Green Bay Packers

Brett Favre vs. the Green Bay Packers

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I think I do a pretty good job about not talking about football on this blog, but I would be remiss if I failed to mention the big game last night. Of course I am referring to Brett Favre playing against the team he played for for 15 years.

I think I’ve made my feelings on the whole Favre thing pretty well known, so I won’t go into all that again. But I sure was excited about this game. I was listening to some of the pre-game coverage on the radio in the morning and I literally got chills. I even bumped all of our Monday night shows off the TiVo in anticipation.

In regards to all the hype, I’ve noticed that some people seem to have their facts a little mixed up. I kind of think they know that and did it on purpose to make it a better story. But let’s be quite clear – the Packers did not run Brett Favre out of town. The Packers begged him to come back. The disagreement was over when exactly Favre was going to decide if he was going to play or retire. Remember every football fan in the universe? You were all pretty annoyed with that too. I’ve even heard McCarthy’s now famous “that train has left the station” quote used out of context to imply that he was referring to Favre’s ability. So it’s a good story to pretend like the Packers told Favre, “You’re washed up, we don’t want you anymore!” but that’s not really how it went down.

So the actual game began and I was very excited. Everything quickly went downhill. The Packers put the “offensive” in “offensive line”, taking 8 sacks. They had many, many opportunities in the red zone that they didn’t convert. Overall, however, with the exception of the o-line, they played pretty well. They contained the best RB in the NFL. They moved the ball fairly easily. In fact, between the two, I think Rodgers might have played better than Favre, considering he was scrambling for his life the entire night. At the end of the day, Minnesota was just clearly the better team in almost every aspect, so the fact that they managed to pull within a touchdown at the end was quite impressive.

Watching Favre play against the Packers was not nearly as painful as I thought it would be. In fact, I felt really good for him when they pointed out that Favre became the first person to beat every team in the NFL (obviously he had never beaten the Packers before). I felt good about that, the same way I felt when he got most wins, most yards, and most touchdowns. Like somehow I was a part of that. And quite frankly, I think I am! I might not have caught any passes, but don’t tell me all the positive vibes I’ve sent his way for 15 years didn’t amount to something cosmically.

But man-oh-man did I want the Packers to beat him! Still, everyone is saying, “Oh, Favre really showed them!” I don’t see it that way. The only thing you can compare Favre to is Aaron Rodgers, because that is the only consideration you have if you’re thinking about whether you need to appease Favre or not. And I think anybody watching that game could see that Rodgers is a pretty good QB. The Vikings’ o-line being better than the Packer’s o-line has nothing to do with it.

Every great football unit needs a great nickname. So, in the spirit of the “Gang Green” of the late 80’s Eagles, the “Steel Curtain” of the 70’s Steelers, or the “Purple People Eaters” of the 70’s Vikings, I am now nicknaming the Packer’s offensive line the “Wet Napkins“. Hopefully this new nickname will give them something to aspire to.

Misc.

/ Shane / 4 Comments

I just have a lot of random miscellany to update on, so here you go, in no particular order:

Some Norwegians came to visit. Meg, I really appreciate the effort you put into keeping in touch with me. I can’t count the number of friends that I’ve regrettably lost contact with since college. And giving me bacon / cheese popcorn doesn’t hurt either (although it wasn’t all that bacony, mostly just tasted like cheese popcorn).

Evie finally learned how to jump on Friday. She’s a little behind schedule on that one, so I was working on it with her. I’d like to think that my excellent advice to “put your feet together, bend your knees, and push with your toes” are what put her over the top. She’s going through a bit of a trying phase at the moment, so, after our initial giggling and hugging fit, the fact that we wanted her to jump again pretty much guaranteed she wouldn’t. She did jump some more on Sunday though.

Everyone was sick, back to back. It took each of us about 4 days to shake it, so we had a rough patch for about 12 days.

American History X, good movie!  Really good! Has anyone seen it? Oh yeah, Sara and I were the last people on earth who hadn’t.

