Is It Time?

Kevin Greene, Super Bowl XLV, Photo by Kevin Eulitt, KC Star, via Getty Images

The Green Bay Packers are 4-6-1 going into Sunday's game against the Cardinals.  So are the Cleveland Browns.  Let that sink in for awhile.  The Browns have already fired their head coach, and installed their heir apparent at quarterback.  The Browns are over-performing most people's expectations this year. 

The Packers still have the same head coach, and don't have an heir apparent in the wings at quarterback or at coach for that matter.  And they are under-performing the expectations of almost everybody.  With, arguably, the best QB in the league.  And with a "highly successful NFL coach" at the helm. 

The Wisconsin natives are restless.  Wisconsin ex-pats, like me, are also restless.  The bandwagon jumpers are beyond restless and are looking for another bandwagon.  Something must be done!  Fire McCarthy now!  This has been going on for weeks, but intensifies after each disappointing loss.

Even a measured guy like Chuck Todd, of Meet the Press fame (and a Packers fan) says (on a non-sports radio show) that Mike McCarthy has worn out his welcome, is not a winner, and really does not know what to do in crunch time.  He says McCarthy really should hire a clock management coach, because he just doesn't know how to manage the clock.  (Don't get me started on clock management.  This has been a bugaboo for some time.)

It is amazing how quickly it has become conventional wisdom that McCarthy will be fired this off-season, unless the Packers pull off some miraculous recovery.  Headlines abound, such as "McCarthy's Latest Blunder" (referring to the 4th down punt at the end of the Seahawks game).  "McCarthy-Rodgers Marriage Can't be Saved."  "Rodgers, McCarthy at Odds Over Offense."  "How it All Went Wrong."  This last article is probably the best single article I have read on the current state of the Packers.

There have even been conspiracy theories that Rodgers has been under-performing intentionally in an attempt to get McCarthy fired.  While I don't believe that, it is not really in doubt that Rodgers has ignored open receivers looking for a bigger play.  And then when the big play is not converted, the result all too frequently is a punt, not a first down.  And of course he has missed easy, third down passes that any rookie QB could make in the last couple of games. As the Sports Illustrated article suggests, Rodgers has so much latitude to change plays, and changes them so frequently, that if, after watching a game, you are unhappy with the play-calling, it is not clear how much of the blame goes to McCarthy, and how much to Rodgers.

Is a new coach going to be able to convince Rodgers to hit the open man?  Or show him how to hit an easy short pass for a first down?  Those seem like open questions to me.  In other words, replacing McCarthy will not necessarily result in better on-field decisions by Rodgers.  Will he be better when his injury is fully healed, and if he has a new head coach?  We better hope so, given the investment the team made in him this year.  Because of that investment, the Packers are not getting rid of Rodgers.  And the only other key party not replaced last year is McCarthy.

Traditionally, I have thought that firing McCarthy was a bad move.  First of all, in his own immortal words, he is a "highly successful NFL coach."  And in truth, he obviously has a record as a coach many teams would love to have.  Plus, if there are a bunch of sure-thing head coach candidates sitting around just waiting to take the league by storm, why haven't they been hired already?  It is a hit or miss process.  You might end up with the next Sean McVay.  Or you might end up with the next Sean McDermott (hired at the same time as McVay), who might already be on his way out as coach of the Bills.  Or worst of all, you might pay a king's ransom and end up with the results that Jon Gruden has had.  Not even a proven winner from the past like Gruden is a sure thing in today's NFL.  So if you decide to fire your "highly successful NFL coach," you have to do it with trepidation.

But something is seriously wrong with this team.  I doubt that there is a single team in the league that has had as much "bad luck" this year.  The Matthews penalty that wouldn't have been called a month later.  The worst day in Mason Crosby's career.  The Ty Montgomery fumble.  The Aaron Jones fumble.  The decision to punt against Seattle.  The missed TD to Adams against the Vikings.  The bad passes on third and short.  Some of that stuff can happen just as a result of luck.  But it can't all be luck.  Some of it is players not playing up to their potential.  You don't have to accept the conspiracy theory to believe that a new coach might change the atmosphere in the locker room, bring some new excitement to the team, and get better performances out of some of the key players. 

