Yeah, baby! [more Packer coverage]
SI MMQB - All emphasis is mine.There are some fans who like their team. There are some fans who love their team. And then there are the Packer fans. For my money, for sheer devotion, it's Green Bay one, Pittsburgh two and Cleveland three. Washington's up there, as are Denver and Dallas. (See if that starts the angry mail.)
But the Packers are No. 1, and people such as Robert Ruprecht are why. Our little crew -- including old pal Mike Silver, who is always ready to be led astray -- encountered Ruprecht in a classic Wisconsin tavern late Friday night. "I just want to tell you one thing," Ruprecht, a 39-year-old optometrist from LaCrosse told me, his eyes crystal clear. "When Brett Favre retires, I will cry. In fact, the day he retires I will call in sick. I won't be able to work."
OK, easy, big fella. Ruprecht was with five or six friends. and when Mike and I tried to make a little bit of light of their devotion, they weren't having any of it. And believe me, this was before the beer started flowing. "You don't understand," Ruprecht said. "I have lived through Randy Wright, David Whitehurst ... people used to leave free tickets under your wiper blades with a note saying 'please take these.' This guy Favre has brought us so much joy. He is the greatest Packer ever. To us, he's Michael Jordan. I am totally serious."
Now we had built up a little bit of trust and had been talking for a while. Here came the big guns. "This is going to sound weird," he said. "I dream about this guy. I dream that I'm going shopping with him. I'm not kidding. I'm just saying, we worship Favre."
And that was a little slice of time at Nicky's, a few long spirals from Lambeau Field. I walked out of there thinking not that Robert Ruprecht is out of his mind, but that it's nice to find fans who love their team and the players on it and, despite the shopping dream weirdness, are about as welcoming as any fans in any town.
...
In the morning, Favre arrived early to watch some tape on the Seattle defense and to monitor the Weather Channel. It seems crazy, in his 17-year career he'd never played in a game where it had snowed heavily.
"I was pretty pissed off," he said later. "Everything I saw said snow was going to end right around game time and there wouldn't be much of it." The weather people were wrong, obviously. The snow was light to moderate through most of the first half. But after halftime, it snowed so hard, we could barely see across the field from the press box. We had to rely on the TV monitors to see the snow collecting on the hat of Holmgren the Snowman.
...
On defense, the Giants are fast up front and beat up in the secondary. They'll need a fast track to get to Favre on Sunday. I checked the long-range forecast on Weather.com, and the temperature at kickoff at Green Bay will probably be in the single digits. "Nice," Packers cornerback Al Harris said from Green Bay after he finished watching the Dallas-New York game.
Nice? Harris is from South Florida.
"I know, but I converted," he said. "We're going to love being at home. It's big. We don't have to travel. We can play on grass and our fans will be crazy. But the Giants are a really good team. Playing at home will really help us."
...
Fine Fifteen:
2. Green Bay (14-3). I wrote this Saturday night online, but it bears repeating: 145 running backs make more than Ryan Grant ($310,000). That's an average of 4.5 running backs per team making more than the hottest back in football.
9. Seattle (11-7). The output for the starting defensive line of Patrick Kerney, Brandon Mebane, Rocky Bernard, Darryl Tapp that was supposed to control the game in Green Bay: nine tackles, two assists, no quarterback pressures. And you wonder why the Seahawks allowed six straight touchdown drives.
...
This will be one of the NFC storylines of the week: Where did Ryan Grant come from, and how did the Packers' running game rise from the ashes? Basically, McCarthy, frustrated with the lowest-rated running game in football entering the Week 7 bye, got Sept. 1 acquisition Grant ready to play a prominent (dominant, as it turned out) role for the Week 8 Monday-nighter at Denver. Since Week 8, here's how the four lead rushers in Championship Weekend have fared:
Player Team Att. Yards Yds/Att. Rush TDs
1. Ryan Grant G.B. 209 1,130 5.4 11
2. LaDainian Tomlinson S.D. 200 965 4.8 9
3. Brandon Jacobs N.Y. 162 778 4.8 4
4. Laurence Maroney N.E. 153 705 4.6 7
[hopefully that table worked - the point is still pretty damn awesome though :)]Seems that the Packers have this 2007 tradition that started the first week of the season. Instead of a rookie getting the donuts at Stadium Bakery across the street from Lambeau Field, coach Mike McCarthy gets a few dozen the morning before each home game. And in the team meeting and the quarterbacks/wide receivers meeting that morning, the donuts are devoured.
