision and keep an eye out at Cheesehead Radio in the very near future for the first of our draft specials...LIVE!

Video: Return to Titletown

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 01:25:00 +0000

Hey gang...sorry this is a little late, but you will find my pictures from the Return to Titletown celebration at Lambeau Field last Tuesday. You'll find a couple of familiar faces in the beginning, and a little video of the fireworks at the end. It was very cold day, so forgive the shivering of my hand as I tried to film the fireworks!

The Punt That Helped Win the Super Bowl

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 23:40:00 +0000

The Packers defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers in a nailbiter, winning 31-25, having to stop the Steelers on what would be the game-winning drive. It was a beautiful, unbelievable moment, but most of us look earlier than Jarrett Bush's final stop to determine what was the critical play of the game that spelled victory for the Packers.

Most Packer fans (and likely, most Steeler fans) would point to the Rasheed Mendenhall fumble at the start of the fourth quarter. The recovery by Desmond Bishop on his own side of the 50-yard line diverted what would have been at least a field-goal attempt, if not a go-ahead touchdown. And certainly, that was the moment where the Packers found their steam again.

Others will point to Nick Collins' dramatic pick-six in the first quarter, a dagger that left the Steelers reeling and unable to get anything going for nearly the rest of the half. Again, you could see the momentum tip all the way over to the Packers' side in that moment.

It's the NFL's biggest game, to be forever defined by its biggest plays. When NFL Films goes to show the best highlight of the winning team, chances are it will be Collins' interception, Matthew's forced fumble, or Bush's defensed pass. But, there's a much smaller game always at work, too...and in a 6-point game, every decision in that chess match is critical.

The one moment that gets oft-overlooked amongst all of the flashy plays in the Super Bowl is the decision of Mike McCarthy to punt in the ball in the third quarter. In the end, it could well have spelled the difference in the game, but not without the Steelers' help.

Face it...in the third quarter, the Packers' were reeling. On their first two possessions of the half, the Packers amassed seven total yards and held the ball for 3:06 of just over ten minutes of play. The Steelers had piled up 76 yards of offense and had already scored a touchdown on their first drive, and were in Packer territory on their second. The score was 21-17, and the Steelers had whittled down an 18-point deficit, looking to close it out.

The Steelers were stopped on the Packers' 34-yard line, after Ben Roethlisberger held onto the ball for an extraordinarily long time, allowing Frank Zombo to sneak in for a sack. This left Pittsburgh with a 4th-and-15. At this point, Mike Tomlin chose to send out kicker Shaun Suisham to attempt a 52-yard field goal, despite not having attempted anything past 50 yards in the regular season. It was a risky move, but a logical one. A field goal would keep the momentum going, would shave the Packers' lead to one point, and keep the Packers' playing on their heels.

As it turns out, Suisham missed it, badly. The impact of the missed field goal was huge, as the Steelers had been freely moving the ball since Charles Woodson and Sam Shields were injured at the end of the first half. Not only did Pittsburgh finish up a 9-play, 4:31 drive with nothing to show for it, they gave the Packers the ball on the Green Bay 43-yard line.

Now, not only did that missed field goal have an emotional impact, it played large for a Packer offense that was in a rut and unable to move the ball. On their two previous possesions, the Packers started at their own 20, then their own 18. After punting, the Steelers started on the 50-yard line and their own 40. That's a huge advantage in field position, as well as psychological advantage. Now, the Packers made a stop and had their ball on their own 43 to start.

Now, the Packers continued to have problems moving the ball on that drive, gaining one first down, then going three-and-out. But, the same temptation was there for Mike McCarthy. The Packers finished with a fourth-and-eight on the Pittsburgh 38-yard line: a mere 55-yard attempt for Mason Crosby in a dome environment. Crosby was 2-4 on the regular season from beyond 50 yards, and we all know he has the leg strength for it. And a field goal would extend the lead to seven points in what had to be a moment on the sidelines desperate for something on the scoreboard.

But, McCarthy realized the importance of field position when his offense was still running in neutral. Any advantage gained by the Packers after a missed field goal would be lost if they did the same in kind. So, McCarthy sent out Tim Masthay to put the ball. It was a 25-yarder, fair caught by Randle-El at the Pittsburgh 13-yard line. It would be Masthay's only punt inside the 20-yard line all game long.

