Packers rising to power in the NFL
By Bob McGinn
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
January 29, 2010
Green Bay This friend of mine, a man of modest means, desperately wants to attend the Super Bowl but can't because he's paying college bills for his kids.
My advice to him was not to worry because the Green Bay Packers are going to make the Super Bowl seem like old hat by the time Aaron Rodgers and the stacked lineup around him are finished.
One of the most annoying remarks in sports is when a coach or a player for some down-in-the-mouth team says his goal is to win "championships."
If any player, coach or scout for the current Packers failed to use the plural case to state his objective, he would be guilty of grossly underselling the capability of what has been built in Green Bay or not telling the truth.
As far back as Dec. 20, one day after the Packers nearly won at New England with a backup quarterback, I knew exactly how I intended to wrap up a season in which the Packers battled gamely through a torrent of injuries but ultimately fell just short of making the playoffs.
They were going to win the Super Bowl next season.
Now the Packers find themselves playing in the Super Bowl next Sunday, a game they're favored to win against the Pittsburgh Steelers. And I'm spending my first non-football weekend in what seems like forever trying to make sense of a team whose future appears brighter than at any time since the Lombardi era.
Get ready, Wisconsin. You ain't seen nothing yet.
No matter the outcome at Cowboys Stadium, 2011 will be tough on the Packers. For myriad reasons, the Super Bowl hangover is real. It's why just one organization, New England in 2003 and '04, has even played in back-to-back Super Bowls in the last 12 years.
But the last team in the NFC to accomplish that was the Packers, and with the minimal distractions afforded by the NFL's smallest city, it would be no surprise if they ended the drought.
History tells us that no professional sport is harder to forecast than football. The frequency of "worst to first" stories is unrivaled. Dynasties don't exist.
Or do they?
Think about the 68 players (69 with Johnny Jolly) under contract to the Packers. Consider the coaching, the personnel department, management, financial resources, facilities and fan support.
In all areas, Green Bay basically is as good as it gets right now.
We all know what can happen in sports. Look no further than Michigan State, which appeared to be as loaded this season as any collegiate basketball program could possibly be and continues to hover around .500 in the Big Ten.
Stuff happens. Players get hurt. Confidence wanes. Chemistry crumbles. Defeats snowball.
The Packers know all about hard times. In the regular season, they had 12 starters miss a total of 86 games and 31 players miss a total of 180 games. No team in the NFL was hit harder by injury than Green Bay.
Three months from now, they will enter the draft with their own seven selections, an additional seventh-round pick and what figures to be a compensatory selection in the third or fourth round for the loss of Aaron Kampman.
Given the stunning depth of his roster, general manager Ted Thompson will have no choice but to let go some useful hands. During the draft, he also will have the freedom to be aggressive, maybe trading up as he did for Clay Matthews and Morgan Burnett the past two years.
Obviously, the Packers have demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the 53 players on their current roster are the finest in the NFC, if not the entire NFL. They really don't need anything.
Chad Clifton will be 35 in June but didn't miss a game this season and still pass protects about as well as any left tackle. If talented rookie Marshall Newhouse develops in 2011 as so many players developed in 2010, the Packers could be set at left tackle for another decade.
Daryn Colledge is as ordinary as ordinary can be.
Matt Flynn might be around for another year, if that.
Ryan Grant is coming off a bad injury, and as promising as James Starks has looked he probably wouldn't stop Thompson from taking a back high.
The Packers should make every effort to re-sign Cullen Jenkins, although Mike Neal must play and Jolly will be just 28 next month.
This will be the draft in which Thompson will seek a legitimate threat to pair opposite Matthews.
Kick returner is the only void on the depth chart.
Now let's look at the overwhelming strengths of this team.
The only thing that can stop Rodgers would be concussions or major injury. Jermichael Finley, 23, will be back wanting his piece of the action, and coupled with three ace wideouts in their mid-20s and perhaps venerable Donald Driver, the Packers will have almost an embarrassment of receiving riches.
Bryan Bulaga, just 21, didn't play a terrible game all season and should do nothing but get better. Josh Sitton, 24, is a robust, high-caliber guard. Center Scott Wells does the job, too.
Remember coach Mike Shanahan calling the Packers' defensive line "probably the best in the NFL" after Jenkins, Neal and B.J. Raji, 24, mauled his Redskins in Week 5? Neal's surgically repaired shoulder shouldn't prevent him from becoming a terrific player.
Ryan Pickett and Howard Green can belly-bump with anyone, and rookie C.J. Wilson impressed, too. Even if the Packers try with a repentant and reinstated Jolly again, the year off might be too much for him to overcome. If not, and he does return to form, the Packers will have another legitimate force inside.