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion, echoing Kevin Greene, that "it is time."

Kings of the Overtime Game

Animated Rodgers Waits His Turn, photo by Evan Siegle, Packers.com

Another week, another overtime game, another victory?  At some level, that sounds great.  It certainly shows that the Packers are not giving up on games when they get behind.  And they have been able to make some plays when the chips are down. 

I really liked the way the Packers opened the game, with the first drive including a fake punt and another fourth down conversion.  The drive ended in a 30 yard TD pass from Hundley to Jamaal Williams.

But then I don't know that I liked a single additional thing I saw for the rest of the first three quarters.  It was that familiar funk, into which the Packers have sunk in a number of games this year.  When the fourth quarter rolled around, I appreciated the way that the Packers stuck with it, battled back, and eventually tied the game to send it to overtime.  To get there, it took a gutty challenge by McCarthy, and a big time punt return by Trevor Davis, showing us why McCarthy and Coach Zook keep sending him back there despite his mistakes.  But they got there and tied the game up with seconds to go.  I admit that I was concerned that the defense would blow it when Cleveland won the toss.  But far from blowing it, they pressured DeShone Kizer and forced him into a horrendous rookie mistake.  As the ball was in the air, every Packers fan must have been terrified that somehow a Browns player would come down with the ball, or that the multiple Packers players in the area would take each other out of the play.  But instead, Josh Jones snatched the ball out of the air, and a few plays later, the Packers had won, thanks to a nice TD reception by Davante Adams.

But the question is, why was a furious comeback and overtime score necessary against the worst team in the league?  I understand, the Browns have come close to some wins in the past few weeks, and they were close again Sunday.  As a matter of fact, but for the terrible wounded duck thrown up by Kizer in overtime, maybe they would have finally won on Sunday.  But the Browns have a history of finding a way to lose, and it happened again against the Packers.

Where this game leaves the Packers is an interesting question.  They still have an outside chance of making the playoffs.  (You can check out some of the scenarios here.)  It probably won't happen, as they need far too much help from others, not to mention needing to put together three more wins themselves against tough opponents.  But, to paraphrase Dumb and Dumber, yes, there is a chance.  And in light of that, the question on everyone's mind is, will Aaron Rodgers be activated from IR and play the final three games? 

My strong hunch is that he wants to be activated.  He seemed more animated on the sidelines on Sunday, and that suggests to me that he is anxious to get back under center.  So far, McCarthy has given no indication that Rodgers won't be activated, unless the doctors won't allow it.  So McCarthy is obviously willing to entertain a Rodgers return, rather than just "playing it safe" and announcing that he isn't going to take a chance on Rodgers' health this year.  From McCarthy's perspective, he knows that he would get a lot of heat if he were to preemptively shut Rodgers down, so it is perhaps understandable that he wants to put it on the doctors.  We will see in the next few days.  I suspect that the medical report will be a good one, and I think Coach McCarthy will have a hard time turning Rodgers down, unless the medical staff says he is not ready.  So buckle your seatbelts, it will be an interesting week, and I think we will be back to Aaron Rodgers at QB come Sunday.

Packers Run to Victory in Overtime

Aarons Celebrating Their Birthdays Together, photo by Packers.com

On a day when Brett Hundley didn't look very good (13 complete passes for 84 yards), how would the Packers be able to pull off a win against the Buccaneers?  A huge dose of Jamaal Williams, just a pinch of Aaron Jones when needed, and NFC defensive player of the week Dean Lowry making  plays all day long.  That was enough for a 26-20 win in overtime.

The Packers were ahead at halftime, 17-10, on the strength of Williams' running and an opportunistic defense.  But the Packers basically did nothing in the second half.  When the Buccaneers went ahead, 20-17, with 6 minutes to go in the game, it was not hard to imagine the Packers losing the game.  But when a drive was needed, Hundley put one together that was just good enough to get the tying field goal.  Both on that drive and in overtime, Hundley made use of his own legs as a change of pace for the legs of Jamaal Williams.  And for the ultimate change of pace, after Williams, on successive hard driving plays, got the Packers deep into Buccaneers territory, they gave him a rest by bringing in Aaron Jones for his first carry of the day.  Boom.  Jones goes into the middle of the line, finds nothing there, and bounces it out to the left side, where he ran it in for the 20 yard, game-winning touchdown.