In a flash, the field position battle was turned around. No, it didn't "turn around" the momentum of the game, but it did take the steam out of the Steelers. The two teams traded two more punts on three-and-outs, but a penalty on Tramon Williams on the Steelers' punt return gave the field position back...and it took Matthews' forced fumble to prevent the Steelers from driving further into Packer territory.

Had the Steelers made that field goal, and the Packers gotten the ensuing kickoff back at around the 20-yard line again, the momentum would have been very much against them. Furthermore, had the Packers missed their own field goal attempt, the Steelers would have gotten the ball on their own 45 yard line, and only had to move 25 yards or so to get into range for a go-ahead field goal attempt...or worse, another touchdown.

The Packers have won ballgame after ballgame, particularly during their final six-game winning streak, with aggressive play. Yet, in a moment where the team was struggling, McCarthy made a wise move that the coach on the other sideline did not, a decision to kick or not to kick. It was a passive play, a "we're not going to risk it" play, but the smart play (no matter what Aikman says).

It's like the boxer who is getting whipped in the ring by an opponent, who covers up and looks for ways to take the momentum away from the other guy. Wrap him up, separate for a bit, get your wits about you, get saved by the bell. The punt didn't "win the game" for the Packers, but played a critical part in putting them in a position to not get beat...by taking away the advantages enjoyed by the Steelers.

Yes, it's small ball and not nearly as sexy as a pick-six or forced fumble, but there are many moments like this that go overlooked in the course of a game that come down to coaching decisions. And in this case, Mike Tomlin was outcoached by Mike McCarthy in a simple decision of risking field position to get a few points.

Packers' Report Card: Super Bowl Edition

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 03:20:00 +0000

Overall: A

The Packers may have entered this game as the favorites to win, and even played the first half like they were on their way to an easy Lombardi Trophy. But a string of injuries quickly dampened those thoughts and doubts began to creep into everyone's mind...that is, except the Steelers, who quickly capitalized and captured the momentum from the Packers. Losing Donald Driver early in the game was bad enough (leaving Aaron Rodgers to pass to James Jones and Jordy Nelson, each afflicted with an acute case of the dropsies), but losing defensive backs Sam Shields and Charles Woodson on consecutive plays late in the first half shook the Packers to their core. The Steelers racked up 14 unanswered points and pulled within four points of taking the lead, and the Packers didn't look ready to put up much of a fight on offense or on defense.

Now, you may have questioned some of the strategies in the third quarter, like why the Packers' best defensive player, Clay Matthews, was being marginalized as a spy instead of wreaking havok in the pass rush, or why the Packers only ran the ball three times in the third quarter, despite trying to protect a lead. But one thing you cannot question is the ability of this team to scrap and claw when its back is against the wall, and once again, the Packers delivered.

In Super Bowl XXXI, a similar third-quarter fade by the Packers was saved by Desmond Howard, who lit up the Patriots for a touchdown on a kick return that brought the entire team back to life. In Super Bowl XLV, it was another Desmond: Bishop, who opened the fourth quarter by recovering a fumble jarred loose by Matthews from Rashard Mendenhall in Packer territory. What happened next will go down in Packer lore, as Rodgers led two fourth-quarter scoring drives, leading to an 8-yard touchdown by Greg Jennings and a field goal by Mason Crosby. No, it wasn't a game-winning drive by Rodgers, per se, but it was a game-preserving drive that gave the defense room to breathe, with the Steelers having to score a touchdown to win, down by six points as time ticked away.

No, it wasn't pretty. In fact, at times, it was pretty ugly. But on every play, bodies with both colors of jersey were flying around and laying the hardest hits they could. Neither team left anything on the field in Super Bowl XLV. But coach Mike McCarthy's Packers won this game exactly the way they made it to the big game itself: by rising up when things looked bleakest, championing themselves on, if nothing else, pure heart and desire. No one will ever claim this was the most talented team to ever win a Super Bowl, but no one will question the heart, drive, or determination this team had as it took the hardest possible route to the Lombardi Trophy.

