It’s been an amazing year for the Packers, and I have to believe that their dramatic improvements played a big role in the amazing things that have happened to this blog. Here’s the 2007 highlights for Green-Bay-Packer.com:
In early October this blog was featured in the USA Today Blog Blitz. The feed from that profile quickly surfaced on the Sports Illustrated website. So there I was, 4 weeks into the season, my Packer blog on the highly popular pages of USA Today and Sports Illustrated’s websites. I went out and bought a Powerball ticket because I knew the odds of winning were about the same as appearing in the USA Today and SI websites at the same time. Dude, I am so freakin’ rich right now.*
The uptick in traffic from that exposure gave the site about 300-400 visitors per day for the next few months. Pretty nice for a blog without any expectations.
I watched the last regular season home game against the Lions and saw some attractive women wearing matching bikini tops. I wondered if I could find any pictures or info about them online. Found a few. Posted ‘em. The next few days the site got a boost in traffic that made this site rival the biggest of my other websites. Little did I know what was to follow. I heard from the family and had a dialogue going with the oldest sister and later their father.
A Wausau newspaper contacted me asking if it was OK to include information about this blog in their article. It wasn’t a headline, but ink is ink.
The NFC Championship game. Sub-zero temperatures and a trip to the Superbowl hung in the balance. I paced like a caged dog with cabin fever watching the game, then saw something crazy: the bikini girls were at it again. But now the audience was national. They were on NBC’s Today show the next day. Apparently that made a lot of people want to learn more.
This site was crushed with traffic. Our server was hanging up and crashing from all the people wanting to know more about the bikini girls. I got contacted by Inside Edition, ABC’s Good Morning America, Maxim Magazine, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Sportsline Radio, that same Wausau newspaper (The Daily Herald) and a host of others trying to get hold of the bikini girls for creepy requests for photo shoots, product endorsements, and more (and sometimes, less). Traffic briefly spiked from 400 visitors a day to nearly 20,000.
It’s been quite a ride. It didn’t end the way any of us wanted it to, but it ended better than almost all of us thought it would when the Packers kicked off the season. Thanks for all of your visits, comments and bikini-clad Packer fan pictures (always feel free to send more to webmaster[at]green-bay-packer.com ).
Superbole (soo-ˈpÉ™r-bÉ™-(ËŒ)lÄ“). When play on the field during the NFL championship game meets the extravagant exaggeration of the two weeks of Superbowl build-up. What we saw last night was Superbole. There was a New England team that by all accounts was being given the Lombardi trophy 5 weeks into the season. A veritable Justice League of the NFL, the Patriots were chock full of today’s superheros at their respective positions.
Choosing to play against them was the 12-point underdog Giants, led by a meek quarterback, gangly-legged receiver and gap-toothed defensive end. The NFL’s Bad News Bears. Only a few prognosticating wackjobs gave the Giants a chance.
“What happened, happened and couldn’t have happened any other way.” - Morpheus, The Matrix Reloaded
Are you a Packer fan thinking that if we’d have kicked that last kick in the NFC championship game instead of the Giants, that our boys would be raising the hardware today? That’s nonsense. Let me explain why.
There were a few common threads to each of the four losses the Packers suffered this season. One was coaching yips; in both games against Chicago, the Dallas game and the NFC Championship, the play selection either showed hand-wringing indecision about how to best attack the opposing defense or an in-game inability to recognize what was working and what wasn’t (or the patience to give more than one try to a given tactic).
Another was Brett Favre. Though he’s a crafty old veteran who’s seen it all, it’s been several years since he’s been in a really meaningful game. He’s probably forgotten how to not get rattled in the big games. Those past successes don’t lend as much confidence as they would if Favre had been to the Superbowl in say 2003.
Even Favre had been on camera late this season discussing how their success was so unexpected and how he was concerned about how loose everyone was playing. Like they should have been tighter. We saw what the increased cranial pressure was doing to this southern Mississippi guy: inside the egg scrambler.
Throw around him a cast of young bucks who’ve never sampled the attention heaped on at this level and they’re bound to be overwhelmed. The Packers would not have beaten this Patriot team.
But then there’s the Giants. In the 4 hours of pregame telecast Howie Long had said that in week 17 the Patriots got the Giants ‘A’ game, but that the Giants hadn’t seen the best the Patriots had to offer. Howie could not have been more wrong, as it may have been Belichick’s poor sportsmanship and insane lust for ultimate perfection that drove him to bring everything the Patriots could muster to every game. And that cost them this Superbowl.
