It was unequivocally a great weekend to be a Packer fan!
The Packers addressed a ton of areas of immediate need in the draft, something they generally failed to do in a 2020 draft that remains mysterious for so many reasons.
Their first-round pick, Eric Stokes, is an elite athlete and a strong cornerback prospect who played high-caliber football against outstanding competition in the SEC. He was a shut-down corner at the college level, has blazing speed and should complement Jaire Alexander nicely if he lives up to his potential.
There was certainly no other breaking news on the first day of the draft that overshadowed the selection of this promising young player out of Georgia!
The second day of the draft saw the Packers take home two more players who should be immediate contributors: center Josh Myers out of Ohio State and slot receiver Amari Rodgers out of Clemson. Myers is ostensibly the replacement for Corey Linsley and has a strong college pedigree, and Rodgers might be the most exciting pick of the draft for the Packers, as he gives them something they’ve been lacking for several years: a bona fide slot receiver who can play all over the field.
It was great to be able to focus solely on these two selections, and no other Packer news that continued to develop on the Friday of the draft!
The final day of the draft is always a crapshoot, but it’s where great teams really make their hay. The Packers obtained more depth along the offensive line, and looked to other areas of need: defensive line, inside linebacker and depth cornerback, before ending the draft with the selection of an exciting young running back who could have easily been taken two or three rounds earlier.
Upon completion of the draft, Packer fans were able to bask in the afterglow of a sensible, promising draft without any other nonsense that could potentially tear the fanbase apart, unlike what happened in 2020.
I’m excited to see what this class is capable of. While I understood the logic behind certain individual picks in the 2020 draft, the entire approach general manager Brian Gutekunst and company used in the draft as a whole remains mystifying to me. Though some armchair scouts might quibble with the individual selections the Packers took this year, there’s certainly no mystery with regard to the approach Gutekunst used this year. These selections were almost entirely needs based.
These rookies will be fortunate to walk into a fantastic situation in Green Bay, an idyllic small town where there is currently little media attention and nothing that could potentially cause a locker room schism, ensuring they will have an easy, successful transition to professional football.
CheeseheadTV Live Draft Party was a blast!
I had a great time on the CheeseheadTV live draft party this past weekend. I stuck around for the entirety of Thursday evening and was around for the first hour or so of Friday, and it was fun listening to all the banter surrounding the draft, the “other” Packer news happening, and football in general.
I was particularly impressed at the host of guests Nagler managed to attract to the event. Some really heavy hitters in there. AJ Dillon, David Bakhtiari, Will Blackmon, TJ Lang and Jace Sternberger represented the players, and there were media members like Rob Demovsky, Rachel Hopmayer, Baille Burmeister, Annie Agar and, of course, Andy Herman. Really great lineup of knowledgeable and fun folks.
I think my favorite insight from the weekend, and I mentioned this on Friday, came from Lang.
TJ was talking about some of the differences between playing with the Packers and playing with Detroit. He specifically noted the difference in mindset in the two locker rooms. With Green Bay, the expectation was that you would win the division and compete for championship football. With Detroit, he said the locker room and coaches would consider a successful season beating your divisional opponents.
The stakes and the expectations were noticeably lower in Detroit, he said, something that permeated the locker room.
To me, it’s really eye-opening to hear that coming from an actual player. Obviously you see that in the fan base--fans of certain teams are going to have naturally lower expectations because, even from a position of relative bias, they can see if their team sucks.
But the fact that this was an accepted mindset in Detroit, even when the Lions had a winning record in his first year there, is really surprising, even when you consider the team’s long history of losing. Obviously, we see the results that have come from that sort of mindset, but to hear an actual player essentially say one team simply didn’t care as much about success as another, that’s a bit jarring.
It also makes me further appreciate the Packers and their success over the last few decades. I think we’d all like to see at least a couple more Lombardis out of this run, but can you imagine being a Lions fan? Good lord.
Wisconsin Beer of the Week
It’s always great to be able to welcome a new brewery to the Milwaukee area, and I’m extremely excited about everything that is to come from Supermoon Beer Company, based in Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood.
This new nano brewery has only put out a couple beer releases so far, spaced months apart, and I’m still waiting for an announcement for their next release. But if the first couple beers I’ve had from them are any indication, they’re going to quickly become big-time players in the Milwaukee craft beer market, competing with favorites of mine like 1840 Brewing Company and Eagle Park Brewery.
I was able to get my hands on a bottle of their beer Launchdown, a farmhouse style raspberry beer. As you can see from the photo, it’s got a gorgeous reddish pinkish hue to it with beautiful transparency. The beer itself was just as crisp as it looks.
Supermoon’s thing is making beer that takes a long time to age, much like 1840 Brewing. This particular beer had a 16-month production time before release, ensuring some really complex flavors.