Rushing Offense: C+

The Packers sent a pretty clear signal that the running game would be a secondary weapon when they chose to make power fullback Quinn Johnson inactive for the game. As the Packers spread out the defense and went primarily with Rodgers throwing from the shotgun, James "Neo" Starks was seldom-called upon, but did well when he was given the ball. He finished with 52 yards on just 11 carries, but you saw flashes of the playmaking ability he possesses, particularly on a first-half run when he ran up the right side, crashing through tacklers for a first down and looking like he wanted to keep going despite having been pushed out of bounds. On the Packers final drive (ending in a critical field goal), Starks re-emerged with two rushes for 15 yards on a 75-yard, 10-play drive.

Rushing Defense: C

The Packers' best bet was to stuff Mendenhall like they had so many other quality backs they have faced in this preseason, and force the Steelers and Ben Roethlisberger to become one-dimensional against the Packers' secondary. However, the Packers had trouble containing Mendenhall (63 yards) as well as Mewelde Moore (13 yards on two carries) and Isaac Redman (19 yards on 3 carries). With Roethlisberger doing damage with his feet as well, the Steelers 5.5 yards per carry. The Steelers' 50-yard touchdown drive in the third quarter was completed entirely without one pass attempt. In the end, however, the Steelers were forced to go to the pass in the fourth quarter while trailing, thanks in part to Mendenhall's fumble in Packer territory, the turning point of the entire game.

Passing Offense: B

Aaron Rodgers delivered another sparkling stat line (24/39, 301 yards, 3 TDs, and a 111.5 efficiency rating) that earned him the Super Bowl MVP honors. But, the passing game gave us plenty of scares, not the least of which was Jordy Nelson's four critical drops (with another added by James Jones). In fact, while Nelson finished with 140 yards on 9 catches, he was targeted 15 times in the game. Rodgers himself would probably admit there were a couple of passes he would like to have back, with some hurried throws caused by the 4 sacks, 8 hits, and pressures on seemingly every dropback. Certainly, the offensive line had its hands full with the Steelers' front seven. But most of the time, Rodgers was zeroed in and throwing with his usual needle-point accuracy (even if it went through a receiver's hands), with Greg Jennings finding the end zone twice on beautiful passes. Most importantly, Rodgers did not throw an interception or turn the ball over, and in a game that came down once again to the final drive, taking care of the ball is the difference between a Lombardi Trophy and disappointment.

Passing Defense: B+

The Packers seemed to have their secondary in command of the game throughout much of the first half, forcing Roethlisberger to make mistakes, including two interceptions to Nick Collins and Jarrett Bush and looking more and more frustrated as the game went on. But, when Sam Shields and Charles Woodson exited the game, Big Ben began gaining confidence, going 4/4 for 41 yards and a touchdown to finish off the half. The secondary struggled to find its new identity with reserves Pat Lee and Jarrett Bush forced into full-time action, and appeared to come unglued when the Steelers went 6/7 for 66 yards in the fourth quarter to cut the Packers' lead to three points. But, it was the final drive of the game where Jarrett Bush and Co. stopped Roethisberger from using all that playoff experience we heard so much about, shutting him down and sealing the game for the win.

Special Teams: B

It wouldn't be a normal Packer game if there wasn't something to take Shawn Slocum's name in vain, and a critical unnecessary roughness penalty on Tramon Williams, who retaliated against a player pushing him towards a third-quarter punt about to be downed, made us question why Williams was anywhere near the ball to begin with. That play put the Packers inside their own 20-yard line and played a key part in giving the Steelers great field position for a go-ahead touchdown. Williams also muffed the first punt of the game after being run into by Shields, a bullet barely dodged as Williams got it back. Tim Masthay had an average day, punting for a 40.1 yard average and had difficulty keeping the ball outside the end zone, only downing one inside the 20 on seven punts. A forgotten man this postseason, Mason Crosby kicked a 23-yard field goal late in the fourth quarter that put the Steelers behind the eight ball on their final drive. The Packers passed on a third-quarter field goal attempt from 55 yards away, allowing Masthay to punt instead. That may have been a wise decision, as Shaun Suisham had just missed a 52-yarder going the other way that gave the Packers good field position.

CheeseheadTV Live Blog and Cheesehead Radio LIVE Post-Game Show

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 19:22:00 +0000

Looking for someone to share the Packers' Super Bowl experience with? Head on over to CheeseheadTV's Live Blog, being commandeered by the inestimable John Rehor tonight. Share in the fun as we watch the Packers battle it out!