One of the donuts is a plain, small, crescent-shaped brown thing, with a couple of small ridges. Glazed. When McCarthy brought them in at the beginning of the season, Brett Favre took one look at them and christened them "turds." A couple of times Favre has had to remind McCarthy to "remember the turds."
On Friday morning, I went into Stadium Bakery and ordered one turd. "Aaah," the guy said. "You must have talked to someone from the Packers." It cost 60 cents. It reminded me of a regular plain donut, with a glazed frosting. Not so memorable, really, except the name it's been given in the building across the street.
...
Offensive Player of the Week
Green Bay T Mark Tauscher. Strange pick, given that Green Bay had a back rush for 201 yards on Saturday and Brett Favre played as good a bad-weather game as I've ever seen a quarterback play.
Here's why I picked Tauscher: The storyline going into the game centered around the quick Seattle defensive front seven because wild-card weekend had featured an indomitable performance by left end Patrick Kerney. And Kerney always had good success pass-rushing against Favre, with four career sacks of him.
On Saturday, matched man-on-man all day with Tauscher, Kerney's line was: zero tackles, zero assists, zero quarterback pressures. Obviously the weather was a huge help to Green Bay. "Torque and leverage are so important to a pass-rusher's speed," Holmgren had told me Friday. "They love a fast track." They didn't have one, certainly, but even in run plays Tauscher got low and had excellent leverage; on one of Grant's long runs, replays showed Tauscher burying Kerney.
Said Grant: "There were so many times I didn't get touched until the second level [the secondary]. Those guys up front did a phenomenal job." Particularly the right tackle.
...
I hope the Elias Sports Bureau, keepers of all NFL stats, take a look at replays of the lone sack Seattle was credited with at Lambeau. Because it wasn't a sack. Leroy Hill caught Brett Favre at the line of scrimmage in the first quarter and downed him for no gain. But Favre had pulled the ball down and was clearly attempting to run for it. I make the point only because I'm sure the Green Bay offensive line would take it as a badge of honor if the record showed Seattle, second in the league in sacks this season, was held sackless.
...
There is nothing like Green Bay on a playoff weekend. You've got to go. You just have to.
I wish I could have been there/could be there next weekend. Doubtful, but ... we'll see. A local radio station is giving away tickets, and I'm hoping to at least be in the running! =crosses fingers=
But, yes, lots of awesome and more that wasn't quoted. And more is forthcoming!
NFL's Bad Weather Classics - photo album of great bad weather games, including more than a few shots from Saturday's insta-classic.
First Look: Giants-Packers NFC Title Game - 5 early questions about the upcoming game
Atari game a new hit with Pack - Yay, Bigby! :)
Giving some pep to the divisional playoffs - Making fun of Peyton Manning and his "pep talk" commercial by basically turning his pep talks against him. Hilarious. My favorite, although it was hard to pick:"Jealous of your brother? Wish you were him right now? Don't be. Remember growing up how your mom used to change his diapers? Let me let you in on a little secret: He's still wearing them. Yeah. You know it."
He's also still in the playoffs. So ...
