OldSchoolSnapper

I just can't believe that a guy is going to play at 50% and risk having to go to Baltimore in the playoffs. That team just does not look good against anyone half decent.

The Patriots have played three good teams. They beat Buffalo early and got clobbered by HOU and BAL. I am just not a believer this season and Brady looks his age.

I think it's most likely the Saints end up with HFA. Even with a loss to SF it could still happen because SF ends with Seattle and really has no gimmes the rest of the way. In an ideal scenario to me, the 49ers end up 5th, go crush the winner of the East, and the Vikings lose to Seattle. SF then gets New Orleans, the Packers get to host Seattle, and if they win either go to the Saints or get SF at home. I think the Packers are the 5th best NFC team but that's the path I'd see as the best shot. I would most like to avoid road games to Seattle or SF.

Yeah, I'm also not buying that PSU is some monumentally bigger national draw anyway. UW travels exceptionally well. Even when the team is average the host town is always thrilled to get them.

I'm nothing more than the most casual of casual Badgers fans, and I don't see anything about PSU that makes them better than WI. Their games with OSU were basically the same for a half and the Badgers got stuck in quicksand a bit harder in the 2nd. The Illinois game was the dud Wisconsin is good for every year and needs to quit, but they crushed Minnesota. They seem like they're more or less the same team to me. If WI gets run off the field again, then yeah, PSU in the Rose is fine, but I don't think UW would be all that hard to justify. I think WI getting killed by OSU twice is more significant than losing to Illinois. They'll forgive one game like that, but they don't like blowout losses.

Ehh, I agree no one should write them off, but the 2010 comparisons are kinda weak to me. This team is just not where that one was. It doesn't have the same kind of veteran presence all over the field, it's just not as good. I'm just hoping for some fun playoff football. If they win two games that's awesome.

I keep saying this. It's completely possible the Packers are 13-3 which is almost a lock for at least a bye. It's not the most likely outcome but I don't think it's remotely out of reasonably cheering for yet.

To be fair I think they were better than a 6-7 win team the last two years too. Maybe the first year because he got hurt. Last year they sucked. They were exactly where they finished. More to the point though, their decline was pretty obvious as a team starting in 2015. Rodgers pulled off some legend stuff in 2016 but it was clearly a different level of talent the past several seasons after the debacle in Seattle. That game IMO was a pretty relevant moment for the team that trickled down for years.

I agree that is very likely their ceiling. Which is a meteoric rise from two sub .500 seasons and one I'm totally satisfied with.

I actually think it was that week and he specifically called them an 11-5 team. Of course it was contingent on Seneca Wallace being the starter...

If you take the franchise QB off most teams they're going to suck. But my point was more that the receivers and tight ends have never been as bad as they are this year. This is IMO the worst skill position group of Rodgers's career.

We could say this every year since 2012. Huh? He won an MVP in 2014. He carried the team, literally, to an NFCCG in 2016. What?

There's no reason Rodgers would be as good as he was 8 years ago but to ignore the subpar talent on the offense and just say he's not elite is pretty lazy. Get actual NFL receivers and a tight end as good as Jared Cook and then I'll evaluate where Rodgers is. Take him off this team and I think they are 2-10.

You mean the defense? Otherwise weird game to post this Take your pick I guess. If Rodgers is the QB and you are 17th in YPP safe to say the offense has some problems. They just aren't particularly good at anything. What is a true strength of the Packers? I guess they are decently balanced and not awful at anything besides special teams yards. Even some of the perceived strengths are odd. The Smith's are great but the defense is still on the low end of pressures, and they can run, but sometimes get totally shut down there too. It's a true feat of coaching or game management or something I can't figure out that they are knocking on 9-3's door. I guess they rarely cough up the ball, that's something significant.

I'm coming around to the idea that the Packers just can't blow anyone out. They're simply not explosive enough.

I'm not sure how you can hate it unless you have some nostalgic attachment to Davies. These are the kinds of guys the Brewers need to pursue.

The hell is Kyle Davies?

Maybe JJ got sick of him laughing at potential contracts?

