Going into the 2020 NFL season if you told me that the Green Bay Packers would not only get back to the NFC Championship Game for the second year in a row but even host the game this year, I would have said that the season shaped up to be a resounding success since the Packers looked like a strong candidate to regress in 2020 after getting blown out in the 2019 NFC Championship game on the road against the San Francisco 49ers.
Given that the Packers finished the 2020 regular season 13-3 thanks to a win over the Chicago Bears on the road in Week 17 (more on that game later) and locked up the top seed in the NFC, all of a sudden hosting the NFC Championship Game felt like the absolute floor for what would be acceptable. The NFL added a 7th playoff team so despite losing to the Packers, the Bears still got into the playoffs because the Arizona Cardinals couldn't beat the Los Angles Rams on the road. Since the NFL added a 7th playoff team to each conference that also meant that only one team got a bye in the first round of the playoffs in each conference as opposed to two teams. In the divisional round the Packers dispatched the Los Angeles Rams to host Brady and the Buccaneers in the NFC Championship Game. All four previous NFC Championship Games that Rodgers was the starting quarterback for the Packers were played on the road so this was the first time that Rodgers was the starting quarterback for the Packers in an NFC Championship Game at home all be it with a much smaller home crowd due to COVID-19 restrictions.
It is almost too painful to relive that game at this point since the Packers lost to the Buccaneers in a game that they really should have won. I know that sounds like sour grapes but man did the Packers pick some inopportune times to commit some complete brain farts (how do they give up a touchdown to end the first half?) and failed to convert on any of the three 2nd half interceptions by Brady to finish the season with a record of 14-4 and two of those four losses were to the Buccaneers. The Packers are now 1-4 in NFC Championship Games with Rodgers as their starting quarterback: one win over the Chicago Bears 21-14 at Soldier Field, two loses were total blowouts (44-21 to the Atlanta Falcons in 2016 and 37-20 to the San Francisco 49ers in 2019) and two losses were total heartbreakers (28-22 to the Seattle Seahawks in overtime in 2014 and this year 31-26 to the Buccaneers). It honestly stings to get that close to the Super Bowl so many times with Rodgers as the starting quarterback for the Packers but only have one Super Bowl appearance to show for it so let me see if I can mix in at least a personal silver lining that I am sure happened to thousands of other Packers fans this season too.
I like to get to at least one Packers game in-person a year since I live in Chicago and watch a handful with friends but that was not possible this year due to COVID-19. As a result, I watched every Packer game on the couch this season with my wife Katie, ~6.5 year old son Aaron and ~3.5 year old daughter Audrey. Sure winning games helps but I honestly have to say this might have been my favorite Packer season of my lifetime. My son Aaron was absolutely locked in on the Packers all season. So much so that Aaron has watched the Packers/Bears game from Week 17 almost every day for the last month. While I am bummed that the Buccaneers as opposed to the Packers represented the NFC in Super Bowl LV, I will still look back fondly at the 2020 NFL season because it gave us a nice thing to take our minds off the fact that we are living through a global pandemic. Plus, part of being a fan of a team of a team is to enjoy the ups and the downs, which we got to do together. I don't want to (have to) force my kids to be Packers fans but I know that Aaron and Audrey will be Packer fans for life so I still consider this season a success.
With that, I thought I'd give some thoughts on where things stand right now got the Packers. While the defense continues to be a mixed bag (already changed defensive coordinators this off-season), there were true signs of growth on the offensive side of the ball as Rodgers won his third NFL MVP but honestly that all feels a bit hollow since it is now 10 years since Rodgers and the Packers won Super Bowl XLV over the Pittsburgh Steelers in Jerry World. That said, the Packers organization is at a bit of a crossroads because absent injury Rodgers will be their quarterback in 2021 but there are some lingering questions about whether that will be the case in 2022 given that Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst traded up four spots in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft to draft Utah State quarterback Jordan Love. I wrote about the Rodgers/Love situation before the 2020 NFL season season started and have given it even more thought since then. Despite having no inside information, I honestly think I have a handle not only on how/why it went down that way based on my reading of the tea leaves but how to proceed in the coming years.