After the game, join me on Cheesehead Radio for our LIVE Post-Game Call-in Show! John will join me as we take your calls at 917-932-8401 and hear your thoughts on how the game turned out. We're hoping to have some guest shots from all the members of the CheeseheadTV family, including those down in Dallas for the game, so you don't want to miss this LIVE call-in show tonight, starting at 9:00 PM CST.

The CheeseheadTV Live Blog will continue to run during the Cheesehead Radio broadcast, so to do both, just click on and put it in the background while having the Live Blog open at CheeseheadTV.

GO PACK GO!

TundraVision's Super Bowl Keys to the Game and Prediction!

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 17:45:00 +0000

The day is finally here, as the Packers take on the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV. Here's my take and game prediction:

The game is going to come down to what the Packers' offense can do against the Pittsburgh defense, period. I think the Steeler offense/Packer defense is a relatively even matchup that the Packers will get the upper hand in. Unlike most, I don't think the Pouncey injury is going to make any more impact on the Steelers line than what they've already had to deal with this season. The Packers will be able to get penetration, but to be honest, not having Eric Walden is going to be just as much of an impact as Pouncey. Frank Zombo is the master of almost getting to the quarterback in time, and that will be the great equalizer in this matchup.

In the end, you can count on a couple of interceptions by the Packer secondary, but the damage that the Steelers will do will be on the ground: either with Mendenhal on the ground or with what Rothlisberger can do with his feet. The pressure is going to be on the Packers to stuff the run, contain Big Ben, and let the secondary do its work.

I think the Packers will allow between 15-20 points on defense, with the potential for more point to come on special teams or by the Steelers' defense. However, the defense will do their job and open the door for the Packers' offense to win the game.

Aaron Rodgers will have the weight of the world on him, as I don't think Starks is going to do any consistent damage in the run game. The more the Packers go away from the run game (especially if the simply give up on it altogether, as they've done many times this season, the worse it will be for the Packers in the long run.

The Packers need to gain at least 70 yards on the ground on around 20 carries or so. They don't have to dominate the ground game, but they need to establish a commitment to it, even if it is a consistent 2-3 yards per carry. The Packers' record in post-season games with a running game under 50 yards is bleak.

In the end, though, it still will come down to the pressure the Steelers' front seven will place on Aaron Rodgers. I will go on record that Rodgers will throw one interception (or have a turnover of some kind today), and the Packers will be able to absorb it because of the strength of their defense. But they won't be able to survive two interceptions without some heroic plays to make up for it.

I am not a fan of the Big Five formation, and do believe that it only works against teams that aren't expecting it. With all the talk about the set these past two weeks, there's little doubt that the Steelers will be ready for it. I do think that a four-wide formation will have some impact on the defense, but the Steelers will allow a five-receiver set to go with a minimal zone coverage and bring six against Rodgers. It won't end well.

Instead, look for the Packers to continue to use the play-action and look for three receivers in the progressions. Rodgers has to play smart, both with his arm and his legs. This is the biggest variable in the game. Rodgers can dominate or end up like he did against the Bears, allowing the defense to dictate the game and punting it away, hoping the defense will bail the offense out.

I am going to change my X-Factor in this game from Andrew Quarrless (as I predicted on Cheesehead Radio) to James Jones. Now, I really do think Quarrless will be an x-factor, but Jones is going to be the biggest variable in the game. He will (I repeat, will) have at least one incredibly frustrating play today...a drop, missed route, maybe even a turnover, but he has the ability to more than make up for it with an incredible play. Against a tough Steeler defense, Jones will have to make that spectacular long play for a touchdown...and to be honest, it might be the only long play the Packers' offense has all day.

My Packers game prediction:

The Steelers will score two offensive touchdown, and will add another on special teams or defense. Tack on a field goal and they will finish with 24 points.

The Packers will get two touchdowns through the air by Rodgers and one on his feet. What will spell the difference in the game is the ability for the offense to get Crosby in field goal range at the end of the game. I am going to say that the Packers will have two attempts for Mason, and he will kick one late in the game that will end up spelling the difference in the game.