Me neither. That they kind of dominated them the first time doesn't seem to bode well for Baltimore. New England seems kinda flakey though. They're scraping by some mediocre teams and really have no wins over anybody good but they haven't played anybody too good outside of Baltimore. I know they're 10-1 but I feel like they could be one and done this season with a bad matchup. I guess nothing they do would surprise me.

SF has such great speed on defense I don't know if they'll get handled by anyone. I think Baltimore has to be everyone's top team at this point though. They're just crushing people like I hoped to see the Packers do in the first half of the year.

The Packers may not even need to beat the Vikings. It could be wrapped or require a win over Detroit to get the division. All remains to be seen. But the field of teams is more or less set, just waiting on who wins the East. The WCs will be from the West and North. It seems fairly likely that the Packers and Vikings meet a third time in the wild card. In which case, I kinda hope the Packers lose the 2nd game but still end up winning the division. If the Packers can take care of the Bears and Lions, they'd still win a tiebreaker with Minnesota with a 1-1 split. And like I said prior to the 49ers game, it's still fairly conceivable the 49ers actually finish beneath the Packers, especially if the Packers win the last five. SF has road games in Seattle, Baltimore and New Orleans. The home games are not sleepers either, Atlanta and LA. Likely? No, but not impossible. I think the Packers at 3/6 is most likely, which makes the question where you'd most like to go in the 2nd round. I'm inclined to say Seattle just because the defense is the worst, but I don't think it matters. I tend to think all 3 are a notch better than the Packers.

The Eli thing just as easily goes the other way IMO. He won it with a 10-6 and 9-7 team. You can't look at the Giants history over Rodgers career and say they've been better than the Packers. We're talking about a team that's going to miss the playoffs for the 9th time in 11 years. It's just not as simple as "they have this guy and our guy is better therefore we should have more titles." IMO, the Packers have generally been as good as anyone could have hoped, even with those two guys, and I'd say they've had a rash of freak losses in the playoffs that contributed to this "wasted the QBs" thing.

Whenever this QB topic comes up I think people are too dismissive how big a role luck plays. The Packers have been a winning team for almost the entire duration of those two guys careers. Once you're in the playoffs, you have be really good but also lucky. There are scores of teams with top QBs that can't even make the playoffs. Then there are the seasons the Packers got really close, which in my book, is pretty much the same as winning it at least from the standpoint of the responsibility the front office has. I'm looking at 2003, 2011, 2014, teams that were good enough and the team didn't finish the deal. You can throw in 2007, 2016 teams that got one game from the Super Bowl. They lose Rodgers for huge chunks of two seasons, and in one of them still push the NFC runner up to near OT in the wild card. Even 2009, they get knocked out in OT. It's not like the Packers won a Super Bowl and then put together a bunch of 5-11 seasons. They've been pretty similar to the Steelers for the last 20 years. What are the Saints exactly? They won it a year before the Packers and missed the playoffs four times. When you actually start going down the line of teams the Packers have been a top 5 club. If you remove the outlier of the Patriots there is really nobody that's been clearly better. You can split hairs and point to things like Roethlisberger playing in three SBs, but I can't really look at them as clear evidence of the Packers organizational failure. There are just too many things that can go wrong, too many variables to ignore all the nuance and wrap it up with a simple statement like "the team failed Rodgers." What role does he play, as the MVP, in throwing for 422 yards, 1 TD and 4 picks in two NFC Championship games? And they won one of those, btw. I guess I'm just saying that Rodgers being in one vs. Ben being in three can really be chalked up to luck or bizarre crap like Brandon Bostick more so than the team being complicit in some mass shortcoming.

Guys who murder their wives, but specifically the ones who do it with no plan whatsoever, in a time when there is a camera everywhere and forensic evidence is better than ever, and think they will outsmart the world and get away with it.

I feel as though the fans are justified in their anger for the team not getting back to the Super Bowl after 2010. That team was seen as one that hadn't even plateaued. But I'm out of the discussion when the current regime is held accountable for it. Time to turn the page.