Luckily, while I was gone, The Pack played a Monday night thriller in Denver and had a comeback victory in Kansas City, and had the same hero for both games.

That’s right, this week’s hero is Greg Jennings.

He has quickly become the Packers deep threat in an already potent passing game. After catching an 82 yard touchdown pass on the first snap of overtime Monday night, and stunning the nearly 80,000 at Invesco Field in Denver; he came back the next game with 2 touchdown catches, one for 60 yards with 3:05 left in the game to seal the win.

Jennings showed us last year that he was going to be a receiver to watch, and caused many a Packer fan to think “Javon who?”  He came out this year a bit off his game, but has consistenly stepped it up as the season has progressed.

Greg Jennings: 24 catches for 454 yards and 6 TDs, which is an average of 19.7 yards per catch

Jennings is definitely a guy to watch as his career progresses, and in this writer’s opinion will be one of the greats of this era of football.

The bio on Jennings

Game Recap

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Max McGee, the free-spirited Green Bay Packers receiver who became part of Super Bowl lore after a night on the town, died when he fell while clearing leaves from the roof of his home. He was 75.

Vernon Biever/WireImage.com

Max McGee finished his 12-year NFL career with 345 receptions for 6,346 yards and 51 touchdowns.

Police were called to his home in suburban Deephaven on Saturday afternoon, Sgt. Chris Whiteside said. Efforts to resuscitate failed.

“I just lost my best friend,” former teammate Paul Hornung told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “[His wife] Denise was away from the house. She’d warned him not to get up there. He shouldn’t have been up there. He knew better than that.”

McGee caught the first touchdown pass in Super Bowl history in 1967, a game he expected to watch from the sideline. When it was over, he had caught seven passes for 138 yards and two TDs and Green Bay — coached by the great Vince Lombardi — had beaten the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10.

“Now he’ll be the answer to one of the great trivia questions: Who scored the first touchdown in Super Bowl history?” Hornung said. “Vince knew he could count on him. … He was a great athlete. He could do anything with his hands.”

McGee had only four receptions for 91 yards during the 1966 regular season. He didn’t plan to play in the title game against the Chiefs because he violated the team curfew and spent the night before partying. The next morning he reportedly told Dowler: “I hope you don’t get hurt. I’m not in very good shape.”

Dowler separated a shoulder on the Packers’ second drive, and Lombardi summoned McGee. He had to borrow a helmet because he left his in the locker room. A few plays later, McGee made a one-handed snare of a pass from Bart Starr and ran 37 yards to score.

“When it’s third-and-10,” McGee once said, “you can take the milk drinkers and I’ll take the whiskey drinkers every time.”

Jerry Kramer played 11 seasons on the Packers with McGee, and they remained friends. He said McGee’s humor defused the tension on a team run by Lombardi’s iron hand.

“When everyone else was looking at their feet wondering what to do, Max would come up with something,” he said.

Kramer said McGee had a stubborn streak and it was not altogether surprising he went on the roof by himself.

“It’s hard to admit and distinguish the fact that you’re no longer what you were and you’re no longer capable of certain activities,” Kramer said. “And I think we push the limit a little bit.”

Packers historian Lee Remmel recalled McGee’s “great sense of timing” and his “knack for coming up with big plays when you least expected it to happen.”

Lombardi once showed the team a football at a meeting and said, “Gentlemen, this is a football.”

“McGee said, ‘Not so fast, not so fast,”‘ Remmel said. “That gives you an index to the kind of humor that he served up regularly.”

McGee attended White Oak High School in East Texas. He was a running back at Tulane and the nation’s top kick returner in 1953. Selected by the Packers in the fifth round of the 1954 draft, McGee spent two years in the Air Force as a pilot following his rookie year before returning in 1957 to play 11 more seasons. He finished his career with 345 receptions for 6,346 yards — an 18.4-yard average — and scored 51 touchdowns and 306 points.

After retiring from football, he became a major partner in developing the popular Chi-Chi’s chain of Mexican restaurants. In 1979, he became an announcer for the Packer Radio Network with Jim Irwin until retiring in 1998.

Although fans hadn’t heard much from Max after he retired from the broadcast booth, he will still be greatly missed as no one can tell a story of stymying Lombardi quite like McGee could.

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• With a bye this week the healing can begin. Many players have been playing with nagging injuries, and they can now rest and be ready for the first practice back on October 22.

That’s it for today, enjoy the games this weekend.

Here’s hoping the Bears, Lions, and Vikings all lose…again.

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The NFL determined that Koren Robinson will be allowed to return to the Packers.

Robinson celebrated by getting on a plane to Green Bay as soon as he heard the news.

“Football shape, I feel like I’m right there,” Robinson said in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, “If I’m not there, I’m close. It should only take me a couple of practices or a game to be there. But I feel like I can come in right away and help out.” 

Robinson reinstatement is effective today and he intends to rejoin the team and work hard on the bye week.

“If I’m not ready to play on Monday night, then I don’t know what I’ve been doing for the last two months down in Phoenix,” said Robinson,  “I feel like I’m ready to go, I’m in great shape. My conditioning and my wind is up. My knee is healthy, I’m healthy, my weight is down, I’m stronger, faster. I don’t know what else I could have done. So I feel like I am ready to go.

“Even if I’m returning kicks or if I’m the fourth receiver, I’m willing to do whatever the team wants me to do. But I feel like I’m ready to go.” 

We’ll see once workouts begin for Robinson how ready he is to perform on a weekly basis.

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Charles Woodson

Woodson had his best game of the year, and one of the better ones in recent memory, as he intercepted the Redskins once, had 4 tackles, and returned a fumble 57 yards for the game winning touchdown.

