Some people are fans of the Green Bay Packers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Green Bay Packers. This 2017 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Green Bay Packers.
Your 2016 record: 10-6. Yep, you wasted another year of Aaron Rodgers’s prime. You are Atlanta Braves-ing him. Suck it. How do you have Aaron Rodgers and fall behind 31-0 in the NFC title game?...
Your coach: Mike McCarthy. That’s how. He’s still here, and Dom Capers is still the defensive coordinator. Until the day you people die (and it’s coming soon; I’ve seen the way you eat), you will be stuck with Beav calling isolation plays with his 10th-string back on third and 5, and Capers orchestrating a defense that only looks good against any offense that can’t play offense.
I can’t believe you got beaten senseless by the Skins.
Your quarterback: Aaron Rodgers. How come you never call you mother anymore, Aaron? Every year, the Packers go through a rough patch (last year’s example being a four-game skid and a 4-6 start) and you can rest assured that’s enough to cause every last idiot Packers fan to lose their shit and wonder if it’s the end of an era. Go here if you don’t believe me. They’ll probably still blame every Rodgers slump this year on Olivia Munn even though those two aren’t fucking each other anymore.
What’s new that sucks: LOL who are you kidding? It’s the Packers. They do nothing. Ted Thompson spends the entire offseason napping in a barcalounger. True, they brought in Martellus Bennett to replace Jared Cook, and they grabbed Jahri Evans to help make up for the loss of T.J. Lang, and they cut Eddie Lacy for being the weight of your average season ticket holder, but come on. Everything the Packers do is to ensure model consistency, so that Rodgers will spend another season running for his life before the team ultimately shits down its own throat in the playoffs.
They can’t keep anyone healthy. Half the team will spend all winter in that sideline medic igloo. The only receiver who doesn’t go through Pleistocene-length cold stretches is Jordy Nelson and he’s a fragile little white man with hair like a seal pelt. For real, I’m shocked Jordy hasn’t been clubbed by a hunter and mounted on the wall of a Rhinelander log cabin. Their best running back is a converted wideout and their second-best running back is an actual wideout. They’ll both get hurt and McCarthy will still try to “establish the run” 25 awful times per game anyway. The cornerbacks are abominable.
Clay Matthews still has a tiny face and I hate him. YOU’RE NOT THOR, BUDDY.
What has always sucked: This is the part where, as ethics require, I must disclose that I am a Vikings fan (or ViQueens, as Green Bay fans so cleverly put it), and that the Packers DISGUST me with their never-ending, small-town, Thornton Wilder horseshit. Look at these assholes:
These are the dumbest fans in the NFL. It’s not close. Ask any other fan of any other team who the stupidest fans they’ve ever encountered are, and they will tell you: Green Bay. Every fan is a 300-pound troglodyte with an ice block for a head. This is the only franchise where fans have more brain damage than the former players. If you’re unfortunate enough to be stuck near a Packers fan, you will be subjected to hours of cheese breath and contradicting takes about players they aren’t even aware are no longer on the roster. Any time the Packers win by fewer than 28 points, they want everyone replaced.
I guarantee you that Rodgers hates every waking second he has to be in Green Bay. Who wouldn’t? Apart from the Packers, the most exciting thing that happens in Green Bay is when the local Chili’s offers a new drink special. The fans are dumber than styrofoam and the media is even worse:
This is your model NFL team. This is every last FOOTBALL IS FAMILY lie tucked into one fanbase and handed a stack of forged ownership certificates. This is the Notre Dame of the NFL. Every time Rodgers completes some bullshit Hail Mary (goddammit, opposing teams, bat the ball down), every Packers fans may as well cry out WAKE UP THE ECHOES and jerk off into their mittens. These people think they’re magic. They think they’re SPECIAL. They think they deserve all these great quarterbacks and neat football action that they’ve been arbitrarily handed by a Blind God. They think they’re the American idyll.
