Why Your Team Sucks 2016: Green Bay Packers

Some people are fans of the Green Bay Packers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Green Bay Packers. This 2016 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. And buy Drew’s new book here. Your team: Green Bay Packers. Your 2015 record: 10-6. Let’s get right to the ending… God, it’s so beautiful. It’s almost as good as Brandon Bostick dropping the onside kick. Remember when he did that? And you blew the NFC title because of it? That was really cool and fun. Anyway, as a Vikings fan who just heard that Teddy Bridgewater died in practice today, the only time I am happy is when the Packers blow yet another season of having Aaron Rodgers at QB. Luckily for me, the Packers have become EXPERTS at this. This is team that completed three Hail Marys and was blessed with God knows how many phantom face mask calls going in their favor last season, all because God just loves his little dipshit Ned Flanders NFL franchise. And yet they STILL couldn’t get to the Super Bowl. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? I think so. Your coach: BEAV! FUN FACT: The steam in that photo is coming from a fresh ham that Mike McCarthy tucked into his jacket. Anyway, the Packers needed two miracle throws at the end that divisional game to get within one point of the Cardinals. And did Mike McCarthy—riding a once-in-a-lifetime streak of miracles—go for two to win the game? NOPE. No, he sure didn’t. Like a fucking pud, he meekly kicked the PAT, and then Arizona won the game within half a second of overtime. This is life under Beav. He will never be aggressive. He will never take risks that aren’t even statistically risky. He’ll just sleepwalk his way to a wasted playoff spot season after season. He fired himself as playcaller before last season and then, inevitably, rehired himself. Because if anyone is gonna drive this sorryass team into a ditch, it’s gonna be HIM. I love him. I want to adopt him and feed him table food. And McCarthy must really be feeling his oats because he took a moment this offseason to reportedly vent his frustration at GM Ted Thompson, whose allergy to free agency is so severe that he makes the Steelers look like the fucking Boston Red Sox. Did Thompson listen to McCarthy and make an aggressive attempt to improve this roster? BAHAHAHAHA GOD NO. No, the Packers napped all offseason long. No one listens to Beav, even when he’s right. Your quarterback: Aaron Rodgers, who will retire with just one Super Bowl ring, and you can tell it’s already killing him. This is a man who reacts to questions about his height like Donald Trump discussing hand size, so he’s very sensitive when it comes to certain topics. Here we have one of the greatest players of all time (even I have to admit it), and he’s gonna leave the game with the Atlanta Braves’ resume. I bet he keeps a little McCarthy doll under his bed and does a Cartman voice for it while slamming it against the wall. Once again, the Packers’ season depends on their ability to keep Rodgers clean, even as McCarthy steadfastly refuses to get the ball into the hands of Eddie “Is He Fat?” Lacy or Randall Cobb. I think Rodgers is so good that McCarthy can’t help but jack up the degree of difficulty, to see if his QB can win games with one hand tied behind his back and both ankles broken. “Oh wow, he did it. How about that?” Also, Rodgers’ estranged brother “won” The Bachelorette this offseason. I asked my colleagues at Jezebel who watched that show to explain Jordan Rodgers to me. Here is what they said: “Jordan Rodgers’ face is so narrow it looks like his head got caught in a vice. He also has freakishly short legs.” “His hair is too peppy and I don’t trust it.” “His face is bad.” “He’s also been accused (with proof) of cheating multiple times, and yet he and his family have somehow managed to spin Aaron as the bad guy.” Well then, I guess I can see how Aaron Rodgers can tolerate the Packers organization. He’s inherently used to being surrounded by terrible people. What’s new that sucks: Oh please. This is Green Bay. Nothing changes here. JUST THE WAY PETER KING LIKES IT! Nothing warms my cold, black, big-city heart like a tweet like this. It’s one of those small traces of evidence that helps confirm what I always suspect: That a dewey-eyed, throwback of a place like Green Bay is just a disgusting fraud, a haven for sheltered racism and passive aggressive hostility all cloaked in supposed old-school values. DURRRRR WE DON’T LIKE NO FANCY TECHNOLOGY ROUND THESE PARTS DURRRRR… Green Bay is just American Beauty but with fat people. Remember Cam Newton tearing down that