I’m sure you’ve heard the term “closer” before.  In baseball, it’s the relieving pitcher you put on the mound last, who (in theory) is just un-hittable.  You put him on the mound and the game is effectively over.

There are salesmen that are closers, too.  And sometimes it works a lot like baseball - you get a junior sales rep to warm (or soften) up a prospect, and the silver-tongued shark comes in the finish the sale.  Like the pitcher, when he sees the finish line, there’s nothing that will stop him from finishing the deal.  Not even badly mixed metaphors.

Not so long ago is was like that with Green Bay Packer football.  If the Packers got close to the end zone, they were getting in, no matter what.  The ball was going to Mark Chmura, Keith Jackson, Edgar Bennett or Dorsey Levens (or Freeman or Brooks or Rison or Beebe, etc), and it was getting in.  If those didn’t work, Favre would do the wet work himself.  But it was getting in.  You could count on it.

But not anymore.  When the Packers have a big drive and they have their foot on the throats of their opponents, they don’t press.  They don’t close the deal.

Sure they beat the Vikings on Thursday, but unless they learn how to close out their drives in the next 6 days, the Chicago Bears are going to show them what to do when your spikes are on the other guy’s jugular.

On a side note regarding poor performances in the clutch:  I’m working on starting a new website:  cutbubbafranks.com

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