The TundraVision Super Bowl Game Prediction: Packers 27 Steelers 24

Super Bowl Situational: The Steeler Penalty Hits

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:28:00 +0000

This week, I'm going to write each day about some situational adversity the Packers may be facing next Sunday in the Super Bowl. In my first piece, I am going to address the possibility of the Steelers propensity for hard, illegal hits and the effect it may have on the Packers' offense.

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The name of James Harrison may no longer associated as much with being a Pro Bowl linebacker as he has become the poster child for harsh hits in the NFL this year, as well as being the perceived target of Roger Goodell's mission to make an example out of illegal shots.

Indeed, not only does Harrison seem to relish the role of playing the hitman, he's insisted that it unified the in such a way that it may have save their season.

"We didn't worry about the calls," Harrison said following a six-personal foul day against the Raiders in November. "When you're getting a lot of penalties against you, it brings you together."

Not only have the Harrison and the Steelers not held back from the imperative sent down for the league office, they've vowed to hit harder and keep paying fines if they must, as such aggressive play is the identity of the defense. Unfortunately, if they have held back until the Super Bowl, they have little to stop them from loading for bear against Aaron Rodgers and the Packers.

It's one thing to be scrapping your way through the AFC playoffs, know each game is a critical step towards the Big Game. The last thing you want to do in the playoffs is make the dumb play that may not only cost you the game, but even if you win, could involve a suspension for the next game. Not even Harrison is dumb enough to take a shot at Tom Brady's head or dive at mark Sanchez's knees after all of the fines he's taken this year with such a national audience and every NFL bigwig watching.

He's not going to risk his status to play in the Super Bowl.

But now that the Super Bowl is here, there's little to discourage a defense that may keep a Ken Stills-esque hit list on their terrible towels. The chances that a referee is going to eject a player from the game is pretty slim, even in the face of a clearly illegal and vicious hit. That is something often decided by the league afterwards, when fines and other punishments are assessed.

And what do the Steelers have to lose? Having to sit the first game of 2011, assuming we even have a season next year? Who cares if you have to sit out the first game of the season, especially if the rewards contributes to a Super Bowl win? What would any NFL player be willing to do to hold the Lombardi Trophy high above their head: sit out one game next year? Two?

Therefore, the Steelers will be locked and loaded, and the bad part of it is that the Packers are vulnerable to such an attack. First and foremost, the health of quarterback Aaron Rodgers has to be not only a concern for Packer fans, but a target for Steeler defenders who don't seem to mind whether or not their hits have an impact on the victim's health.

Rodgers has been vigilant in saying he didn't suffer a concussion against the Bears, but the naked eye still holds some doubts as to why Rodgers doth protest too much. A third concussion in a season would have spelled a potential start by Matt Flynn in the Super Bowl, and I wouldn't want to admit to being a bit woozy either. While such a concussion may not have been an automatic benching for the Super Bowl, it sure would have made for a lot of scrutiny of Rodgers in this already overhyped week.

You can bet, whether it is right or not, or whether they admit it or not, the Steelers would love to make Aaron Rodgers see stars, and I'm not talking about Fergie and Christina Aguillera. Having Rodgers miss significant time in the Super Bowl would force the Packers to change their entire gameplan, as they did against the Patriots in the regular season. And, while Matt Flynn put up a good fight, it wasn't enough in the end.

Worst Case Scenario: The Steelers come aggressively off the edges, picking particularly on rookie tackle Bryan Bulaga playing on the biggest stage of his young career. The Steelers are a high-risk, high-reward blitzing team, and the more the Packers become one-dimensional, the more aggressive the Steelers will be.

And by one-dimensional, I mean that James Starks and the running game will run into the brick wall that is the Pittsburgh run defense. Starks' high running style will find it tough to make significant yardage against the D that held the Jets to 70 yards on 22 carries, and McCarthy will default to centering the offense almost completely around Aaron Rodgers in the backfield.

Yes, Rodgers lit up the Steelers defense in 2009, but that was just a regular season game and did not feature Troy Polamalu. There's nothing to be left on the field and Rodgers will be under fire on every snap. When Rodgers gets rattled, there's a chance he will resort to his old habits: scrambling and holding on to the ball too long. Both habits invite big hits.

