GREEN BAY PACKERS 2021 (season): 1st Playoff Game (and Last, as it turns out)
Vs. 49ers at Lambeau; Saturday, January 22nd at 7:15 Packer (Central) Time
Who will the Packers be playing? Maybe it's known, but I don't know it yet. Once I do, I will make a score prediction.
Monday, 1/10/22
The four possible opponents in the first playoff game are: Eaglets, 48ers, Redbirds, and Ramjets (gold was discovered in California in quantity in 1848, not 1849).
As for who will be back from the sick room to shore up the team, Beertiari and Oscar Meyers were already playing yesterday. Next could be Alexander the Gr8 and Candle Robb. Billy Turner Broadcasting, too? I still hope Z is a possible returnee this season—he could bring a real boost to the defense (not that his “brother” Pressed-On and Rushin’ Gary haven’t been doing a great job distressing the ball chucker); Z could be the “X factor” or the “It” that the defense needs to scale the wall.
As for defensive sparkplugs, I don’t think I ever heard Razzle Dazzle’s name mentioned yesterday—nor did I notice him at all, in fact. Was he maybe one of the cats who wasn’t “doing his reservoir job” in pursuit of more pyrotechnics?
MVS was also basically invisible until he got hurt. I hope he’s OK, too. Just sucking defenders away from other receivers alone makes him a valuable puzzle piece. Maybe the Packers should come up with some trick plays of their own: MVS could, a la Favre, throw a pass to himself—just heave it up there where only he can get to it in time. Has anybody ever had a passing TD and a receiving TD on the same play? He could be the first!
Tuesday, 1/11/22
Something I hadn’t really thought about, but was reminded of, about last Sunday’s less-than-stellar defensive performance, is that Souped-Up Campbell wasn’t playing. When he’s back for the next game—along with, apparently, Alexander the Great and maybe Z, too—and the defensive players focus on doing their job before being a hero, things should go much better.
Part Deux
Anything can happen on any given week (e.g., last week the Motor City Lions, who were 2-13-1 prior to the game, defeated the Pack, who were 13-3 prior to the game), but I still sort of expect, and definitely hope, that this is the Packers’ year to get over the hump and actually get to the Super Bowl again.
To get there (as mentioned above), the Packers will first have to defeat either the Philadelphia Eagles, the San Francisco 49ers, the Arizona Cardinals (I first wrote “St. Louis” and had to change it), or the Los Angeles Rams. As I said, any game can go awry—one bad decision or throw or fumble or penalty, or injury, or just “the way the ball bounces” can have a major impact on the outcome—but the two of those that engender the greatest anxiety for me are the last two. For one thing, they probably have the two best quarterbacks of those two teams. Plus, the Rams have Aaron Donald, who might make things difficult for Aaron Rodgers or Aaron Jones.
But! The Packers have the just-mentioned Aarons, so what’s to worry (too much)?
After that, it would be one more victory, over one of the remaining candidates. But I have no clue at this point who that might be, so . . .
Thursday, 1/13/22
Z is back at practice! I think Billy Turner Broadcasting and Candle Robb are, too. They will still miss “Big Bob” Tonyan and Elgton Jenkins (as well as Whitney Houston Merciless, et al), but getting Z back is huge! The Packers are getting healthy at the right time. And it’s practically guaranteed nobody will get injured his weekend (unless they fall off their deck or something like that). A bigger worry is having key players go on the COVID list and miss one or more playoff games.
Later:
Whitney Houston Merciless is back at practice, too!
Sunday, 1/16/22
The 49ers somewhat surprisingly defeated the Dallas Cowboys today, so the 49ers will be playing America’s Team The World’s Team, the Packers, Saturday the 22nd of January at 7:15 Packer time (5:15 Pacific).
GPG!
Prediction: Packers 30, 49ers 26
Seen on nfl.com this evening, a logic/math error:
Tuesday, 1/18/22
A Packers.com writer had an especially bad day today. There were other things, too, but this was the worst: three errors in one paragraph:
First error: Grant was not a novelist. A novel is fiction. The only book Grant wrote was his “Personal Memoirs” (guided by his friend, Mark Twain, whose publishing company produced the book).
Error #2: Grant wrote no book on redemption. Again, his autobiography was the only book he wrote.
Third error (or 2B, maybe): Since Grant wrote no book explicitly about redemption, he did not literally write such a book. Even to say he figuratively penned such a piece would be stretching it, I think. The quote that fits here is: “I don’t think that word [“literally”] means what you think it means.”
