2011 by Michael George
Let the hoopla roll and bask in the glory, Packer Backers! The champs are huge, nationally, and here comes the 2011 NFL Kickoff Party with Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum and Maroon 5 and the regional cover of Sports Illustrated’s NFL Preview Issue for Clay Matthews. The Packers are on top of the sports world and we fans are lovin’ it! It’s hard to take it all in, but I plan to as much as possible, at the big party September 8.
Of course it was not always so for the committed Packer Backer and it’s been a long journey of fandom for this Wisconsinite. My first distinct Packers memory is kids in my second grade class saying some guy named Phil Bengston was the new coach for 1968 and I started following Packer football seriously on TV and in the paper. I had been aware the Packers were champions and I knew the names Starr, Nitschke and some others but I was too young to get really into the Lombardi era experience. Suddenly the champs were old and tired and began the long downhill slide, a new bunch of Packer lean years, had begun, like déjà vu all over again for the elder fans that had seen the bad fifties teams.
Bengston’s teams were 6-7-1, 8-6 and 6-8 and in 1971 the Packers brought in Dan Devine, who suffered a broken leg on the sidelines to welcome him to Green Bay en route to a 4-8-2 season. Despite the record they beat the Bears twice and two rookies created excitement: QB Scott Hunter and running back John Brockington, who burst on the scene with 5.1 yards per carry and started in the Pro Bowl. In 1972 it clicked and the 10-4 Packers returned to the playoffs and the swagger returned to Packer Backers, at least until Christmas Eve when they got slapped 16-3 by the Redskins and told to go home.
There’s always next year, the Packer Backer always heard in those days. After no more winning seasons Devine was out and Bart Starr was anointed for the 1975 campaign. In the next seven years their best record was 8-7-1 and no playoffs until the bizarre, strike-interrupted 5-3-1 campaign of 1982 where they actually won a wild card playoff game against the old St. Louis Cardinals before falling to the Cowboys in the next round. Well, try again next year.
The 8-8 1983 Bart Starr Packers gave way to something totally different: the 1984 and 1985 8-8 Forrest Gregg Packers. Rough times. It was almost a relief when they dived below five hundred for two years and we made the break from Lombardi era players as coaches when Lindy Infante was hired in 1988. He started 4-12, but then came Don Majkowski, the Majik Man, 90 catches from Pro Bowler Sterling Sharpe and the Cardiac Pack.
Those 1989 comeback games were nuts to watch, Packer Backers. They finished 10-6 with a lot of close wins, in the hunt for a playoff spot but not clinched pending the outcome of the final regular season game, the Monday nighter December 25, 1989, Cincinnati at the hated Vikings sitting at 9-6. The winner of that game was going to the playoffs. Come on, BENGALS! It was not to be. The hated purple got up 22-7 at half and a couple Esiason second half TD throws were not enough and it was the Vikings 29-21 going away, which gave them the NFC playoff spot by tiebreaker and the Pack got nothin’. We Packer Backers burned. The 1989 Packers were the first team with ten wins not to make the playoffs in the history of NFL playoffs.
The Packers went below five hundred two years in a row again and 1992 began the reign of Mike Holmgren, he of today’s Holmgren Way. And the reign of some guy who, when I first heard and saw his name, made me wonder why his family didn’t use the obvious French pronunciation of his name (Fav RAY) and made something up instead. And the reign of Reggie White, may he rest in peace.
Thus began the return to Super Bowl Glory that Came and Went. On the way up, Packer Backers witnessed the original Leap at Lambeau by Leroy Butler in 1993 and the return of a home playoff game in 1994, screaming our lungs out in the End Zone seats as the Packer defense turned back Detroit’s attempts to score en route to a 16-12 victory. Unfortunately, the ’94 playoff run, like the ’93 run, was ended by the Cowboys at Texas Stadium. The ’95 team roared to the playoffs, beat the Falcons and the Niners and, lost to the Cowboys at Texas Stadium. I remember Reggie White, enraged, walking off the field yelling at the Cowboys, “Come to Green Bay. Come to Green Bay and see what happens.” The Packers needed to have home field throughout the playoffs, it seemed, if they were ever going to beat those bastards when it counted.
At 13-3 the Packers achieved home field domination in 1996, destroyed the Niners on January 4 and we Packer Backers salivated in anticipation of the Cowboys coming to Green Bay. Only nobody told the upstart second-year franchise Carolina Panthers, who went into Texas Stadium on January 5 and beat the Cowboys, which the Packers had been unable to do the previous three consecutive years. It made the NFC Championship in Green Bay anti-climatic, a cheat somehow. Packer Backers whispered among themselves, “Had the Cowboys laid down for the Panthers, unwilling to risk a mortal beat down on the frozen tundra to sully their sense of smug superiority over the franchise from the smallest city in major professional sports?” Well, HAD they???? Probably not, but there was a definite feel of not playing against the varsity there on the way to Super Bowl XXXI.
