Why is it that for some reason, when you hear the term “Power Rankings” and think about the Green Bay Packers of the moment, you just know the news isn’t going to be good?

Like some how when you’re assembling the word equation, “power” (meaning strength or might), and “ranking” (meaning position relative to others), you know the Packers are a remainder that gets dropped somewhere.

According to Fox Sports the Packers rank a miserable 26th out of 32, just behind the Detroit Lions. Number one is Seattle, two is Pittsburgh (and this is before Ben Roethlisberger tried to put his face into the lap of grandma - while she was dirivng her car). After a little consideration, I guess it’s not a huge surprise. Here are the reasons why I think the Packers are correctly put at the bottom of the pack in the 2006 power rankings:

  1. The Packers have Brett Favre. Sure, he’s one of the league’s top 10 quarterbacks of all time, but he’s really getting too old for this kind of punishment. He hasn’t scrambled out of the pocket in about 50 games, and looks increasingly brittle every time he gets popped. Tell me you don’t hold your breath every time he takes a hit, praying he gets up. You know you do. I do. What’s worse is we don’t have a worthy replacement for him now or in the forseeable future, so he’s our guy, ’till retirement or injury do us part, including forcing plays, bad decisions, and rocket balls.
  2. The Packers don’t have Jim Bates. I’m still kinda raw about that one - here’s a guy that at the start of the 2005 season had every single STH (Sports Talking Head, both on radio and TV) saying that the defense would never amount to anything because they didn’t improve on 2004’s personnel. The talking heads were wrong as Bates took that team from near worst to top ten, just by squeezing the talent he already had. Our thanks to Mr. Bates for his magician-like efforts? Harlan and Thompson turn their noses at his request to be the head coach, and he leaves. Bates was a good get. Now we have to wait and see if his subordinate Bob Sanders is as good as the original.
  3. Favre doesn’t have anyone to throw the ball to. Ok, he has Donald Driver, but double-D is more of a between-the-hash-marks receiver, not a deep threat guy. Robert Ferguson never lit up the field prior to 2004, and after getting laid out by a cheap shot in 2004 that cost him the season and could have cost him the use of his arms and legs, he’s contracted a case of alligator arms that no pill can cure.
  4. We have a rookie head coach. So far I like what I see, in that Mike McCarthy appears to be hard-nosed and prefers to handle player issues in-house. Then again, Mike Sherman seemed unemotionally hard-nosed when he landed in Green Bay. Turned out that look on Sherman’s face was terror, not quiet confidence. McCarthy might be a (slightly) thinner reincarnation of Andy Reid, but it’s way too early to say. But I’m pretty sure rookie head coaches don’t take their teams to the Superbowl.
  5. We have a kicking game that is in flux. And by “in flux” I mean we don’t know what the flux is going to happen with our kicking game. We lost our all-time best place kicker Ryan Longwell to division rival Minnesota, and we’re still letting the beakers bubble on the third-round punter selection experiment BJ Sanders. We brought a new kid from Canada in to compete for the punting job, but like the coaching staff, you don’t know what you don’t know.
  6. We don’t have a running back we can hang our hats on. RB by committee never seems to work, unless you have only two, and those two each get a good share of touches, and have different styles/abilities (speedy with razor-sharp cuts and big bruiser up the middle is a nice combo that worked well for the NY Giants). Samkon Gado seems to really be a great human being, so I wish the best for him. And he’s as smart as they come. But he was a third stringer in college. I’m guessing that with the element of surprise gone, opposing defenses are going to figure out how to stop him.

Is it going to be another 4-12, like back in the days when I used to bank on the few bucks I’d win from my grandmother by not taking the Packers in any bets with her? Cheese-n-rice, I hope not.

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