The brewers blended together a few mixed fermentation saisons, aged that blend in French oak barrels, and then added a heap of red and black raspberries. The result is an oaky, aged, sour flavor you’d expect from a really great aged farmhouse beer, with a perfectly balanced berry flavor that is just sweet enough to help balance out that sourness. This isn’t a fruited sour that’s going to have an overpowered fruit flavor--it’s a balanced work of art.
If you have never before tried an oak-aged saison or farmhouse beer I’d strongly recommend you give it a shot. In some ways the experience resembles drinking a good wine. Even if fruit flavor in beer isn’t your thing, you can find plenty of aged saisons without fruit added that introduce you to the bright, funky flavor that characterizes them.
Okay, fine, let’s talk Rodgers
Alright, I suppose I can’t get any farther into this column without addressing the elephant in the room, so let’s get to it.
I’m currently writing this section of this column on Tuesday morning for a Thursday morning publication, so God only knows what fresh hell will be unleashed upon us in the 48 hours to follow (I’ll update this section if I feel like there’s anything worth noting that changes my mind), but it really does appear we’re heading for a second consecutive ugly divorce from a Hall of Fame franchise quarterback.
As I mentioned on Twitter a few days ago, this whole thing feels like we’re speedrunning the Summer of Favre. Constant leaks, people in the fanbase taking sides, the sudden realization that a seemingly untouchable player might actually be traded… this all feels very familiar to those of us old enough to remember the Summer of 2008.
The thing that feels most different to me about all this so far is that while in 2008 I’d argue the majority of Packer fans took Brett Favre’s side against Ted Thompson and Mark Murphy, this time it feels like the opposite is true--at least for those fans old enough to remember that summer 13 years ago. Most polls I’ve seen put the fanbase heavily in the Packers’ corner this time, even if most fans realize that both sides share some blame in the deterioration of this relationship.
I think this is because, for some of us at least, the Favre drama still feels somewhat fresh. We saw it played out, we went through all the emotions, we came out of it okay.
Frankly I just don’t have the patience or emotional investment to go through all of it again.
Ultimately, it boils down to this for me. Aaron Rodgers’ feelings are valid; if you’re a high-performing employee who is of incredible value to your employer, you can probably expect to be given at least a little bit more input into how things are run. It seems Packers leadership failed to properly manage that relationship in many ways over an extended period of time.
That being said, the Packers are under absolutely no obligation to get approval from Rodgers for certain decisions, and some of the choices the Packers made that allegedly angered Rodgers were undeniably correct.
(Jake Kumerow? Really? Come on, dude.)
Rodgers has every right to be upset, and of course, we do not have access to the whole story. But the reports that have come out over the last week or so really only serve to make him look like a petulant child.
Here’s a man who goes on Pat McAfee to complain about how the media is always putting words in his mouth, but then he sits back and lets the drama unfold when this situation arises.
He spent an entire last year talking about how he’d accepted that his future is out of his hands, that he had achieved some level of zen, was enjoying his career more than ever and wanted to be a Packer for the rest of his life. But his apparent actions and desires as reported make all of that appear to be a bunch of bunk.
To me, that’s what’s most disappointing out of all of this. Rodgers’ reported demands and actions are so far removed from the way he has portrayed himself over the last year. I guess I expected he really had learned from the Favre situation. Maybe he did--just the wrong lessons.
Look, the way things were shaking out, 2021 was probably going to be Rodgers’ last year in Green Bay anyway, given the contract situations. If the relationship is truly impossible to repair at this point, the Packers need to bite the bullet and trade him while he’s at his maximum value. Rip off the bandaid a year early. Or, at the very least, play hardball and make him pay back his contract while he sits out.
Jordan Love might not be ready, but Gutekunst and Murphy put themselves into this position, almost certainly knowing this could be a possible outcome, even if they didn’t think it particularly likely. On the other hand, Love might turn out to be the Packers’ next great quarterback and once again this all becomes a moot point, as it did with Rodgers. But if not, both Gutekunst and Murphy will be out of a job within three years and their names will be cursed for the rest of time in the Packer fandom.
I hate that things are ending this way, but this time around I refuse to get emotionally invested in the outcome. Aaron Rodgers’s time with the Packers was, whether we like it or not, already running out. We’re just going to have to accept that we’re getting plunged into uncertainty earlier than we might have liked.
Where there’s smoke…
There’s a tendency among a subset of sports fans to excoriate members of sports media when they report on things they don’t like.
Over the last couple years, any times there were rumblings of dissatisfaction or any kind of bad blood between Rodgers and the Packers, fans would immediately shout down these reports as being made up or exaggerated.
But there has been a pattern now for several years of these types of reports. None of the reports that came out ever indicated the team and its star could be heading for a messy divorce, but there were still signs of trouble that many Packer fans (myself included) dismissed as being hearsay or unreliable reporting.