However, once the pre-game hoopla was well advanced the bad taste was gone, replaced by the taste of Bloody Marys. By the time Favre made his iconic lap after the first TD pass to Rison, arms extended, helmet in hand, hair that was long and not yet gray flying in the wind, it all felt right. The Packers never trailed and Reggie White’s three sacks of Drew Bledsoe (the team had five) sealed the deal. It was all Packer Glory. And of course, the Lombardi trophy was, “Back where it belongs at Lambeau Field.”
Sic Transit Gloria. “All Glory is Fleeting,” was whispered in the ear of Roman conquerors as they paraded before cheering throngs numbering in the thousands, a custom that was hoped would help the general to avoid destroying himself with hubris, unrestrained or overweening pride. The glory of the nineties was fleeting. The Packers got to the next Super Bowl all right, maybe a little too confident and lost to the Broncos. My memory of Super Bowl XXXII is a blur of Gilbert Brown being knocked on his fat ass and Terrell Davis running over and past him with three rushing touchdowns. Ah, we’ll get ‘em next year.
And so glory came and went too fast. The ’98 Packers slipped to 11-5, lost a Wild Card playoff to San Fran and Holmgren bolted for, “total control” in Seattle. Ray Rhodes made a good team mediocre (8-8) in ’99 and went away. Then Mike Sherman came in and we had several years of the Oh So Close Packers. Starting in 2001 they were in the playoffs four consecutive years but couldn’t finish. The worst was FOURTH AND TWENTY-SIX, and for the benefit of the very young or uninitiated I’ll explain that. On January 11, 2004 the Packers were at Philadelphia for the Divisional Playoff leading 17-14 late in the game when the Eagles were faced with fourth down, twenty-six yards to go for a first down and out of field goal range. The game should have been over. The Eagles had nothing but a Hail Mary but the prayer was answered. I remember wondering why a receiver was so open on a straight fly when Donavon McNabb completed the pass for 27 yards. That was stunning, Packer Backers. Next thing the Eagles tied it with a field goal and we got OT. The Packers had the ball in OT and under tremendous pressure Favre slung a rainbow way the hell downfield seemingly without looking. It’s intercepted, the Eagles move the ball, kick for three points and that was it. A lot of people blamed the loss on that wild throw by Favre, but I always say there never should have been overtime that day. Fourth and twenty-six my ass.
The 2004 team was the first to allow a playoff loss at Lambeau, ever, and to the stinking Vikings. They dived to 4-12 in ’05. The rumbling about retirement for Favre began and Mike McCarthy took the reins in 2006, drafting Aaron Rogers and going 8-8. The Rogers era began on November 29, 2007, when Rogers went in the game for Favre at horrible Texas Stadium, flung a touchdown to Greg Jennings and, despite a loss showed he could play. Favre and the Packers rebounded but then again failed to defend the home playoff field, this time losing to the New York Giants and the “other” Manning, young Ely. Well, there’s always next year.
Except there alledgedly wasn’t going to be a next year for one #4, who announced his retirement. The Packers believed him, or at least acted like they did and elevated Rogers to starting QB accordingly. And then Favre changed his mind and the Retirement Circus began. The tears. The heartbreak. The nausea. We moved on.
Rogers, McCarthy and all began to climb the mountain. Even as they went 6-10 in ’08 Packer Backers felt they wouldn’t be in the desert too much longer. Dom Capers came in and freaked everybody out with his new defense that became dominant. There were stumbles, especially as Rogers became the most-sacked most-hit quarterback for periods of time. 2009 was a huge turnaround to 11-5 and back to a playoff shot at Arizona this time. Rogers threw for 423 yards and tied the wild game at 45 and it was OT again. The Cardinals picked up a fumble and it was, “We’ll get ‘em next year” again.
Only, of course, in 2010 the Packers really did get ‘em next year although it still seems unbelievable. When so many players kept getting hurt, and you know the roll call, I really had no thought for the playoffs. With two games to go against the Giants and Bears and six losses already, I thought, maybe, just maybe they have a shot to win both and probably get in the playoffs, but even so who knew what would happen then.
Well, of course they kept winning. The first playoff game in Philadelphia put fourth and twenty-six to rest. Michael Vick looked confused. In Atlanta, Matt Ryan looked ineffective. And in Chicago, Jay Cutler was humiliated. In Dallas against the Steelers, everybody stepped up. Charles Woodson inspired the team to keep doing what they had done all year, step up. And at the end the announcers got to use the cliché we all had been waiting to hear for many years: “The Lombardi trophy is going back home to Lambeau Field, where it belongs.” Sometimes a phrased is clichéd because it is so true.
And the next thing you know we got Kid Rock and more coming to Green Bay, the cover of SI, and NBC hyping September 8 like the Second Coming. Way to go Green Bay. It’s been a long time coming.
Sources:
www.fox11online.com
www.lombardiave.com
www.pro-football-reference.com
