I’m the media. After the first game of the NFL season, when the gorgonzola blossomed in the cow pastures between Sheboygan and Green Bay, I wrote that the 1–0 Green Bay Packers were doubtless headed for the Super Bowl.
In Leinenkugel-addled football solipsism, I crowed:
Scoff if you will, but in the words of Election Night guru Dave Wasserman, “I’ve seen enough”: The Green Bay Packers are going to the Super Bowl. If it seems premature to claim that the shockingly young and inexperienced team (youngest average age — 25 — of any NFL team) can make the playoffs let alone the Super Bowl just because the Pack stunned the Chicago Bears on Soldier Field, that would be because it is premature. But so what?
After 30 years of excellence split between two Hall of Fame–caliber quarterbacks, Aaron Rodgers and Brett Favre, the idea that Green Bay could hit with any success on a third is absurd. But Jordan Love, a Utah product who did his three years in the shadows of the aforementioned Rodgers, showed mettle in his debut earning a QB rating of 123.2 with three touchdowns and a final score of 38–20.
Well, we’ve come to find out that the Bears may be the worst team in the NFL, so the Packers beating them in Chicago was the equivalent of winning an arm-wrestling match against your formula-fed baby cousin at Thanksgiving after you left your shift early at Wendy’s without informing the manager — just embarrassing for everyone unfortunate enough to witness the episode. (On review, this example may be suspiciously specific.)
But why are the Packers so bad? Well, they’re terribly young, and what age they have on the team is injured, so the starting group’s age average has to be pretty near prepubescent. Observe our woes: All-Pro left tackle David Bakhtiari is out for the season; the juice of the backfield, Aaron Jones, is walking wounded alongside star cornerback Jaire Alexander; and the most-veteran wideout is a second-year player. A turnstile O-line, bumbling wideout corps, and hobbling backfield are the anti-Trinity insofar as quarterback success goes, and Jordan Love is understandably struggling to make anything happen (32nd in completion rate, 22nd in yards, and 23rd in QBR).
Worse, our chances of a bonus first-round pick disappeared with Aaron Rodgers’ Achilles’ tendon in the first four minutes of the season, so there’ll be no salvation there. The ’70s called, and they insisted we sample their Packers platter — boy does it stink.
So, no, the Packers aren’t going to the Super Bowl. Maybe we’ll do what other bad teams enjoy and overspend on overhyped wide receivers . . . It only took the Jacksonville Jaguars two decades to quit that bad habit.