I will say this - with the way the Packers were giving up yardage on screen passes, and with Jameis Winston having more accuracy on passes down the field than Hundley, we were very pleased when the Packers got the ball first in overtime.  Who knows what would have happened if the Buccaneers had gotten the ball first?

It is hard not to daydream about what the Packers' offense would be like with this running game, and with Aaron Rodgers behind center.  Rodgers can test his arm by throwing passes anytime he wants.  The fact that he goes out and throws passes in pregame warmups seems to me to be sending the message that he is ready to come back.  Clay Matthews has even been quoted as saying that the Packers made a mistake putting Rodgers on IR; i.e., Matthews thinks he would have been ready to come back before 8 weeks have passed.  And if he comes back after the Browns game, and if the Packers run the table . . .

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.  The bottom line is that I am still skeptical that the Packers will make the playoffs this year.  Too many things have to fall the right way for that to happen, and little things will happen, like the Seahawks knocking off the Eagles Sunday night, that will interfere with the Packers ever getting there.  And, of course, all of this depends in any event on the Packers winning the last 4 games.  Let's assume that Brett Hundley plays well enough to beat the Browns on Sunday.  After all, the Browns are the worst team in the league.  So the Packers should win that game.  And let's assume that Rodgers is healthy enough to return for the last 3 games.  Unfortunately he doesn't get any games against the Browns in that stretch.  Instead, he plays road games against the Panthers and Lions, and a home game against the Vikings.  Let's just say none of those are easy games; all of those teams have presented problems for the Packers in the past; and as a result, I frankly doubt that the Packers will win all three.  But even if they do, they still have to pass up too many teams.  An extra win for the Seahawks here, or for the Panther or Falcons or Lions there, and the playoff push goes out the window.  But as long as the Packers keep winning, things will stay interesting.  That is more than I would have predicted a few weeks ago.

So no, I am not too excited about the Packers' prospects for actually making the playoffs this year. But one thing I really am excited about is the Packers' running game for 2018.  We have discovered that we have two, high-quality, rookie running backs ready for next year, not to mention Ty Montgomery, if indeed the Packers don't either trade him or re-convert him to receiver.  It seems like forever since the Packers had two really good running backs of this quality.  Off-hand, I am thinking of Edgar Bennett and Dorsey Levens, but maybe I am forgetting a pair of backs some time in the last 20 years.  There is no need to give up on 2017 just yet, but 2018 looks very promising, indeed!

Despite Injuries, Packers Roll into First Place

Photo Courtesy of Packers.com

This turned out to be an eventful weekend in the NFC North, on a couple of levels.  In the early games on Sunday, the Bears lost to the Redskins in a high-scoring game (41-45).  The Redskins manufactured an excellent drive in the final two minutes, and went ahead on a final minute touchdown run by Roy Helu.  Minutes earlier, the Lions had lost to the Bengals (24-27) on a final play field goal.  Going into this week's games, the Bears and Lions were both at 4-2, while the Packers trailed in third place at 3-2.  So as soon as the Bears and Lions lost, the Packers found themselves in first place in the division, for the first time this year, although obviously they needed to win their game in order to stay in first place.  Which they did, beating the Browns 31-13, in a game that was never in doubt after the Packers scored touchdowns on their first two drives.  This was a simple case of a better team beating an inferior team.

The Packers played the game in their historic blue and gold throwback uniforms, this year featuring plain gold helmets, instead of the plain brown helmets they have used for the past few years.  As a point of historical trivia, this game between the Packers and the Browns featured both teams playing in plain helmets, with no logo (since the Browns always play without a logo).  This presumably is the first Packer game since 1960 in which neither team had a helmet logo, because the Packers added the "G" logo to their helmets in 1961.  In this game, the Packers did a very good job of compensating for their injury-depleted roster.  The Packers played without linebackers Clay Matthews, Nick Perry, Brad Jones, and without receivers and tight ends Randall Cobb, James Jones and Ryan Taylor, and would lose Jermichael Finley during the game.  But the backups played very well.  WR Jarrett Boykin, who looked very iffy when pressed into service a week ago, looked great on Sunday, having his first 100 yard receiving game, and his first NFL touchdown.  On the defensive side, A.J. Hawk had another big day, racking up 12 total tackles, and backup linebacker Jamari Lattimore got another 12 tackles and a sack.  Rookie linebacker Nate Palmer added another 6 tackles. 