I think it’s worth reflecting on this and once again noting that the vast majority of sports journalists (we’re talking legitimate journalists, not talking heads) don’t just make stuff up. Their reporting is well sourced, and there are strong editorial standards they must meet for publication.
Sure, there are some reporters whose words you should take with a grain of salt. But the next time you write an angry Twitter response to a journalist over a Packers-related story, consider this: what is your motivation? Is it just an emotional response because you don’t like the news?
Because there have been reporters who have been on this story for a while now, dropping little crumbs of it here and there, and today they get to say “I told you so.”
A promising springtime in Wisconsin
As much as I might be frustrated with the Rodgers news, it at least hit at a good time of year. There’s months to go until football season, and the weather is finally warming up here in Wisconsin as the leaves return and the promise of summer is on the horizon.
Last year at this time, there was a whole lot of uncertainty as to what the summer (and the future in general) would look like. This year, there’s a lot more reason for hope. More and more people are getting vaccinated, things are opening back up, there are going to be plenty of outdoor events to attend… it feels like people are going to take full advantage of the few months of nice weather we get after a year-plus of being mostly cooped up.
My sheepshead group got together for the first time since last February a couple weeks ago, and that was so needed. With the weather finally cooperating, my toddler has been enjoying more trips to the playground, and my twins are enjoying rolling around on the blanket out in the backyard.
As frustrating as the Rodgers saga can be, it’s hard to let it get the best of me when the sun is shining and I’m getting back out into the world, connecting with friends and family I haven’t seen in some time, and preparing to enjoy everything that comes with summertime in MIlwaukee.
Current team needs
Gutekunst and company did a great job of addressing some immediate needs during the draft, but there are still some spots on the team that need to be addressed before the 2021 season begins.
The obvious position is quarterback. If Rodgers isn’t coming back, the Packers can’t just roll into the season with Jordan Love and an undrafted free agent. There are some available veterans on the market that could fill in in a pinch if Love truly isn’t ready yet. Of course, at this point, none of the options are exactly the kind of player you can expect to carry you to a playoff season.
Of the available free agents, I’d say the best bet is probably Blake Bortles. Bortles showed some flashes in his years in Jacksonville (where he worked with Nathaniel Hackett) and then held a clipboard for the Rams. He’s not a long-term solution, but at least he’s got a bit of talent and could win you a couple games.
Otherwise, the team could always go with a familiar face in Brett Hundley! Kidding…
Outside of quarterback, the biggest glaring need to me is punter. At the very least, the Packers need to bring in some competition for J.K. Scott, who stunk it up last year and was fortunate the Packers had to punt as infrequently as they did. If Scott comes into camp and is booming the ball all over the place with consistency, then great. But the team needs to start looking elsewhere.
It’s not entirely clear yet who will be the Packers’ return specialist. With Tyler Ervin and Jamaal Williams both gone, there’s a void in that position. I’d figure Amari Rodgers will probably get a crack at it. Jaire Alexander has returned punts before, and Chandon Sullivan has also been placed on return duty. Rookie running back Kylin Hill could be in the mix.
Whoever the Packers put back there, they just need to be reliable with catching the ball and gaining a few positive yards.
Finally, there are a few positions where the team could use more depth, and defensive line is, to me, the one that stands out. I’m just not a fan of once again trotting out Dean Lowry and Tyler Lancaster as your primary rotational d-line players next to Kenny Clark. TJ Slaton will get playing time, but at the moment he’s really the only new face to a group that has been a team weakness for several years.
Now what?
The draft is over. It’s uncertain what offseason training activities will look like with the latest drama between the league and the NFLPA. There’s not going to be any kind of resolution to the Rodgers situation until at least June 1.
So for now… we wait.
The uncertainty of what’s to come for the Packers can be a bit frightening, especially for those of us who are lucky enough to only have experienced winning football in our lifetimes. I’m going to be 33 in May, and my entire football consciousness is defined by Hall of Fame quarterback play and championship contention.
But I had already come to terms with the idea that the ride was going to come to an end sooner than later, likely after the 2021 season. Like it or not, some of the so-called “desired timelines” (as Rodgers put it) have shifted, and we may be plunging into the unknown sooner than expected.
It’s more likely than not that this is the end of the Packers’ three decades of top-flight quarterback play. But regardless of what happens, I’ll be there every Sunday caring way too much about the dudes in green and yellow.
Endings are inevitable. Uncertainty can be hard. But if this truly is the transition into the next era of Packer football, then I am ready to accept that.
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May 06, 2021 at 06:02PM
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Hello Wisconsin: Packers Have a Strong Draft, and Yes That's the Only News of the Week - Cheesehead TV
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