Going into the 2020 NFL Draft, I truly believe that Gutekunst not only questioned whether Rodgers could get along with head coach Matt LaFleur but also whether Rodgers could perform as he had in the early-to-mid 2010's. As a result, the Packers did a ton of due diligence (as they should for every draft honestly) on the quarterbacks in the 2020 NFL Draft with an eye for coming up with a succession plan to replace Rodgers sooner than almost everyone outside the Packer organization would expect. As I said right after the 2020 NFL Draft and I still maintain now, I have no clue whether Love will ever turn out to be a good NFL quarterback but that is missing the point of this whole exercise.
Starting as far back as 2014, it started to feel like the Packers were only going to go as far as Rodgers would take them given how stale the offense got under former Packer head coach and (somehow) current Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy. I am not breaking any news to say that having a very good quarterback is essentially required to win in the NFL playoffs at this point (looking at you Bears fans) but part of the genius of LaFleur's offense compared to McCarthy's offense is that players seems to get open based on the scheme as opposed to just talent alone. As a result, I think that allows a serviceable quarterback like Rodgers to get results in LaFleur's scheme and a generational quarterback to take it to the next level.
The Love pick is a sunk cost so the Packers need to think about the best way to move forward and as crazy as it is to say, I think that is to bring Rodgers into the already messy decision making hierarchy at the top of the football side of the Packer organization. Players like Rodgers and Brett Favre are bigger than the organization. In the case of Rodgers (and to a lesser extent Favre), while money is a sign of showing how much you care about them, he already has a nine figure net worth so you need to come up with another way to "compensate" Rodgers. Heck the Packers tried to give Favre a $20 million "services" contract to keep him retired but still a part of the organization when they transitioned from Favre to Rodgers as their starting quarterback so the organization knows there is value to keeping their stars happy by any means necessary.
Back to the actual organizational hierarchy. Mark Murphy is the president and chief executive officer of the Packers so while Murphy has a board of directors that he has to answer to, the buck stops with Murphy. Arguably Murphy's biggest decision of his tenure was who would replace long time general manager Ted Thompson (RIP) back in 2018. Ultimately Murphy decided to hire Gutekunst, which meant that he didn't give the job to a couple of other internal candidates that interviewed for the position: Russ Ball and Elliot Wolf. There was no way that Murphy could find a way to give the general manager job to Gutekunst but still retain Ball and Wolf so Murphy got creative.
Wolf left to work in the front office of the Cleveland Browns as assistant general manager under another former Packer front office executive John Dorsey, neither Dorsey (currently a senior personnel executive for the Detroit Lions) or Wolf (currently a front office consultant to the New England Patriots) are with the Browns anymore so while I appreciate what Wolf's father Ron did for the Packers (Favre would have never played for Packers without Wolf), the jury is still out on Elliot.
Murphy elevated Ball from his position as vice president of football administration/player finance to executive vice president/director of football operations and set things up on the football side of the organization so Gutekunst, Ball and the head coach all report directly to Murphy. Different professional organizations have different reporting structures but the most common is that the head coach reports to the general manager and the general manager reports to the president. When Murphy hired Gutekunst as general manager, McCarthy's status with the organization was shaky at best but the Packers still kept McCarthy on as head coach for most of the 2018 season. I know it seems like I am taking unnecessary shot here but if f I were Murphy, I would have fired McCarthy after the Packers lost the NFC Championship Game to the Seahawks in January of 2015. Instead, McCarthy remained head coach of the Packers until early December of 2018 when he was fired following a super embarrassing 20-17 home loss to the then 3-9 Arizona Cardinals.
I also know this seems silly to break this down so much but like or hate Rodgers, he (at least) seems to be a super intelligent person. Heck Rodgers won in his only appearance on Celebrity Jeopardy and is scheduled to be one of the guest hosts of the show (RIP Alex Trebek) in 2021 as well. I say Rodgers at least seems to be a super intelligent person because everything that he says has a purpose for him. After the loss to the Buccaneers in the NFC Championship Game this season, people interpreted Rodgers' comments as opening the door to him leaving the Packers but I actually saw it as an opening to keep him a Packer for the rest of his career. What Rodgers was trying to covey was his angst over the uncertainty not only of where he stands in the eyes of the organization but also where things stand for a number of his teammates. As I said earlier, Rodgers just wants a seat at the table so given that Murphy already opened that with having Gutekunst, Ball and LaFleur report directly to him on football decisions, why not add a 5th chair?