We finally checked out the Harry Potter exhibit at the MSI. It was pretty cool, and well done, but not exactly what I expected. It’s pretty much a tour through a bunch of movie props. Since it was in the museum of SCIENCE and INDUSTRY, I kind of thought it would be like explaining about the special effects, or like “real life invisibility” exhibits or something. Not just, “Here’s the clothes Ron wore in this scene…” Also, our scheduled time was before the museum opened, which was pretty confusing to begin with, but they had a lot of trouble getting people lined up for the right times and stuff. You’d think for the money they’re pulling down, they could have invested in a couple of signs or something. Still, it was fun. I can’t say if it was worth the price of admission or not, since it was free for us.

Football is officially underway, and what better way to start the season than to beat the Bears? And the best part? I get the double win in the morning when I get to ride to work and listen to Chicago sports talk radio rehash the game!

We had fun at the 57th Street Children’s Book Festival over the weekend. Every year that we go, Evie enjoys it a little bit more as she gets old enough to appreciate the events. We listened to a story teller, made a crown, dug for pirate treasure, attended a music class, watched a dance troupe, painted and glued a paper box, and danced to some music (including jumping on some bubble wrap). Side note, Sara said, “Jeeze, there sure are a lot of pirate themed things here.” When will people realize, it is not me who is obsessed with pirates, but rather all rational human beings who are obsessed with pirates when confronted with their awesomeness.

Finally, the other day I opened the back door to discover an enormous spider web over the opening, trapping us inside. Right in the middle of the web, directly at eye level, sat Lillith the spider queen, bigger’n a quarter. I quickly slammed the door shut before she could spray venom in my eyes. Now I ask you, what could that mean with the web directly across the door opening like that, other than this enormous spider was trying to catch humans? Finally I took it out with a broom, shrieking and cursing the whole time. The spider sat for a while on the porch, memorizing my face before slowly sauntering under a potted plant. I could have squished her with the broom (at least so I told myself…that was a big spider) but do I really need the wrath of all the spiders in the world for killing their queen? No sir, I do not. So I let her go and the next day she had spun her human trap over Evie’s chair on the porch. That’s right, I put a little fear into her and she decided to try for smaller prey. Me 1, spider queen 0.

And now Favre is a Viking

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I thought this would have been the last time I had to make such an announcement.

After publicly declaring several times that he was retired, wanted to stay retired, and would in no way be joining specifically the Vikings, Favre surprised no one by signing with said Vikings.

Despite what many people would have you believe, I don’t much care about Favre signing where ever he wants. And if the Vikes want to have the drama that will be surrounding this whole thing, more power to them. In fact, that’s really the tragedy about this whole thing…my apathy. This was a guy who was a god, and now I hardly even care, other than to say, “Ha, good luck with that you idiots.” How the mighty have fallen.

Oh well, at least this will distract some of the media from the Michael Vick thing in Philly.

Wait, so are you saying Brett Favre isn’t God?

/ Shane / 1 Comment

First Football Weekend

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Well, the first weekend of football is over and my fantasy football season is already sunk.

I’m only in one league this year.  That league is my keeper league that I’ve been playing in since 2002.  Every year you select the 2 best players from your team the previous year and keep them into the next season.  Last year I won the league and the main reason why was Tom Brady.  Obviously I kept him for this season.  After netting me a grand total of 2.53 points he received a season ending knee injury.  I don’t mean to be callous about a guy with a serious injury, but lets face it, he is paid extremely will because of the risk.  But consider how his injury affects ME!  An entire season of fun down the tubes.  And not just me, it has been estimated that Brady’s injury will shift $150 MILLION dollars of Fantasy Football winnings to different people.  Economics are weird.

In other football news, I watched the first quarterback since 1992 not named Brett Favre start a football game for the Green Bay Packers.  And actually, he was pretty awesome.  Not awesome in the fact that he was unstoppable, but considering it was his first start ever he looked like an old hand.  Despite the fact that many penalties put him in bad situations, he played very well and against a team that many people picked to go to the superbowl.  Certainly against a tough defense.  He made plays when he had to, he never looked rattled, and he displayed traits (especially eye techniques used to freeze or move safeties) that some veteran quarterbacks never master.

I always had complete faith in Rodgers, but I think the rest of the world now sees what most of the Packers’ faithful saw a long time ago…that the team is honestly really good and in no small part because of Aaron Rodgers.