Dearest football fan,
Is Aaron Rodgers one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game, or is he an all-time postseason choke artist?
Have the Packers wasted three decades with a first ballot Hall of Famer under center, or are two Super Bowl victories enough to call the last 30 years a success?
First, the Packers.
I grew up watching the NFL with my older brother Pete and my football loving father, Ed. Pops was born in Iron Mountain, Michigan back in 1950, which meant he was old enough to live through the glory years with St. Vince and the boys, and lucky enough to not be a Detroit Lions fan. While the vast majority of Yoopers in Iron Mountain identify as Packer fans, some families up there actually support the Lions, and they should all be ashamed of themselves.
Anyways, my earliest football memory was not, in fact, with the Green Bay Packers, but with presidential politics. I clearly remember my Pops turning slightly annoyed whenever Jimmy Carter interrupted Monday Night Football with an update on the Iran hostage situation: Pops always made some sort of grand empathetic speech to his too-young-to-fully-understand sons supporting Jimmy Carter’s handling of the situation, but it was pretty clear to everyone in the living room that Pops wanted the game back on as soon as possible.
Other early NFL memories include Jim Plunkett and the Raiders defeating the Eagles in Super Bowl XV, cheering for the 49ers in Super Bowl XVI after watching The Catch, and my Grandma Vi complaining about Lynn Dickey hitting the deck for yet another sack every time a defender breathed on him.
Suffering through years and years of shitty Packer teams with David Whitehurst, Lynn Dickey, and Randy Wright at the helm pushed me to become a temporary 49ers fan during Montana and Rice’s heyday. It was only when the Majik Man made miracles happen during the 1989 season that I was officially ordained as a diehard Packer fan.
The Cardiac Pack narrowly missed the playoffs with a 10-6 record that year — easily their best season in my lifetime. This gave the entire Packer Nation hope that our darkest years were finally behind us. Side note: Don Majkowski’s 1989 Packer team still holds the NFL record for most one-point victories in a season (4).
From then on, I’ve lived blissfully with every game winning field goal, and died painfully with every fourth-quarter defensive collapse. Some defeats (like Seattle in 2015, Tampa in 2021, and San Francisco in 2022) will scar my Packers’ soul for all my remaining days.
No doubt, my fandom peaked on January 26, 1997, when the Packers finally won a Super Bowl. After years and years of humiliation and heartbreak, Brett Favre, Reggie White, and LeRoy Butler firmly planted the capital G back on the NFL’s summit.
At the time, the ecstasy of winning that long awaited Super Bowl was palpable statewide. From my immediate family to strangers on the street, the entire Packer Nation felt like we climbed that mountain together. Through all the turmoil (like annual blowouts against Dallas), and through all the needless suffering (like drafting Tony Mandarich over Barry Sanders, Derrick Thomas and Deion Sanders), we finally did it, just like we believed we could!
However . . .
Shortly after the confetti stopped flying and toes from the bitterly cold victory parade thawed (no, I wasn’t there), I discovered a profound emptiness deep within my non-Packers’ soul. After the dopamine rush faded, the communal ecstasy of high-fiving strangers at the mall inevitably turned into another cold-as-fuck February depression. I came to the stark realization that I personally didn’t do shit to help the Pack reach the summit!
I, in fact, did not win a Super Bowl along with Don Beebe, Jim McMahon, and Andre Rison. I watched them do it from my parents’ couch while eating chips and drinking Wild Cherry Pepsi. I was a 21-year-old, slightly overweight college-student addicted to chocolate milk, Cool Ranch Doritos, and Camel Lights. I had never been in love, and I didn’t have any semblance of a plan for my life after college. Bottom line: I wasn’t getting paid a dime to play professional football, so I better find something other than a Packers’ Super Bowl to fulfill that noticeable void.
In my heart of hearts, I knew that emptiness could only be filled by one thing:
Huffing glue.
Or maybe environmental activism was the key to fulfillment.
How about dedicating my life to becoming the greatest bobsled pilot America has ever seen?
That would do the trick, right?
In all seriousness, my post-Super Bowl epiphany changed my entire worldview and led directly to my current position in the universe with its many blessings. I peeled myself off my parents’ couch, dusted off the Dorito crumbs from the hoodie I wore everyday (but never washed), and I started to manifest my own destiny.
I finally realized that only I held the keys to my future happiness, and only I had the power to transcend depressions when unhappiness and general malaise set in.