Sunday was an absolutely brutal day on the injury front in the NFL.  The Bears lost Jay Cutler for 4 weeks with a torn groin, and also lost LB Lance Briggs for 6 weeks, during the game.  The Colts lost Reggie Wayne for the season, the Bengals lost Leon Hall, the Buccaneers lost Doug Martin, the Texans lost Brian Cushing, and the Rams lost Sam Bradford.  The scariest injury of all was the potentially life-altering injury to Packers tight end Jermichael Finley.  Finley took a blow to the head or neck on a tackle, and initially could not move after hitting the ground, was taken off on a cart and spent the night in the intensive care unit of a Green Bay hospital.  The latest news as of the writing of this blog post suggests that Finley is up, walking around, and in good spirits.  So it looks like he will OK in "real life."  What about his football life?  It may be some time before we know the answer to that one.  I wish him nothing but the best.

While I was finalizing this post, I saw references on the internet to Finley's twitter account, where he sent out a set of tweets late today, saying:

"I want to thank my family, friends, teammates, fans and Packer Nation for the prayers and support over the past 24 hrs. I'm happy to report that I have been transferred out of the intensive care unit and that I have full feeling in my arms and legs. As importantly, I was able 2 walk to & from the shower today, which was badly needed after yesterday's victory! Thank u again 4 the support, and Go Packers!" 

Great news to hear, and I hope that he recovers quickly, and that his injury does not turn out to be career threatening.

To finish out the NFC North's weekend, the Vikings played at the New York Giants on Monday Night Football.  I have to say, both these teams look just terrible.  They both have some talent on defense, but they can't get their act together on offense.  Eli Manning, despite having targets like Victor Cruz and Hakeem Nicks, can't get the passing game going, and the Giants' running game is a mess. 

The Vikings are now starting their fourth quarterback in the last 10 months: Christian Ponder, Joe Webb, Matt Cassel, and now the recently-acquired Josh Freeman.  Josh Freeman could conceivably turn out to be the Vikings' quarterback of the future, but he clearly he is not the Vikings' quarterback of the present until he learns more of the playbook.  The Vikings' next game is against the Packers, at the Metrodome, next Sunday night.  Will Freeman be ready?  I don't think so.  Does Greg Jennings miss playing for the Packers?  Based on the ill-will he has shown for the Packers since signing with the Vikings, I guess the answer is no.  But maybe, just maybe, he is starting to realize that things were not so bad in Green Bay, and maybe he would be better off if he was still a Packer.  Since the Packers play the Vikings twice, the Cutler-less Bears once, and the Giants in the next five weeks, I am hoping that these games will provide the opportunity for some wins while the Packers get a little healthier.  It starts in Minnesota this week, and I am looking forward to a solid win for the Packers on Monday night.

Injury Carousel Continues

Photo by Evan Siegle, Press-Gazette Media

Linebacker Nick Perry, shown in the photo, was one of the Packer players who sustained significant injuries in Sunday's game against the Ravens, which the Packers hung on to win, 19-17.  The photo shows him forcing the fumble on the second-to-last play of the first half, which resulted in Mason Crosby getting another shot at a field goal, having missed one (his first miss of the season!) a couple of plays earlier.  This time, Crosby made the field goal, in essence providing the margin of victory in the game.  Perry's strip sack was a big-time play.

But apparently on the same play, Perry broke his foot and is expected to miss multiple weeks, meaning both starting outside linebackers, Perry and Matthews, will be out for now.  If Brad Jones is still out this week, then 3 of the 4 starting linebackers will be out.  Time for McCarthy's mantra: next man up!  Speaking of which, what got into A.J. Hawk?  The normally steady but unspectacular Hawk led the team in tackles and assists Sunday (10), in sacks (3) and in tackles for loss (5, including the 3 sacks).  Hawk was not the only defensive player to step up his game on Sunday.  Lots of players contributed, and when you hold Ray Rice to 34 yards rushing, and have a sensational goal-line stand from the 4 yard line, the defense is playing a great game.