It only takes one hit for Rodgers's status to be affected for the rest of the game. With the largest television audience of the year having all-eyes on a groggy-looking Rodgers, the Packers' coaching staff will be under the microscope to take every precaution.

Best Case Scenario: There's a lot of Packer fans who still remember safety Chuck Cecil fondly, but me? Not so much. Oh sure, we all remember the bone-jarring hits and the blood dripping from the nose, but not as many people remember poor Jerry Holmes, the cornerback who often became the whipping boy for giving up big pass plays. What was often missed in the translation was as Cecil was taking his running starts for his big hits, he gave up his coverage and left Holmes (who was expecting over-the-top help) on an island.

The Packers will establish a run game....no, not the shotgun with Brandon Jackson trying to run away from people, but the inverted bone formation with Quinn Johnson, Tom Crabtree, and John Kuhn laying wood on the Steelers front seven. The Packers don't have to gain a ton of yards, and even consistently gaining three yards a play is sufficient if it keeps the linebackers honest.

From that point, you let Rodgers work his magic, utilizing that play-action he's become so good at (and so effective with a potent run threat) and do the quick hitters and screen plays, getting the ball out of his hands as quickly as possible.

The Steelers are a smash-mouth team on both sides of the ball, and such teams live to change not only the gameplay of the other team, but to make the play scared. The Packers need to deliver some smash-mouth football back at them, then use that dome turf to set Jennings, Driver, and Jones loose in the second level.

James Harrison, like Chuck Cecil, can't deliver a punishing hit if he can't get a running start. Keeping his head (as well as all the heads of the defense) on a swivel trying to follow the play will negate the threat of the Packers getting beat up on the way to getting beat.

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Tomorrow: The O.T.

The NFL Has Outgrown the Pro Bowl

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 03:51:00 +0000

T'is the season for a plethora of blog posts explaining how they should fix the NFL Pro Bowl. Let's make a couple more adjustments to the rules, and somehow, it will all be fine and worth watching more than the commericials.

I'm here to tell you my solution: it's time to give up on the Pro Bowl.

But the reason for my rather ultimate Solomon-esque decision isn't just based on how bored I was catching snippets of the game. It's because of the nature of the game itself. The NFL has simply evolved too much, and the Pro Bowl is like the prehensile tail that simply needs to fall off.

There are two major draws for any All-Star game in any sport. The first, obvious one is to see the biggest stars of the sport all on one stage. But having the stars there is useless if you aren't seeing the players able to go against each other, mano-y-mano, as a spectacle just ranking under the championship game itself. So, we're dragging out the biggest names in the game to go onto a field and do little more than disappoint us, because they can't give us the game that we need to appreciate their talents.

Other sports can do this, because the basis of competition is still based in the rudimentary basics of the game. Baseball is perhaps the best example we can use for a successful All-Star game, because the mechanics of each position is nearly independent of each other. A batter doesn't depend on other players to swing the bat for him, and while some communication may be needed in the field, turning a double play is still based on basic individual execution of the fundamentals.

You can take a pitcher mid-season and throw him on a different team, and for the most part, he functions the same as he did on the other team. Same can be said for position players. A first baseman on the Blue Jays is going to still follow the same fundamentals as a first baseman on the Padres.

It's a little different in basketball, as you would figure most offenses (and defenses, for that matter) are highly dependent on knowing the scheme. As a coach of both boys and girls basketball over the years, I've implanted some offenses that are pretty specific, if not complicated, for kids to understand. And college coaches often take this to dizzying heights, as we can see from watching Memphis run the dribble-drive offense, or Dick Bennett run his swarming defense.

But basketball can always be turned back down to its "least common denominator", and become an individual game with basic fundamentals: the pick-and-roll, the give-and-go, and the backdoor cut. And at the level of talent the NBA has (with the streetball mentality it has taken on over the last twenty years or so), players can put on quite a show using just those fundamental skills, as well as individual matchups (just like baseball).

But the NFL has evolved so far, the fundamentals simply aren't enough anymore. Oh, sure, forty years ago, football was still three yards and a cloud of dust, with defenders lining up one-on-one against their opponents and trying to win those individual matchups. Whoever smashed more mouths and got more leverage would win.