The 24-year-old Matthews played hurt most of the year yet still was exceptional. Desmond Bishop is entrenched inside, but either Nick Barnett or A.J. Hawk will have to go because neither deserves to sit and neither has the height or weight to play right outside in a 3-4.
Al Harris' career as a capable starter ended abruptly in 2009. So Tramon Williams comes through to play at a Pro Bowl level, and Sam Shields is able to outrun many of his mistakes and improve dramatically as the nickel back.
Thompson could use another cover man, and if Joe Whitt remains coaching the cornerbacks he'll develop someone.
Nick Collins plays safety as well as anyone in the NFC. Burnett will return. Old pro Charles Woodson will fit somewhere.
Tim Masthay has a chance to become the Packers' best punter since Craig Hentrich.
With Jolly and a blessedly injury-free season, it's possible the 10-6 Packers might have been as dominant as their 13-3 forerunners in 1996 that won it all. That's an enormous statement, but given the level of performance we've witnessed from a beat-up team over the last five weeks, it's also true.
Those Packers made it back to another Super Bowl, went down in flames and then reached the playoffs for the sixth straight time in 1998. A botched coverage in San Francisco with 3 seconds left that was preceded by an officiating mistake on Jerry Rice's fumble ended the Mike Holmgren era.
Aside from the parallels of franchise quarterbacks in their sixth seasons, shrewd 58-year-old GMs, cutting-edge coaches in their fifth seasons and time-tested defensive coordinators (Fritz Shurmur, Dom Capers), the '96 club was starting to age.
The defensive dominator back then, Reggie White, was 35. The man in that role today, Matthews, is 24.
Two stalwarts, tight end Keith Jackson and defensive end Sean Jones, retired not long after the first Super Bowl. Nobody will be quitting after this one.
Perhaps the more apt comparison is the Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s, who arguably could be the best team in NFL history. Their haul of three Super Bowls (1992, '93 and '95) in a four-year span was interrupted in a classic NFC Championship Game won by an all-star 49ers squad, 38-28, at Candlestick Park.
In 1992, coach Jimmy Johnson's Cowboys were the youngest team in the NFL, with starters averaging 26.4. Running back Emmitt Smith was 23, and quarterback Troy Aikman and wide receiver Michael Irvin both were 26.
Eleven other talented starters, including seven on a No. 1-ranked defense, were under 27. The oldest starter was tackle Mark Tuinei, 32.
"Had free agency not come along (1993) and the salary cap . . . Jerry (Jones) would have been willing to pay . . . hell, we might have won seven in 10 years," Dallas defensive coordinator Butch Davis once said. "The thing about those teams, they were young. With our defensive line, it really, truly (was unfair) what we had."
Dallas still managed to make the playoffs in 1996, '98 and '99, but its last postseason victory of the decade was a wild-card game in '96.
Jones and Johnson couldn't co-exist, and their messy divorce splintered the organization in March 1994. Jones' lousy drafts failed to compensate for the massive hits in free agency.
These Packers are a bit older than the '92 Cowboys. They will average 26.2 years per man and 27.4 years per starter on Super Sunday.
Clearly, the Packers' rushing attack can't even be compared to the Smith-led ground game. But the Cowboys' play-action-based passing game lacked the Packers' lightning tempo and array of weapons.
The '92 Cowboys were unscathed by injury. Those Dallas defenses were deep, cohesive and fast. From 1992-'97, they never ranked worse than 10th.
"I don't know about dynasty," Johnson said after the Cowboys slammed Buffalo, 52-17, in the 27th Super Bowl. "But I think we'll have a very good football team."
The 49ers won five titles with Joe Montana and Steve Young. The Cowboys won three with Aikman. The Patriots won three with Tom Brady. The Colts have been to the playoffs 11 times in the last 12 years, winning once, with Peyton Manning.
Superior quarterbacking is the No. 1 element, and the Packers have that.
Unless Thompson should retire prematurely, the Packers should have him finding the players, Mike McCarthy coaching them and Rodgers leading a formidable roster for years to come.
The Packers were an overtime interception away from the Super Bowl three years ago. Late last February, a personnel man for one of the four playoff semifinalists walked up to Thompson and told him that after careful study he had evaluated the Packers as the best team in the 2009 playoff field.
Arizona and Kurt Warner extinguished the Packers' chances 12 months ago. The worthy Steelers could do the same thing next Sunday.
No matter what happens, the Packers will not be going away. They didn't even win the NFC North this season. McCarthy can use that for motivation all next year.
So think Super Bowls, and think championships.
And, if you're so inclined, dream about a dynasty in a 32-team league that in some way compares to what the Packers established over a league with 14 to 25 teams in the 1960s.
Nothing should be beyond the realm of possibility for what the Packers have assembled.