They are not. They’re humps. Frauds. Narcissists. SHITBAGS. They are emblematic of a very specific kind of American reverse dysmorphic disorder, where you look in the mirror and see some All-American stud instead of the sad, worthless asshole you really are. I’d rather cut myself than live like a Packers fan, sitting around my whole life waiting for some podunk team to do something exciting so that I can leech off their success because I myself can barely move. GO TO HELL. I’m not bitter. I’m not bitter at all. WHY DIDN’T ANYONE TACKLE ANTONIO FREEMAN WHEN HE GOT UP?!
Did you know? Ty Montgomery started out as a wideout before the team discovered running back was his natural position. Get ready to hear that 4,000,000 times every telecast.
What might not suck: Nothing. Fuck you. And fuck Paul Ryan with a tree.
HEAR IT FROM PACKERS FANS!
Nic:
You can straight up see in Rodgers’ expression how sad he is to be playing for skinny Andy Reid.
Stephen:
WHY THE FUCK IS DOM CAPERS STILL HERE
Andrew:
Wisconsin is the Arkansas of the Midwest, and Green Bay is its Hot Springs.
Karl:
Our defense made Blake Bortles look like a good quarterback.
Landon:
Mike McCarthy and the Packers fan base effectively fat-shamed Eddie Lacy out of Wisconsin, and that is ironic for all of the obvious reasons.
Matt:
Their yearly rash of injuries to important players seems to stem from the fact that their training staff confuses hamstrings with ham sandwiches.
Molly:
I now head into the playoffs wondering what new, unique way my soul will be crushed in the NFC Divisional or Championship game.
Nate:
The Packers suck because month-old tuna fish sandwiches left out to sop in a puddle of excrement are infinitely more fresh than whatever Dom Capers has cookin’ up, and we all know it.
Aaron:
I can’t decide if I want to write a screed against the entitled part of the fanbase that whines incessantly about not winning a championship every year, or if I want to rail against the team for seeming content to be the third-best team in the NFC every year.
Jesse:
Dom Capers.
David:
A regular jar of capers could coach better than Dom Capers.
Justin:
Capers has a lower approval rating among Packer fans than Trump at a Black Lives Matter rally held in Mexico.
Grant:
I texted a couple of friends at 2:55pm the Sunday of the NFC title game saying “I’ve never felt more confident in a Packers playoff win.” The game started at 3:05. The game was over by 4:05.
NSP:
Every Packers season features about 8 life-altering plays courtesy of Aaron Rodgers and a continual sense of dread on how they’re going to piss away yet another year of his prime without another Super Bowl appearance.
Zach:
At some point this quarterback streak is going to end and it will be all “if only’s” and “what if’s” as we inevitably go back to 80's levels of Packer incompetence.
Elijah:
Any Packers fan under the age of 30 wasn’t even sentient the last time the team was bad for more than a year or two, and yet they have the gall to accuse other teams’ fans of being fair weather. At least half of these “best fans in the league” will bail just as soon as Aaron Rodgers leaves. Fuck Brandon Bostick.
Rick:
Packers playoff losses just leave me dead inside. I don’t even get angry. I move so quickly behind the white hot rage of the cavalcade of failure that I just turn off my television and stare at the black mirror until someone tells me the game is over, at which point I sulk so badly for the rest of the night my toddler thinks I’m being dramatic.
I’m from Boise, Idaho. I have never been to Wisconsin. I’m fairly certain that living far away from Wisconsin and never having been there places me in the vast majority of Packers fans.
Ty:
The Dom Capers Defense consists of letting the other team score 36 points really quickly and then praying that Aaron Rodgers performs literal miracles on the football field to tie the game up at the two minute warning.
Katie:
Aaron Rodgers will die with one Super Bowl ring. Mike McCarthy looks like he should be working the fryer at the concession stand. Mason Crosby choked several years ago on some play I no longer remember, but I do not trust the man. Ted Thompson just justified one draft pick as someone who “has natural hand-use that’s hard to teach.” I think bipedalism is another key trait they screen for. I look forward to their inevitable choke this year in either the wild card game or the conference game, ad infinitum.
Peter:
We bitch about everything. It’s amazing how Aaron Rodgers goes from being the greatest QB of all time to a guy who should get benched after two consecutive inaccurate throws because “Hundley is the future at QB and we should see how many 1st round picks Rodgers will net us.”
I went to my first Packers game at Lambeau this year. You could have heard a mouse queef in the wind.