Not anymore. The NFL has become advanced tactical and situational gameplanning. The game has evolved because of the constant chessmatches offenses and defenses play against each other. When the offenses of the 70's and 80's became vertical passing games, defenses went with big front four formations with power blitzes. This, of course, led to innovations like the West Coast Offense and zone blocking schemes to counter it. Since then we've seen zone blitzes, the return of the 3-4, and playbooks so thick that you need a Wonderlic above 30 to understand it completely.

Misdirection, disguising coverages and blitzes, chop blocks and pick plays...everything has simply become more and more like surgical warfare than the simple game it once was. It is the reason that the NFL has become what it has today: it is no longer simply a violent game of smashmouth football, but a one that appeals to the intellectual fans as well. There are fans that are content to dissect a Dom Capers defensive formation and marvel at how effective it is in its complexity.

Taking players from each of their teams, throwing them together in a lump, and asking them to just play a simplified game is like taking one or two of the best dancers and actors from every Broadway musical, throwing them on a stage and asking them to perform brilliantly with only a few days of rehearsal. In a way, that is what the NFL has become...highly specialized players who need months of OTA's, minicamps, and a full preseason to even begin processing the dependence on both the scheme and the players around them to be successful.

In other words, you cannot get NFL-caliber performances anymore out of players in such an exhibition. You heavily dilute the quality of what the players can do, and not only is it not good enough for us, it's not good enough for them.

What would I want to see, because sure, I'd like to see Aaron Rodgers rubbing shoulders with Payton Manning and Tom Brady, is simply exhibitions of talent. I know they do it already with long-ball throwing contests and obstacle courses. Why not have the AFC take on the NFC in some position-specific "Battle of the Conference Stars"?

Sound ridiculous? Not as ridiculous as the game we just watched, with professional millionaire heroes to fans everywhere walking through blocks and throwing interceptions left and right. It's time to end the Pro Bowl, not because it is stupid or boring, but because the NFL has outgrown it

Cutler Reaps What He's Sown

noreply@blogger.com (C.D. Angeli) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 02:13:00 +0000

There's a lot of folks out there in the media and press conferences rising to the defense of Jay Cutler...and rightfully so. Cutler was branded a faker and a quitter long before the game was even over, long before he was even aware people were criticizing him. Bear players and assorted media types spat over Cutler's injuries, more the ones to his pride and ego than the ones to his knee.

"Wait and see before you pass judgement," they cried. And they were totally right.

The news is out. Cutler has a Grade II MCL tear-slash-sprain. According to some experts hearing the diagnosis, they concur with the decision for Cutler to have sat out the game.

So, there you go. We now know the whole story. And now, I'm going to pass judgement.

Jay Cutler is still a douche waffle. He's a whiner, a crier, and a pretender.

You see, I thought of this yesterday, after all of the criticism came flying in. What if the medical tests were to have come back negative? What if he was fine, or the injury was just the kind he could have gotten treatment on and gone back in the game? What if, after having Urlacher defending his honor to the death, and Cutler upset that his toughness was in question (while breaking down in tears), there really had been nothing medically wrong with him, at least seriously?

I'll tell you what. If I were that team doctor, with the organization looking over my shoulder, I would give a pretty vague diagnosis that did not throw the organization's star under the bus. Lie? No. Exaggerate, absolutely.

But, come on, you say. This is America! There's no way a licensed medical official would ever misdiagnose a patient in order to fulfill their requests, right? And, of course, no one in America is addicted to painkillers, either.

Look, I'm not saying that the medical staff is lying. But, as a sports physician mentions, such a tear has the capability of being in a wide range of severity.

Dr. David Thorson, who works with the U.S. Ski team, added that trying to continue to play would have increased the chances of Cutler tearing his ACL, a knee ligament that requires upwards of six months of rehabilitation.

With the Grade II MCL tear, the usual healing time, which doesn’t require surgery, is three to six weeks. Thorson added that Grade II MCL tears are the trickiest to diagnose. A Grade III is a complete tear, and a Grade I, he said, is just stretching, with a couple of fibers potentially tearing.

Grade II MCL tears are somewhere in the middle.

“The reality is, it’s not black and white,” he said. “How do you know if Grade I doesn’t have a few fibers torn? You can’t tell it, until you do an imaging study.