And, finally, as some of you may know, after a decisive victory, I enjoy reading the [online] paper from the city of the opposing team. You find gems like, how after a victory at Soldier Field [which, yeah, years ago ... ], one of the Trib columnists suggested renaming the stadium "Farve Field" or "Green's Ground" or something like that. :D
Here are some gems from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
This was humiliation, pure and simple
Favre's underhand toss a backbreaker for Seahawks
Favre, Packers overwhelm Seahawks
Seahawks' Super Bowl fantasies whited out in Green Bay
But the Packers are No. 1, and people such as Robert Ruprecht are why. Our little crew -- including old pal Mike Silver, who is always ready to be led astray -- encountered Ruprecht in a classic Wisconsin tavern late Friday night. "I just want to tell you one thing," Ruprecht, a 39-year-old optometrist from LaCrosse told me, his eyes crystal clear. "When Brett Favre retires, I will cry. In fact, the day he retires I will call in sick. I won't be able to work."
OK, easy, big fella. Ruprecht was with five or six friends. and when Mike and I tried to make a little bit of light of their devotion, they weren't having any of it. And believe me, this was before the beer started flowing. "You don't understand," Ruprecht said. "I have lived through Randy Wright, David Whitehurst ... people used to leave free tickets under your wiper blades with a note saying 'please take these.' This guy Favre has brought us so much joy. He is the greatest Packer ever. To us, he's Michael Jordan. I am totally serious."
Now we had built up a little bit of trust and had been talking for a while. Here came the big guns. "This is going to sound weird," he said. "I dream about this guy. I dream that I'm going shopping with him. I'm not kidding. I'm just saying, we worship Favre."
And that was a little slice of time at Nicky's, a few long spirals from Lambeau Field. I walked out of there thinking not that Robert Ruprecht is out of his mind, but that it's nice to find fans who love their team and the players on it and, despite the shopping dream weirdness, are about as welcoming as any fans in any town.
...
In the morning, Favre arrived early to watch some tape on the Seattle defense and to monitor the Weather Channel. It seems crazy, in his 17-year career he'd never played in a game where it had snowed heavily.
"I was pretty pissed off," he said later. "Everything I saw said snow was going to end right around game time and there wouldn't be much of it." The weather people were wrong, obviously. The snow was light to moderate through most of the first half. But after halftime, it snowed so hard, we could barely see across the field from the press box. We had to rely on the TV monitors to see the snow collecting on the hat of Holmgren the Snowman.
...
On defense, the Giants are fast up front and beat up in the secondary. They'll need a fast track to get to Favre on Sunday. I checked the long-range forecast on Weather.com, and the temperature at kickoff at Green Bay will probably be in the single digits. "Nice," Packers cornerback Al Harris said from Green Bay after he finished watching the Dallas-New York game.
Nice? Harris is from South Florida.
"I know, but I converted," he said. "We're going to love being at home. It's big. We don't have to travel. We can play on grass and our fans will be crazy. But the Giants are a really good team. Playing at home will really help us."
...
Fine Fifteen:
2. Green Bay (14-3). I wrote this Saturday night online, but it bears repeating: 145 running backs make more than Ryan Grant ($310,000). That's an average of 4.5 running backs per team making more than the hottest back in football.
9. Seattle (11-7). The output for the starting defensive line of Patrick Kerney, Brandon Mebane, Rocky Bernard, Darryl Tapp that was supposed to control the game in Green Bay: nine tackles, two assists, no quarterback pressures. And you wonder why the Seahawks allowed six straight touchdown drives.
...
This will be one of the NFC storylines of the week: Where did Ryan Grant come from, and how did the Packers' running game rise from the ashes? Basically, McCarthy, frustrated with the lowest-rated running game in football entering the Week 7 bye, got Sept. 1 acquisition Grant ready to play a prominent (dominant, as it turned out) role for the Week 8 Monday-nighter at Denver. Since Week 8, here's how the four lead rushers in Championship Weekend have fared:
Player Team Att. Yards Yds/Att. Rush TDs
1. Ryan Grant G.B. 209 1,130 5.4 11
2. LaDainian Tomlinson S.D. 200 965 4.8 9
3. Brandon Jacobs N.Y. 162 778 4.8 4
4. Laurence Maroney N.E. 153 705 4.6 7
[hopefully that table worked - the point is still pretty damn awesome though :)]Seems that the Packers have this 2007 tradition that started the first week of the season. Instead of a rookie getting the donuts at Stadium Bakery across the street from Lambeau Field, coach Mike McCarthy gets a few dozen the morning before each home game. And in the team meeting and the quarterbacks/wide receivers meeting that morning, the donuts are devoured.