Jon:
If I have to sit through another football season where you have the greatest QB in the game throwing to 3rd string receivers and a barely functioning Jordy Nelson, I will kill myself with a wooden spoon. How do we not have an all star receiver for the franchise’s best QB to throw to? It is like we are purposely trying to mold our team after “The Longest Yard” with NFL caliber QB surrounded by a bunch of dudes that showed up to practice.
Also, our stadium is in some sort of midcentury suburban hellscape that is a 3-hour drive from anywhere worthwhile. The area surrounding the stadium looks like a 90's strip mall.
As the stadium grows bigger and bigger, the more Green Bay looks like the parts of Sochi the Russians tried to hide from the media during the Olympics.
Jack:
No it’s actually good to waste the prime of the best quarterback in the league because the coach is a mouth-breathing sack of mashed potatoes. Dom Capers’s defense is too complicated to learn and put in place by the season’s start, but at least it’s also ineffective and outdated. This too is good, to me.
With both sides of the ball this good, I cannot wait for Rodgers to touch God and again reach the conference championship despite McCarthy’s dipshittery only to slip on the popcorn butter trail that McCarthy leaves on the sideline and lose to the fuckin Cowboys or something.
Eric:
The fans. The goddamn fans, man.
- They have the fucking audacity to actively and repeatedly call for the shit-canning of a head coach that’s led the team to eight consecutive playoff appearances (tying Landry, Noll, and Belichick himself). Bill Walsh didn’t even do that with Montana.
- They hate Ted Thompson! And I mean, they HATE him. They hate the dude that’s given them Clay Matthews, and Jordy Nelson, and Randall Cobb, and Jermichael Finley, and T.J. Lang, and Ha-Ha Clinton Dix, and David Bakhtiari, and AARON FUCKING RODGERS, yet somehow still manages to consistently have zero dead money against the salary cap! But nooooooo, he needs to bounce because he doesn’t go after those mystical free agents. I guess Charles Woodson, Julius Peppers, and Martellus Bennett just randomly stumble-fucked their way onto the Lambeau turf. Damn security guards.
- They are the epitome of entitlement. Our fans honestly, genuinely, passionately believe God is A.) real and B.) a Packers fan, and Ted and Mike are doing their damnedest to show him disrespect by failing to bring the Lombardi home every single season. There are Lions fans that only know the Super Bowl EXISTS because people keep reminding them they’ve never been to one, and we complain because EH THE PATRIOTS HAVE MORE, EH. FUCKIN’ BELICHEAT.
Fuck these fans.
Tom:
Ted Thompson is a moron. I have no idea where he got this reputation as a team building genius. Was it because he once recognized that Charles Woodson wasn’t washed up? Because that’s the only signing of consequence that he’s ever made. Literally. People will talk about all of the issues that the Packers have on the defensive side of the ball, but the offense is a disaster as well:
- Five years ago, Rodgers and Nelson were the two best players on the team. They’re now approaching their mid-thirties and somehow they might now be the ONLY good players on this team.
- The team has some rule that states that every year Randall Cobb and Davante Adams have to flip a coin to determine which one gets to be good that season and which one gets to ruin fantasy teams.
- Jeff Janis gets kept around because he’s white and because on one drive, two years ago, the Cardinals didn’t know who he was and accidentally let Aaron Rodgers catch a glimpse of him downfield. He didn’t even actually catch the fucking Hail Mary in the endzone for fuck’s sakes. James Jones had more catches than him last year and he wasn’t even on the team!
- Our fat running back left us for our current biggest rival, presumably because they have a better selection of “China Food”, and we literally didn’t replace him. Didn’t even pick up a middling aging veteran. Just took a mediocre receiver and handed him the ball. But don’t worry, when he fails we have a pair of 47th round picks to fuck up pass protection and get yelled at by Rodgers instead.
This fucking franchise has lucked into two of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, back to back, and is completely content with letting them both retire with a Trent Dilfer amount of Super Bowls. Also, fuck Clay Matthews and his fucking beard. Being marginally more talented than AJ Hawk doesn’t make you a superstar. I hate the fact that if my entire family died tomorrow, the worst moment of my life would still be the NFC Championship Game loss to the Seahawks.