If anything, though, the injuries to James Jones and Randall Cobb were more troubling, given that the Packers' passing offense has sputtered, on and off, all season long.  Both were knocked out of the game, with Cobb's injury looking particularly painful.  When you have to cart the player back to the sidelines to watch the rest of the game, it is not a good sign.  After Cobb left the game, the Packers were left with exactly two active and healthy wide receivers on the roster, Jordy Nelson and Jarrett Boykin.  And for awhile, it looked like Boykin had hands of stone, as he dropped several passes before finally holding onto one for an important gain of 43 yards.

Jones' injury turns out to be the less serious of the two, just as we all expected while watching the game, and he might even play this week against the Browns.  But Cobb broke his fibula, and while differing reports were swirling all day Monday, the current consensus estimate is that he might miss 6-8 weeks.

Was the tackle on Cobb a cheap shot?  After Ravens' safety Matt Elam tackled Randall Cobb at his knees, Rodgers let Elam know he wasn't happy about the tackle.  Another defensive player argued back about the limited areas defensive players are now allowed to tackle a ball carrier, which Rodgers admitted was a fair point.  Adam Czech, of Jersey Al's Packers web site, makes a pretty convincing case that there was nothing dirty about the hit.  For myself, I am glad that Rodgers made an issue about it, both during the game and in his press conference after the game, even if we assume that the hit was not illegal.  As I understand Rodgers' point, he isn't exactly arguing that the hit was illegal, or even that it was (necessarily) a dirty hit.  He is arguing that it was completely unnecessary to hit Cobb at the knees, in effect appealing to Elam's better instincts and, more broadly, to try to encourage the players and the league to take a closer look at unnecessarily dangerous hits.  In the same way that a legitimate tackle becomes an illegal hit when the defender picks up the offensive player and slams him into the ground, there ought to be some discretion to treat a tackle like this one as an illegal hit by needlessly exposing the player to injury.

This coming Sunday, the Cleveland Browns come to Green Bay.  With the rash of injuries afflicting the Packers, every game is a potential loss.  When the 3-3 Browns were on their three-game winning streak, they looked dangerous.  But in hindsight, they have only beaten one good team, the Bengals, and they did it at home.  Their other two wins were against the flailing Vikings and the under-performing Bills.  The Packers ought to have enough, with a week to plan around the injuries, to beat the Browns.

Review of Pre-Season Opener

So, the Packers lost their pre-season opener Saturday night, 27-17, to the Cleveland Browns.  Of course, they lost to the Browns in the pre-season last year, too, and the season worked out pretty well anyway.

I did not see anything to get me too concerned.  Sure, it would be great if they looked in post-season form, but that is not too likely in a first pre-season game.  On offense, the starters (minus Jermichael Finley, who was held out with a minor injury) did not look sharp on their first drive, going 3 and out.  But they got it together on the next drive (the last drive for Rodgers), and moved crisply down the field, scoring in 7 plays, including nice looking passes to Donald Driver and to Greg Jennings for the touchdown.

Matt Flynn led the offense for the rest of the first half, and he looked like a very capable backup, who could lead the offense if necessary.  He put 10 points on the board, on a couple of scoring drives, and made no big mistakes.  Graham Harrell played quarterbacks with an all-backup team for the entire second half, and did not look nearly as good.  He completed 50% of his passes, but gave up the big play of the game, a blind-side sack and strip that was returned for a touchdown.  He had two other fumbles to add to this.  In fairness to him, there was a lot of rotation of offensive linemen in the game, but especially in the second half, presumably so that Coach McCarthy can test out different players at different OL positions.

The defense never showed any consistency at any time in the game.  Of course, they were playing without Charles Woodson (just resting) and Sam Shields (minor injury).  Plus, Dom Capers called a pretty plain-vanilla style defense, as you might expect at this point.  Still, the coaching staff can't be happy about letting Colt McCoy complete 90% of his passes and two scoring drives.