So, this injury could be pretty close to a complete tear. It could also be pretty close to a stretch and several fibers tearing. Who knows?

The point isn't whether or not this is being exaggerated, however. I'm not a doctor and have no idea myself.

The point is that Cutler has brought criticism on himself, in every way possible. He's asked for it, and when confronted with the fruits of his discontent, he again throws himself into the victim's role. But you can't simply erase the temper tantrum he threw to get himself out of Denver, once he heard a rumor that he might be in a trade proposal. He did his best impersonation of Mike McKenzie and got himself out of there.

Since joining the Bears, he's been a bull in a china shop, too. Friction with coaches, friction with teammates, and prickly exchanges with the media have put him under the microscope. But he has consistently dismissed the criticism with a wave of his hand and a "I don't worry about it. I don't care what my public image is."

His body language and constant sulking is obvious to even a football neophyte, such as my wife, who yesterday came to me during the game after watching Cutler for the first time in her life and asked who the big crybaby was for the Bears. Yet, he has been unrepentant and, in fact, seemingly proud of the way he acts, letting teammates and coaches do the defending for him.

So, when you're on the second-biggest stage the NFL has to offer and you don't come through, it's hard not to expect the criticism. Suddenly, Cutler is aware of his public image, and isn't all the happy with it. Funny how that works.

You only need to take a look at the guy on the other sideline for a lesson in how you conduct yourself and how it pays off in the end. Aaron Rodgers has been acutely aware of his perception in the public eye since the day he was drafted. Yes, he has every reason to have a chip on his shoulder after falling in the draft, after spending three years behind Brett Favre, and after being painted as Thompson's best boy in the Favreageddon Fallout.

And he has handled himself with aplomb, even in the face of unwarranted criticism, as we saw last week with Mike Florio. He's been gracious and a professional, and when things go south for Aaron, people treat him the same way back.

Yes, Rodgers has had an up-and-down season, moments where the offense has sputtered under his control and left it to the defense to save the day. Conversely, he's had moments of complete mastery of his craft, showing he can dominate a game.

In five of his last seven games, Jay Cutler had a passer rating above 100. Aaron Rodgers had the same ratio in his last seven. And neither quarterback had a day to remember on Sunday.

Cutler finished the day 6-14, for 80 yards and an interception. A miserable day, and his body language showed his frustration.

Yet, if you look closely at Rodgers' day, he was close to being a goat, too. Sure, he started out like gangbusters, looking like the same guy who carved up Atlanta. But after he was hit on a rush by Julius Peppers, you saw something come off his accuracy...leading to the poor throw to Donald Driver that bounced off his foot and was intercepted.

When he was picked off by Brian Urlacher in the red zone, Rodgers' stats took a nosedive. He went 5-9 for only 34 yards since that interception, leading to five punts in five possessions, possessing the ball for only 10:30 the rest of the remaining 23:50 left in the game.

In the end, the ball kept get turned back to the Bears, who gained more and more confidence against an increasingly exhausted Packer defense.

You see my point? Rodgers could have been the heel in the situation, especially had the Packers lost. But seriously, do you think he would have taken any of the derision Cutler did, even if we would have found out he had his bell rung by Peppers back in the first quarter (which I'm not convinced he didn't)?

No way. Heck, Rodgers can fumble away the game in the shadow of his own goal posts, and Packer fans still rise to champion him. But Rodgers has demonstrated so many times before he makes a mistake or has a bad stretch that he's the consummate team guy and willing to be his own worst critic that we know he's going to bounce back and still be that guy we will root for.

But what has Cutler put in that "respect bank"? Nothing. He does what he wants, acts how he wants, says what he wants, and doesn't apologize for anything.

If Rodgers would have left in the third quarter because he had a slight concussion, no one would have questioned his motives. We know he will play every second he can, and doesn't quit unless he must. Cutler might be in the same boat, but because of his antics, people don't believe it. It colors people's entire impression of him.

In the end, Jay Cutler had a bad game and will be crucified for it. Aaron Rodgers had a bad game and was the first player being celebrated in the locker room...and the first thing he did was give credit to the defense that rose up when he had a bad day.

If you don't constantly act like a whiny little prima donna, people won't treat you like a whiny little prima donna. Get it?

Aaron Rodgers does. Jay Cutler doesn't.