John:
A large contingent of Packers fans think Joe Callahan is better than Brett Hundley because, well, you know…
Grant:
Our fan base thinks winning a Super Bowl is as simple as following a recipe for a science fair project, and they all believe Ted Thompson doesn’t know how to mix baking soda and vinegar.
There is ZERO comprehension that injuries, salary cap restrictions and picking near the bottom of the draft all play a role, but are all “just excuses” when trying to explain that even with Aaron Rodgers as your QB it is goddamn hard to win a championship.
Pat:
Say what you will about the ineptitude and criminality of other teams’ owners, the Packers pretty much have the market on owners who have received OWI citations while driving riding lawnmowers.
Parker:
Thompson cut one of the best guards in the league in the middle of camp last year, saying they needed the money to secure contract for others like T.J. Lang, and then didn’t pay Lang and let him do pretty much the same thing as Josh Sitton and go strengthen a divisional rival.
Ryan:
I’ll give you some problems the Packers have faced and you tell me what season this happened:
-inside linebackers where nonexistent
-lack of a run game to provide any balance for Aaron Rodgers
-somehow Dom Capers kept his job
-Clay Matthews was injured half the season
-Aaron Rodgers makes some great statement about how the team is fine even after all the listed problems above
It was a trick question. This is every Packer season.
Fuck every Packer fan who thinks Jeff Janis is the second coming of Jordy Nelson because he’s tall, white and fast.
(another) Ryan:
For decades I’ve been telling people that they should root for the Packers because they don’t have some asshole narcissist owner who will threaten to move the team and charge $50 for parking. Rather, it’s an idealistic cooperative among kind-hearted Midwesterners who ask for neither profit nor real ownership rights.
But every fucking January I find myself begging for a narcissistic asshole owner who would fire Mike McCarthy and Dom Capers in a fit of drunken blind rage after the team sets yet another new playoff record for a squandered second-half lead. I’ve been a share-holder for six years.
Also, sign a goddamn free agent, Ted Thompson.
Pedro from Brazil:
As an inhabitant of the Third World, it’s not often that I get to have First World Problems, but being a Packers fan would qualify.
It’s been three years running that my soul has been punched in the dick by the defense and special teams, who seem to be unaware you’re supposed to cover receivers or even tackle them. As much as I like him as a player, there’s no bigger evidence that our secondary is an elaborate troll job than the fact one of our safeties is actually named HAHA. Dom Capers is a senile old fart that couldn’t orchestrate a DE-FENSE chant, let alone an actual defense.
Valerie:
Remember when the Packers didn’t know what to do with Ty Montgomery and then tried to spin it as “strategy”? Yeah, that rocketed me into my Fantasy finals and then swiftly destroyed me.
I am 99% sure I will spend another season watching McCarthy ruin us with his play calls while I stand crushed up against a brat-stuffed man in a shitty bar somewhere that plays “The Bears Still Suck” during every commercial break because we apparently only have one song. I hate that I have to watch because I am still only 99% sure in any given season that we will be aggressively mediocre despite having a human rocket-launcher with supernatural accuracy at quarterback.
David:
Packers fans honestly believe that the team is not just some multi-billion dollar conglomerate, but some rugged mom-and-pop NFL team surviving against all odds in the cut throat world of city stadium deals. The little team that could. The fact that we have had back-to-back Hall of Fame QBs over a 24-year span isn’t seen as shit lucky, it is seen as some sort of divine gift for the truly righteous.
Oh yeah, we are also so incredibly humble, considering our 13 NFL CHAMPIONSHIPS! This includes, for example the 1929 season, where the Packers played 13 games against teams such as the Frankford Yellow Jackets, who somehow played 18 games, and the Staten Island Stapletons, who played 10 games. IT COUNTS!
Mike:
Dom Capers and Mike McCarthy’s combined fecklessness means that when I’ll never fully recover from the traumas inflicted upon me by spending $400 CAD to travel from Victoria to Seattle to see the Packers’ braintrust shit all the beds in the greater SeaTac area on one fateful January day in 2015. Fire them both to Jupiter.