Examples throughout the season like going for it on fourth down when you’re up by 40 points and leaving your starters in for the entire game even when you have home field locked up showed Belichick’s unhealthy obsessions. With their win over the Colts in week 9, at the end of week 13 they had home field throughout the playoffs locked up. But Belichick wanted more. So he played every game right up to the season finale against the Giant with balls to the wall, exposing everything the Patriots had in their bag of tricks.
Like when Rocky punched a cut open over Ivan Drago’s eye in Rocky IV, week 17 showed the Giants that this Patriot team was not a machine. It was just a group of men. And just like Rocky IV, in the end the arrogant New England Dragos were laying on the canvas.
As Morpheus said, this is the only way this could have happened. Had the Patriots gifted week 17 to the Giants in order to rest players and prep for the playoffs, the Patriots stand at 18-1, but winners of the Superbowl. If the Packers beat the Giants at Lambeau and go to the Superbowl, the Patriots go undefeated, smothering a young Packer team blinded by the bright lights of superstardom.
Congratulations, New York Giants. You played a hell of a game and did what nobody else was able to do. You did it in the most important game of the season, and your lives. And you did it by beating a team led by a coach of immeasurable ego and vanity. An unguided missile shot up the exhaust pipe of Belichick’s Death Asteroid.
I want the Pats to finish their perfect season. 19-0. I want them to get all the glory and accolades that come with it. All the kudos. All the ego strokes. All the women throwing themselves at anything even loosely associated with the team. I want them to feel like football gods.
‘Cause nothing prepares you for your own demise like believing your own hype.
Not to mention the greying veterans who’d love to go out Elway-style. Junior Seau is almost 40 for Pete’s sake. Teddy Bruschi is almost 35 and was almost dead just a few years ago. Rodney Harrison’s 35. Plus there’s a host of role guys who are 35 or older. At least a few of those guys will be looking to ride off into the sunset with a pretty, pretty ring and a record that will probably live on for at least another three and a half decades.
Or they’ll look to cash in on the Patriot’s success - couldn’t other teams make use of an aging football god for a mere $11.2M per season?
Soak it up, Patriots. Crush the Giants and rub the glory all over yourselves like baby oil at a naked chick wrestling event. Get all slippery in your greatness.
Then strap on your cleats and pads, and we’ll see you next year.
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This site is not affiliated with nor sponsored by the Green Bay Packers or the NFL. Not even a little. It's just a fan blog. All opinions expressed on this site are my own. (Unless you decide to comment on one of my posts. Then all bets are off.) Any graphics, logos or other copyrighted works (such as the Green Bay Packers logo) are presented here under the fair use provision of the US Copyright Act. I will make every attempt to cite sources when reporting news about the Packers, but I'm human, so I'll probably forget once in awhile - if you find an omission please point it out to me so that I can give credit where it's due. Oh, I almost forgot - sometimes a player for the Packers or Packer management or the NFL at large will do something stupid, creating an atmosphere where I may feel the need to spout off about things that are factual right next to things that are totally fabricated. To play it safe, you should probably assume everything written here is a lie.
In early October this blog was featured in the USA Today Blog Blitz. The feed from that profile quickly surfaced on the Sports Illustrated website. So there I was, 4 weeks into the season, my Packer blog on the highly popular pages of USA Today and Sports Illustrated’s websites. I went out and bought a Powerball ticket because I knew the odds of winning were about the same as appearing in the USA Today and SI websites at the same time. Dude, I am so freakin’ rich right now.*
The NFC Championship game. Sub-zero temperatures and a trip to the Superbowl hung in the balance. I paced like a caged dog with cabin fever watching the game, then saw something crazy: the bikini girls were at it again. But now the audience was national. They were on NBC’s Today show the next day. Apparently that made a lot of people want to learn more.
).
Choosing to play against them was the 12-point underdog Giants, led by a meek quarterback, gangly-legged receiver and gap-toothed defensive end. The NFL’s Bad News Bears. Only a few prognosticating wackjobs gave the Giants a chance.
There were a few common threads to each of the four losses the Packers suffered this season. One was coaching yips; in both games against Chicago, the Dallas game and the NFC Championship, the play selection either showed hand-wringing indecision about how to best attack the opposing defense or an in-game inability to recognize what was working and what wasn’t (or the patience to give more than one try to a given tactic).
Congratulations, New York Giants. You played a hell of a game and did what nobody else was able to do. You did it in the most important game of the season, and your lives. And you did it by beating a team led by a coach of immeasurable ego and vanity. An unguided missile shot up the exhaust pipe of Belichick’s Death Asteroid.