I say that especially because the player empowerment era has gone into hyperdrive the last couple years in professional sports, especially in the NBA. It has gotten to the point in the NBA that if a player has enough status in the league and says they want off their current team (totally their right to ask for) they can essentially force their current NBA team to trade them to their preferred team. The contract structures and salary cap ramifications of the NBA are much different than the NFL but as you saw this off-season already, the Los Angeles Rams wanted to move on from quarterback Jared Goff even before the mega contract extension that he signed with the team kicked in so the Rams are going to have a bunch of dead money on their salary cap because they traded Goff along with a bunch of draft picks to the Detroit Lions for quarterback Matthew Stafford. That is all to say that NFL players are going to follow the lead of NBA players and even point to the Rams as a way you can move on from onerous contracts (think Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz) so the Packers might as well get out ahead of it with Rodgers.
Plus as Brady clearly showed last night, the shelf life for NFL quarterbacks is longer than we knew even five years ago. So much so that I think the only real franchise altering blunder that you can put at the feet of New England Patriots head coach/general manager Bill Belichick, arguably the most successful NFL coach in NFL history, is that Belichick misread the Brady situation three or four years ago because he thought that Brady wouldn't be able to play effectively into his 40's and clearly Belichick was wrong about that. Rodgers is 37 years old and I honestly could see him playing into his early-to-mid 40's so the Packers need to do whatever they can in their power to make that a reality. I get it, I am writing this from a fan's perspective so people will write this off as a (borderline) silly idea but locking down Rodgers for another give years means the Packers and Rodgers could realistically compete at a high level in the NFL for that entire time. Sure injuries could derail that but I really do think the Packers need to set-up the franchise to thrive around Rodgers both on and off the field. If it doesn't work on the field with Rodgers they are going to need to replace Rodgers anyhow so might as well go the extra mile in the hopes that it does work. Sure people might worry this is setting a bad precedent but organizations need to stop resting on how they've traditionally done things, which ironically is what Murphy did in 2018 when he changed the reporting structure to all go through him. Again, Murphy already has three people on the football side report to him so that is why I am advocating for a four person to have a chair at that table. I get it, that might create some tension in the locker room, but it could also help alleviate some tension too and it is clearly worth the risk at this point.
I honestly didn't think I was going to spend that much time breaking down how to keep Rodgers a Packer long-term in this post but here we are and I wanted to knock out one other thing with this post so I want to transition to where (I think) I am going to take this blog in 2021. I made a personal commitment to write (at least) 12 blog posts in 2021 as a part of my 2021 S.M.A.R.T. goals. For those not familiar with S.M.A.R.T. Goals, it stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time bound goals. The idea to set S.M.A.R.T. Goals was inspired by my supper witty buddy Chandler Goodman (aka Shebow) that I met via NewClub Golf Society. There is no way that I will be able to have an annual write-up anywhere as enjoyable as Chandler's annual write-ups (2017, 2018, 2019 & 2020) but it did inspire me to at least try.
While some of my blog posts might actually be Cheesehead sports related, what I really would like to do is make them more personal about my journey to live more intentionally than reactionary, which is the whole point of most of the S.M.A.R.T. Goals that I set for myself in 2021. Don't get me wrong, as a person that works in a support role at a law firm and has two young children, I understand that fire drills will come up that I need to react to on a daily basis but my hope is to continue to be proactive in how I handle things in my personal life so look for posts in the coming months on what I am thinking about and working on. While this might turn some people off, I want to start challenging myself (and hopefully other) to improve in various facets of my life. I actually purposely waited to post this until sometime in early February because by then the excitement of New Years Resolutions have worn off so while I want to challenge myself, I want them to be long-term improvements (more intentional) as opposed to short-term modifications (less reactionary) because "quick fixes" just results in me abandoning them. Sure, I would love to wave a magic wand and lose 15 pounds (one of my other S.M.A.R.T. Goals for 2021) but in developing better habits (e.g. eating better and working out more efficiently), there is a much better chance that I sustain a healthy body weight over a longer period of time instead of just losing the weight and putting it right back on. While I have ideas for where I want this to go, I really would like to get some feedback so please connect with me because while this is mostly a selfish endeavor, I want this to be something that others find useful too as opposed to just screaming into the void.