I know. How boring.
How anti-climatic.
Using my platform as the greatest American bobsled pilot of all-time to promote my environmental agenda would’ve been much more exciting, especially if it all came crashing down after TMZ exposes me as a reckless glue huffer.
I digress.
Reflecting on those abysmal 80’s teams leads me to a strong conclusion that the last 30 years of mostly Packer victories on Sundays, and two unforgettable flag plants on the summit, are indeed a massive success.
Maybe the glory days are over. Maybe the Packers will regress to the mean and I’ll spend my remaining decades suffering through countless defeats and the false hope of yet another young signal caller who fails to escape the gigantic shadows cast by Rodgers and Favre.
If that is indeed our fate as a Packer Nation, so be it. It is better to have love and lost, than to never have loved at all (see Detroit and Minnesota).
It is better to reach the summit and live to tell the story, than to die trying.
Speaking of Rodgers . . .
Maybe he doesn’t sleep well before playoff games. Maybe he secretly hates playing in the cold.
Maybe he puts so much pressure on himself to be perfect that he doesn’t throw caution to the wind and play like there’s no tomorrow.
Maybe he tries so hard to be perfect because he’s always saddled with a mediocre (at best) defense, and a special teams unit who has never been worthy of the adjective ‘special’.
Maybe Rodgers is indeed a choke artist who freezes when the lights are brightest. Maybe he’s a modern day Dan Marino or Charles Barkley: Another historically great regular season superstar who just can’t win the big game.
I might agree with that assessment, BUT RODGERS WON THE SUPER BOWL IN 2011, AND HE HAPPENED TO BE THE MVP!
Christ, Rodgers is already a certified world champion! The historical record proves this!
Is one Super Bowl enough?
How about two in 30 years?
How much is enough?
My old Industrial Sociology professor proposed this very question right around the time the Packers were crowned champions back in 1997:
How much is enough?
The professor was from India and extremely difficult to understand at first, but once I acclimated to his speech patterns, he ended up being one of my favorite lecturers.
His conclusion was, in the West, too much was never enough.
Made sense to me.
He often brought up the Machiavellian ethos of an ‘any means possible’ amorality to achieve this greed.
Moral/amoral, legal/illegal: doesn’t matter.
The ends always justify the means.
Again, made perfect sense to me.
Hashtag: Modern Politics.
Hashtag: Big Pharma.
Back to Rodgers. The Packers were 13-3 this year in games he started and finished. They won a bunch of close games mainly because of his unique talents and vast experience. He just won back to back MVP awards and his fourth overall. Regardless of what happens next, he will go down as one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game. Period.
In this year’s playoff debacle, the Pack lost a close game because of a blocked field goal, a blocked punt, and Marcedes Lewis’ first lost fumble since the Obama administration.
I’ve been watching NFL football games religiously since the Carter administration. I don’t ever recall witnessing a blocked punt and a blocked field goal in the same game, and certainly not in the playoffs!
What the hell was that?
Scapegoating Rodgers for this most recent postseason loss is weak and lazy and the organization knows it.
Find a way to bring him back. Any means possible. Lord only knows where this team is without him.
Is one Super Bowl enough?
I argue, yes.
Is two in the last 30 years enough?
I argue, yes.
Is that a loser mentality, or is it the mentality of a man who lives with the scar of watching The Refrigerator Perry score his first touchdown on Monday Night Football against another hapless, overmatched Packers squad. A squad who couldn’t even imagine sniffing the playoffs, let alone shuffling to the Super Bowl.
What’s the mark of a champion?
One title?
Two?
Seven?
How much is enough?
Sincerely,
Joe
P.S.
Losing AJ Dillon in the Niner shitshow hurt the offense a ton. As the conditions deteriorated, their mudder was buried in a coat on the sidelines. Getting hurt on a special teams play added insult to injury.
P.P.S.
All four of my fantasy football teams were buried in mediocrity this year. In my 30-year-old best ball keeper league, I drafted Gus Edwards just before he was lost for the season, and I selected Allen Robinson in Round 3 thinking he’d be my WR1. Despite drafting Cooper Kupp, Deebo Samuel, Micah Parsons, and Trevon Diggs, my team never took flight. It was a monumental disappointment coming off a championship season.
I drafted Saquon in my two Yahoo leagues (‘nuff said), and in my dynasty league I inherited a team with CEH as my RB1.
Thanks for reading.
Go Pack Go!
bellykingbelly 