Among the new players, there was one real standout: rookie WR and KR Randall Cobb (the Packers' second pick in the draft this year).  He was the leading receiver for the Packers in this game (3 catches for 60 yards), and he looked really promising, especially as a kickoff returner.  He returned two kickoffs for a total of 58 yards, and in both cases he got an extra 5-8 yards after I expected him to go down.  The league has deliberately de-emphasized kickoffs this year, by moving the kickoffs back to the 35 yard line.  This will result in more touchbacks and fewer runbacks.  Which might be too bad, now that we have a promising kick returner.

The bottom line is that when you add Cobb to an already-excellent receiving corps, the Packers really have something special.  Plus, if Cobb is the main kick returner, we can keep Tramon Williams out of having to return kicks, which scared me every time he lined up back there.  I anxiously await the return of Jermichael Finley.  They can't keep all the WRs and TEs on the roster, but if they keep the good ones healthy, they will be in great shape.

Preseason Blackout Blues

This is a tough time of year for Packer fans not living in the State of Wisconsin. With all due apologies to Hoagy Carmichael, I’ve got those No TV Reason, Packer Preseason, Blackout Blues.

Two weeks ago, I caught the beginning of the Hall of Fame game against the Chiefs before leaving the office, planning to watch the end of the game on tape later that evening or the next day. Of course, the end of the game never happened, and I couldn’t get motivated to go back and watch any more of the 9-0 bore-fest from the parts I had missed.

Then, last week, I knew that the game against the Falcons would not be televised here, but I figured I could at least listen to part of the audio feed on my computer. Wrong. Turns out the league is charging for the audio feeds this year. I can’t blame them – they have been giving away the audio feeds, and there was no reason to think that they would continue to do so forever. And I willingly pay for the NFL Sunday Ticket to watch the regular season games on TV. But I will be darned if I am going to pay for audio-only feeds on a preseason game.

Finally, last weekend, I got to watch the entire Packer game against the Browns. It tended to confirm what I had been hearing and reading – big problems on defense, fewer problems on offense now that the starting offensive linemen and receivers are playing. But even this game seemed in jeopardy of not happening for awhile on Friday, what with the blackout on the east coast and with reports of sporadic outages in Cleveland continuing during the day on Friday.

And now, having escaped from the big blackout, I am plunged back into darkness for two more weeks, as the Packers finish their pre-season games at home, but without the benefit of national telecasts. I can’t wait for the regular season to start, when DirecTV will rescue me from my temporary Packer blackout.

I hope to have more to say as the real season approaches. For now, I am crawling back under my rock.

Bounced Again

Here we go again. Not content to be in first place, the Packers, for the third time this year, lost a game to a lesser opponent after a crucial victory the week before. [Ed.note - the Packers lost to the Titans, 26-20.] As a result, they dropped all the way from leading the division, being in a position for a bye week in the playoffs followed by a home playoff game, to the number 5 seed in the playoffs, with no bye week and a road game against another wild card team (at San Francisco, interestingly enough).

What is it with this team? I think it is becoming clearer and clearer that they just are not as good as we had hoped, during the moments of euphoria following the 3-0 start at the beginning of the season, or following the big victories over the Ravens and twice over the Bears. Instead, they are a pretty good team, but one with a lot of injury problems right now, and with a real problem of inconsistency from week to week.

That is not necessarily a condemnation. Pretty good teams sometimes get hot and go on to win the Super Bowl, as the Ravens did last year after going for a month earlier in the season without scoring an offensive touchdown. And the Packers are both playing better than most people expected them to play this year, and, at 9-4, have a better record than people expected. But there is still a sense of disappointment at letting the division lead slip through their fingers not once, but twice after beating the Bears. The best the Packers can hope for now is to win their last three games, and hope that the Bears trip up along the way, which is possible but not all that likely.

Last week, I was nervous that the Packers would let down against Tennessee and lose the game. While they lost, I am not sure there was really a letdown. I saw the Packer players seemingly trying hard to make plays throughout the game, but just coming up short, mostly caused, at least in my mind, by three things: the relentless pressure caused by the Tennessee defensive line, the injury-induced problems the Packer defense had, and, let's face it, the fact that the Titans' offensive players just went out and made a lot of plays happen. The result was a good example of the Titans pretty much dominating the game, especially at the line of scrimmage.

