Cheeseheads photo courtesy of Bjorn Hanson
No fan of football, however heated our rivalry, can fail to be impressed with the season the Green Bay Packers just concluded with their Super Bowl victory last night.
To my Packers friends: Congratulations. You have a helluva team and a supremely talented quarterback.
What most impressed me about the Packers season, though, was not the play of Aaron Rodgers, though he’s very good, but it was the team’s ability to overcome an insane number of injuries. It says a lot about the depth Mike McCarthy has been able to build into his roster but it also says a lot about the amount of luck the Packers enjoyed this year.
Brett Favre has spoken many times about the degree to which luck plays into a championship run.
We saw first hand the role luck plays, both ways, both in 2009 and last season.
So Packers fans enjoy this while it lasts because in all likelihood, it won’t last very long.
Some of the more obnoxious (redundant, I know) Packers fans in these parts have boasted about how young their team is compared to the Vikings, about how many free agents the Vikings have this year, etc., implying, of course, that their team is setting up a dynasty.
That’s not how it works.
Vikings fans can take solace in the fact that this is likely the beginning of the end for the Packers. It’s not like the Packers will not be competitive, they will; it’s just that things get a hell of a lot tougher for them from here on out.
They get the last pick in the upcoming draft, and that means the last pick in every round. Their coaches are likely to be poached. They have a far tougher schedule in 2011 than they did in 2010.
It’s unlikely all the bounces will go their way next season the way they did this season. And not just in terms of overcoming injuries but also with the officials handing them games like they did against the Vikings.
The short of it is the odds are, this is the peak for the Pack, which makes it a great time for the Vikings to do a bit of rebuilding.
MAN OF THE YEAR
Safety Madieu Williams has been named the 2010 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year for his charitable work here, nationally, and around the world. It is an honor well-deserved. Read more about Williams’ off-the-field work at Vikings.com.
HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY
Happy Belated Birthday yesterday to safety Eric Frampton (27)!