Saturday, 1/22/22
As somebody once sang, “Tonight’s the Night”; Rod Stewart, I think. TLtG (Too Lazy to Google).
I often rag on the Packers beat writers for their shortcomings. In the interest of fairness, today I want to spotlight a tasty morsel of brain candy written by one of them:
Yes, who knows . . . We will see in a few hours.
5:32 / 7:32
Packers 7-0.
Z gets the sack to force the punt!
5:46 / 7:46
Bad call on the fumble recovery by Krys Barnes, but still ended up with a punt after Gary sacks Garishpolo
6:08 / 8:08
Packers defense has stifled the 49ers!
8:23 / 10:23
So much for that. Besides the obvious (special teams’ failure to block the rushers), the key play / missed opportunity from my perspective was when Stokes (I think it was) didn’t even watch the flight of the ball on what could have been a pick six. IOW, he was playing too conservatively.
Another key play of the game was the bad call on the fumble recovery by the Packers. How that wasn’t a fumble I’ll never know.
But all that is woulda, coulda, shoulda, really. The Packers just didn’t play well enough. Frustrating. But if it’s frustrating for me, who was perched on my couch drinking beers and eating pizza and ice cream cake, what must it be like for those cats. And Rodgers is now 0-4 against the 49ers in the playoffs . . .
Was that the Packers last best chance for quite a while? It may be quite a different team next year. One issue is whether Rodgers and Adams will still be there. Another is will they be able to afford other cats in addition to them if they pay them (beauxcoups bucks). I’m not expecting too much of them next year.
Monday, 1/24/22
Missed it by that much (said in a "Get Smart" voice).
That loss feels like the end of an era to me.
How a group can keep the faith and pull back together after three years running of knocking on the door and not being invited inside is beyond me. I think the well has been tainted. A fresh start is needed—for the players, and for the team. This group, as talented as they are, cannot seem to finish. Three strikes and . . . in the end, they are the lion that squeaked.
Rodgers said he doesn’t want to be part of a rebuild and, given the Packers' cap situation and the dilemma delineated above, I don’t see how this team doesn’t get blown up over the off-season. What’s Rodgers’ definition of a rebuild is a question, but at this point I predict the following for Green Bay next year:
Rodgers will be gone, perhaps to the team he seems to have a mental block against beating (49ers).
Jordan Puppylove will be the starting QB
Marcedes Lewis gone, at least as a player.
Davante gone, unless they “tag” him.
Z gone.
Souped-up Cambell gone.
Razzle Dazzle (Rasul Douglas) gone.
Special Teams coach fired, a greater emphasis placed on ST players in free agency and the draft.
But getting back to the loss to the 49ers in particular, it seems that the Packers kind of brought it on themselves, not emphasizing ST as much as they should have earlier in the year when it was obviously a fiasco and a train wreck with toxic chemicals. That part of the team make the easy scapegoats for the loss, but offense did not perform up to the standard set for and expected from them, either. Two “wiley old” vets who everyone on the team said they wanted to win a Super Bowl for, Rodgers and Lewis, share a fair bit of the blame for the loss.
I'm talking about Lewis’ fumble, and Rodgers’ obsessive monomania vis a vis Davante Adams. How many targets did other wide receivers get? A total of three or four? Especially on the occasions when Adams was double and triple-covered, Lazard or Cobb had to have been open at times.
Watching the end of the Bills-Chiefs game last night, Josh Allen and Pat Rick Mahomey seemed to throw to the open man, not a man with a particular jersey number. They both had their main targets, to be sure (Hornblower Davis and Tyreek the Freak), but only threw to them when they were clearly open.
On that general subject, what a wild weekend of upsets and last-play victories!
Yes, it seems like an end of an era to me, and not just for the Packers. It won't be long, and the current cast of characters atop the NFL's Mount Passmore will seem like mythological figures from the mists of antiquity (relatively speaking). Rodgers and Brady and their ilk are fading away, while Mahomey, Allen, Burrow, et al are on the rise. The future is now.
I have been wanting to boycott the NFL for some time now, due mainly to the obvious collusion against Kaepernick, and partly due to the coverup over the terrible price paid by several athletes as a result of cumulative concussions suffered by them. I think I'm done with all of it. I almost feel like I've been in an abusive relationship, getting disappointed year after year, and choosing to ignore and make excuses for obvious bad behavior. I guess I’ll have to find another sedentary waste-of-time hobby.
I started watching football in 1972. Half a century is long enough. I’m outta here.