Now the thoroughly demoralized Browns come to town. While they suffered a painful loss to the Jaguars last week under bizarre circumstances, I found the comments of President Carmen Policy and Owner Al Lerner after the game,in essentially condoning the actions of the fans who threw bottles and other objects onto the field, to be an utter dereliction of duty on their part.
Policy, undoubtedly under severe pressure from the League, recanted those remarks on Monday and tried to set a better tone, calling the bottle throwers "hooligans." Better late than never, I guess, but there really needs to be a zero tolerance policy for this sort of thing. People throwing objects should be arrested and prosecuted, and if they are season-ticket holders, they should be at risk of losing their tickets. I hope we will never see shenanigans like this in Lambeau Field.

Franchise Free Agency

There has been a fair amount of attention on the internet and in the popular press about the effects of free agency. Is it a plus or a minus for a small market team like the Packers? Now that the Packers are on top of the heap, does free agency help them (because they are relatively attractive to free agents looking for a shot at a ring) or does it hurt them, because the participants in a Super Bowl always get more attention from other teams than they deserve (see Neil O'Donnell, Larry Brown and, yes, even Desmond Howard).

These are all interesting questions, and I might even have something to say about them one of these days. But my topic today is FRANCHISE free agency, not player free agency.

As a Packer fan, I suppose it is obvious that I have my biases on the question of franchise free agency, but try as hard as I can, I can't see anything good about the present system. Yes, there are some teams with whom the fans have just fallen out of love. I suppose the Oilers are the best example. A year or so ago they had a rally in downtown Houston to try to keep the Oilers, and something like 36 people showed up. This is amazing to me, given how recent it was that the Astrodome was known as the "House of Pain" and was filled to the rafters with nut cases with their faces painted blue. But right now the team has no support in Houston, and I suppose that the owner had little choice but to try to find a new home somewhere else. The Rams are probably another more or less comparable example.

But then there are the Raiders, and the way that Al Davis screwed the City of Oakland, not once but twice. The first time was when he took the Raiders away from sellouts and a solid fan base in a dispute with the city over luxury boxes. And the second time was when he brought them back under the burden of the highest ticket and PSL prices in the league, which are not selling out and which will leave the taxpayers in the City of Oakland holding the bag under the financial guarantees they provided to the Raiders to lure them back.

And the saddest case, to me, is the Browns/Ravens. Browns fans were like Packer fans, in many ways. They had a devoted, working class fan base, they were one of the old time teams in the league, and they had a wonderful history and tradition. And, quite unlike the Raiders, the Browns had an old-time, NFL guy for an owner, not a lifelong renegade like Al Davis. But Art Modell took the Browns away just as ruthlessly as Al Davis took away the Raiders.

The people of Cleveland will be getting a new Browns team in a couple of years, but it won't be the same. Never again will the people feel as if this is really "their" team. They will always know that some rich guy can take it all away in an instant over some future dispute over stadiums, luxury boxes, or something we can't even imagine now.

Compare these situations to the Packers. The fans (or more precisely some of them) actually own the team. It is not feasible to imagine a set of circumstances, other than outright financial failure of the franchise, under which the team would no longer be in Green Bay. There is no reason for a kid, or even an adult, to hold back on giving his heart to this team.

Here is the part that I don't understand. Can't everyone see that this is a better situation for the team, for the fans, and for the league, than the situation in Cleveland, Oakland, Baltimore, Houston, Los Angeles, etc? Then why is it that the league currently prohibits Packer-style public ownership, with the Packers being the sole team that is "grandfathered?" This just seems nuts to me.

I would respectfully suggest that the Green Bay Packer ownership model is the ideal fix for the problem with the league and franchise free agency. The league ought to be encouraging community ownership, rather than prohibiting it. Nothing much can be done with the existing franchises, but as the league adds new teams in Cleveland, Los Angeles, and elsewhere, and as teams are sold, community ownership should be the preferred (if not exclusive) model. The NFL right now is the hottest thing in sports. But they are very close to having the league ruined because of problems like franchise free agency.

If you agree, why not take a minute and write a letter to the Commissioner about this. I have already done so. The address is:

Commissioner Paul Tagliabue
National Football League
410 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022