(Hilariously, the only other Packers game I’ve been to was the Fail Mary debacle. I’m banning myself from all future Packers games on the West Coast.)
Nic:
Also, all our fans are fat assholes who don’t pay any attention to football unless the Packers are on. The only other franchises I can say this about are the Patriots and the Steelers. This may be a petty gripe, but Packers fans call it Kielbasa instead of Kovbasa, and as a Ukranian, that really rankles with me.
Mark:
Aaron Rodgers is the only reason this team is consistently competitive. Every game last year, McCarthy hurp derred his way through the “game plan”, the defense gave up 500 yards passing, and our wide receiver ran for 43 yards on 20 carries.
Super motherfuck with a cheddar-filled bratwurst LaDarius Gunter who is the worst god damn excuse for a #1 CB I have ever seen a team roll out, even if our entire secondary was on IR last year.
Grant:
Two years ago the Packers played a road playoff game without their top four wide receivers after Randall Cobb got hurt in the first quarter of the game. Aaron Rodgers miraculously willed this team to overtime with not one but two last ditch hail-marys to a 5th string WR. The defense then gave up the winning score in OT in about 38 seconds and Rodgers never saw the field again.
The events of this one game epitomize the entire Aaron Rodgers Era.
Victor:
The fact that the Packers have squandered the best years of the best QB of the 2010's (Career leader in Passer Rating, Adj YPA and INT rate and Active leader in TD rate) is going to haunt all thinking Packer fans (all 10 of us) for the rest of our lives. We are going to look back 20 years from now and wonder how was it that the Packers lucked into the best QB of his generation; and have one SB to show for it.
The regular season is almost meaningless because McCarthy and Capers WILL screw it up in the playoffs. Why watch?
Kellie:
We finally picked up an exciting free agent in the form of Martellus Bennett. But I now live in a state of perpetual dread about how the large I Don’t See Race (Because I Literally Don’t Interact With People of Color Ever) contingent of our fan base will react the first time he speaks out on any political issue.
Also: dom capers retire bitch
Elijah:
Fuck Brandon Bostick with a rusty tailpipe from Avery’s Auto Salvage.
Luci
I’m 30, single, have two cats, and haven’t spoken to my immediate family in years. Green Bay’s incompetent defense has made me cry more than all of these things combined. My friends say I need hobbies. What I actually need is for the Packers to quit giving me blue balls in the playoffs.
Mickey:
I have the deal of a lifetime for you. Are you ready for this? This type of opportunity only comes around once every 15 or 20 years, so read carefully.
For a limited time, I am going to offer you, Drew Magary, a chance to purchase stock in Mickey’s New House. For only $300 per share you can enjoy the bragging rights and haughty shitheadedness that comes with telling your friends that you are the partial owner of a second home. In return for your investment, I will send you a beautiful, glossy, ribbon-lined, 10x12 certificate verifying the authenticity of your stock purchase.
Before purchasing, I am required to inform you that your shares will have no cash value. They will neither appreciate, nor depreciate in value; they cannot be resold on any existing market, and you will not receive any type of dividend or fixed income payout at any time. I realize it’s called “stock”, but it’s not really, you know, “stock”. If you want to “pass it down” to your kid after you die, fine, whatever, I’ll redo the certificate and send him a new one. You will not be afforded any decision-making or opinions in the financing, function, décor, day-to-day operation, or long-term planning of Mickey’s New House. These decisions are strictly the responsibility of the Mickey’s New House Board, which consists of me, my wife, and possibly the dog since he really likes the backyard.
So, what do you get for your stock purchase? So glad you asked! As a premier investor in Mickey’s New House you will have the ultra-rare opportunity to come out here once a year (travel expenses not covered, of course) to the Mickey’s New House shareholders meeting and hang out for an ENTIRE AFTERNOON. That’s right, you can hang out with me on my couch, drink some beers (bring your own or purchase for $8.50 each), watch some football or whatever else is on TV, and just relax with myself and the family. At 5:00 PM that day, you can cast your vote for the Chairman of the Mickey’s New House Board (don’t stress about it, man, I have more shares than you and I’m the only one on the ballot), and then kindly get the fuck out.
I await your response and your check.
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