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Packers wide receiver Koren Robinson was handed a one year suspension for violating the league’s substance abuse policy on September 18, 2006. His appeal was denied on October 17, 2006.

His one year is now almost up and he has applied for reinstatement to the league and given an opportunity to rejoin the Packers. His application is currently under review and it is unclear when a decision will be handed down on the matter.  It is likely that the Packers will receive a roster exemption for Robinson when he is reinstated, which will last until heis activated for a game.

One of Robinson’s most outspoken supporters has been Brett Favre who said:

He’s eager to get back and says he’s in tremendous shape. I’m not the commissioner, but I think there needs to be something positive — there hasn’t been a whole lot positive as far as suspensions and things of that nature. It would be nice, now I’m a little biased, but I think he’s done everything he’s been asked to do, and it’s time to set a good example that you can resurrect not only your career, but also your life. There’s still a lot left for him to do on and off the field. Give the guy an opportunity.”

If Robinson rejoins the team on the one year anniversary of his failed appeal, he could be active as soon as week 8. Though the capacity of his contribution would be unclear, at the very least it could mean getting Charles Woodson off punt returns without losing quality in the return game.

During his suspension, Robinson had surgery on his knee to repair some tendinitis that had been bothering him since he joined the Packers. Since then he has been rehabbing and working out to stay in the best football shape he can, all in preparation for a return to the team.

Here’s hoping he comes back and makes the Packers’ passing game that much more dangerous.

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This weeks hero is the Packers running game.

After four weeks of horrible attempts at moving the ball on the ground, the backs, Vernand Morency and DeShawn Wynn, gained 121 yards and one touchdown.  Wynn gained 78 yards on 13 carries for a 6.0 yards average and a TD, Morency managed 43 yards on 9 carries for 4.8 yard average.

While niether broke 100 yards individually, the average per rush was encouraging for a change. Although I think the bears came out keying on the pass, allowing more yardage on the ground than normal, the fact that the Packers even called running plays was encouraging.

Hopefully McCarthy will see that the running game can work, and will balance the offense a bit more so as to make the offense more than a one trick pony. I’m not sure if anyone informed him that play action doesn’t work so well if you never call running plays.

Anyway, congrats to Wynn and Morency, as this weeks players of the week they will recieve…well…nothing. But they get mentioned in the best Packers blog on content quake.

So they have that going for them.

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In what appeared to be the tail of two halves, the Packers handed victory to the Bears last night in Lambeau field. With the exception of two James Jones fumbles in the first half, the Pack came out firing on all cylinders and looked like they would be cruising to their first 5-0 start since 1965.

Instead, they came out of the locker room for the second half and played a completely different game plan than the one that had worked for them the first four and a half games.

Did the fumbles in the first half take the air out the Packers sails?

Did McCarthy change to more conservative play-calling in hopes of preserving the lead?

Did the Bears make that many adjustments on defense to completely shutdown an offense that racked up 300+ yards in the first half?

OR

Did McCarthy’s timeout near the end of the first half, which Favre took exception to, set in motion a little dissension causing Favre to run things precisely as called since it was made obvious that McCarthy knows better than anyone?

I kind of doubt the last one was true, but it was naturally the one that disgruntled fans clung to after the game was over.

The call to fire McCarthy has begun again in Green Bay, and will continue until the season is over, win or lose. The fans will pick apart every play call, and find ways to blame everything that didn’t work on him.

I’ve become used to it and find it humorous now. But hey, Packer Fans are passionate and always look for a scapegoat.

As an added aside, Atari Bigby made the hit of the game, and it came on the bears very first possession.

This, is the coolest picture I have seen all year:

Photo courtesy of Dan Powers/The Post-Crescent

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Zac Wassink says in his weekly predictions:

Really? The Packers? Undefeated still? Who could have guessed? I don’t see them losing to the Bears on Sunday night. Rumor is that I’ll be getting a phone call soon to play QB for the Bears. I’m flattered but I don’t know if Emily wants to move to Chicago. We’ll get back to you.

Winner: Green Bay

Real Football 365 says:

At this point, the Bears can only win with a Brett Favre-like quarterback; unfortunately, they’re playing the real thing on Sunday night. Packers roll to fifth victory, 30-9.

Fannation.com writers say:

Astonishing stat for a 4-0 team: Not one of the Packers’ top four rushers have accumulated 100 yards yet. They’re horrible at the run game, but their pass game has been fantastic. I don’t think the Pack is infallible, but I think it’s going to take a superhuman effort on somebody’s part for the Bears to regain their footing.

Green Bay 24, Chicago 16

So there you have it, a sampling of the predictions for this Sunday’s game against the hapless Bears. Sunday night. Madden and Michaels. Lambeau Field. This is the big time.

My prediction. Expect Madden to start talking about the sweat stains of the players and the dietary habits of lineman by the middle of the third quarter.

Packers win… big time.

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Backup corner and dimeback Will Blackmon suffered his second significant injury of the season, and his fourth in two years, when he broke his foot at the end of practice yesterday. The injury will put Blackmon on the bench for the remainder of the season, and puts his future in question as he has only managed to be elligible for half of the games of his pro career.

Blackmon started his first NFL training camp last year by breaking his foot, 4 games after his return to the active roster last year he broke a rib and was done for the season. This training camp Blackmon broke a finger and needed a cast, which turned into a club on gamedays, but he played in the first four games and was doing well, until yesterday.

The injury leaves Tramon Wiliams and Frank Walker to fill his shoes in the dime package. Williams is already returning kickoffs, and now may see an expanded role in the defense as well.

What better team to cut your CB teeth on than the QB-less Bears. Maybe he can get a pick or two and gain the confidence he needs to be a star.

Stranger things have happened.

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