One of the donuts is a plain, small, crescent-shaped brown thing, with a couple of small ridges. Glazed. When McCarthy brought them in at the beginning of the season, Brett Favre took one look at them and christened them "turds." A couple of times Favre has had to remind McCarthy to "remember the turds."
On Friday morning, I went into Stadium Bakery and ordered one turd. "Aaah," the guy said. "You must have talked to someone from the Packers." It cost 60 cents. It reminded me of a regular plain donut, with a glazed frosting. Not so memorable, really, except the name it's been given in the building across the street.
...
Offensive Player of the Week
Green Bay T Mark Tauscher. Strange pick, given that Green Bay had a back rush for 201 yards on Saturday and Brett Favre played as good a bad-weather game as I've ever seen a quarterback play.
Here's why I picked Tauscher: The storyline going into the game centered around the quick Seattle defensive front seven because wild-card weekend had featured an indomitable performance by left end Patrick Kerney. And Kerney always had good success pass-rushing against Favre, with four career sacks of him.
On Saturday, matched man-on-man all day with Tauscher, Kerney's line was: zero tackles, zero assists, zero quarterback pressures. Obviously the weather was a huge help to Green Bay. "Torque and leverage are so important to a pass-rusher's speed," Holmgren had told me Friday. "They love a fast track." They didn't have one, certainly, but even in run plays Tauscher got low and had excellent leverage; on one of Grant's long runs, replays showed Tauscher burying Kerney.
Said Grant: "There were so many times I didn't get touched until the second level [the secondary]. Those guys up front did a phenomenal job." Particularly the right tackle.
...
I hope the Elias Sports Bureau, keepers of all NFL stats, take a look at replays of the lone sack Seattle was credited with at Lambeau. Because it wasn't a sack. Leroy Hill caught Brett Favre at the line of scrimmage in the first quarter and downed him for no gain. But Favre had pulled the ball down and was clearly attempting to run for it. I make the point only because I'm sure the Green Bay offensive line would take it as a badge of honor if the record showed Seattle, second in the league in sacks this season, was held sackless.
...
There is nothing like Green Bay on a playoff weekend. You've got to go. You just have to.
I wish I could have been there/could be there next weekend. Doubtful, but ... we'll see. A local radio station is giving away tickets, and I'm hoping to at least be in the running! =crosses fingers=
But, yes, lots of awesome and more that wasn't quoted. And more is forthcoming!
NFL's Bad Weather Classics - photo album of great bad weather games, including more than a few shots from Saturday's insta-classic.
First Look: Giants-Packers NFC Title Game - 5 early questions about the upcoming game
Atari game a new hit with Pack - Yay, Bigby! :)
Giving some pep to the divisional playoffs - Making fun of Peyton Manning and his "pep talk" commercial by basically turning his pep talks against him. Hilarious. My favorite, although it was hard to pick:"Jealous of your brother? Wish you were him right now? Don't be. Remember growing up how your mom used to change his diapers? Let me let you in on a little secret: He's still wearing them. Yeah. You know it."
He's also still in the playoffs. So ...
And, finally, as some of you may know, after a decisive victory, I enjoy reading the [online] paper from the city of the opposing team. You find gems like, how after a victory at Soldier Field [which, yeah, years ago ... ], one of the Trib columnists suggested renaming the stadium "Farve Field" or "Green's Ground" or something like that. :D
Here are some gems from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
This was humiliation, pure and simple
Favre's underhand toss a backbreaker for Seahawks
Favre, Packers overwhelm Seahawks
Seahawks' Super Bowl fantasies whited out in Green Bay