Packers banner? Remember how the shithead Packers fan reacted to it? I do. The fan, an army vet who is a Wisconsin native, said it ruined his day. “I was just shocked, shocked,” when Newton grabbed the banner out of Mike Dobs’s and his family’s hands, Dobs said on Sunday evening. “It went from a fun event to I was disgusted,” he said. Oh my God, these fucking cheese-drinking losers. This didn’t even happen in his team’s stadium. If that guy could have had Cam executed, he would have. Fuck your stupid Cheesehead sign. Also, B.J. Raji took a year off from football. Because Green Bay sucks. What has always sucked: Clay Matthews! Jordy Nelson! Yes, even with my personal nemesis John Kuhn gone to the Saints, Green Bay remains the White Folk Hero capital of the Midwest. It’s a fake town full of fake people that the NFL uses every week as a Gary Cooper movie set. It’s a town for people who wish they lived inside a snow globe. I hate it and hope it burns. As for the State of Wisconsin, it’s a just a bedroom community for people too girthy to fit into Chicago proper. It’s a place where the most exciting thing that can happen any given week is a stupid fish fry: Wisconsin has the highest per-capita beer consumption of anywhere in the world but they don’t even have any decent beers. Ninety percent of tourist attractions in the state involve buildings erected by 19th century Germans who were exiled from the old country for robbing peasants, who then set up shop here to make pee-beer that Wisconsin people still quaff despite the advent of modern brewing technology. Fuck Wisconsin and fuck Paul Ryan. Bostick dropped the kick. Dom Capers has bad hair. What might not suck: I’ve said far too many nice things about your quarterback already. That’s all you get. I hope the Vikings “accidentally” close their new stadium doors on his foot. Let’s remember some Packers: Tim Harris. I hated Tim Harris. Dorsey Levens. God, I hated Dorsey Levens. William Henderson. Him too. Frank Winters. John Madden adored him. Fuck John Madden. Bill Schroeder. Loser. Hear it from Packers fans! Ali: Mike McCarthy. Landon: Mike: My family moved around a good bit when I was young so I never really had a ‘home’ team. By the time we settled down in Houston we’d lost the Oilers, and I liked Favre, so the Packers were my team. After 20 years of fandom, I finally got a chance to drive up to Lambeau for the Christmas Day game in 2011. I drive up, freezing my balls off. Got to Green Bay mid-morning and tried to small talk with the tailgaters until the gates opened. Pretty much the entire afternoon I just got shit for living in Texas because “those pussies don’t know snow” and “can’t grill worth shit.” Gates open, and I discovered that even the expensive seats in Lambeau still suck. 24 inches of shitty metal bench (if you’re lucky) squeezed in on all sides by people who took up a lot more space than they were allotted. The fans around me are all garbage, booing our own team when we get less than five yards a play, and offering every possible declension of the n-word at black players on both sides. James Jones had a decent run after catch in the second quarter and the woman next to me yells “Run, n****r, like there’s a bucket of fried chicken in the end zone.” Worst fucking fans I’ve ever seen. Worst sports experience of my life. I left at halftime and checked the ESPN recap the next morning so I could convincingly lie to my friends about what I saw. Told them it was great. I’ve never come clean until now. Ryan: Ted Thompson thinks he’s clever in drafting guys way out of order, leaving athleticism on the board. He drafts Kyler Fackrell, who is older than most of our team already, has torn an ACL, and definitely wants to talk to you about Jesus. “Kyler Fackrell” is either a futuristic bounty hunter or the blood-spawn of country music and Coors Light. You guess which. Keith: They refuse to fire the stupid idiot walrus-lookin’ ass motherfucker of a coach despite the fact no one in the history of history has ever been worst with time management or common sense things. Grant: The Packers possess the QB and the talent capable of winning a championship, yet every January this team is basically comprised of practice squad players and mid-season street free agent pick-ups. Seriously, the inability of this team to stay healthy is nothing short of unbelievable. Two years ago the Packers were one of the healthiest teams in the league and it required the most bizarre and epic collapse in NFL history to keep them out of the Super Bowl. But in almost every other season, by week Seven I find myself envying the health of the 1972 rugby union team after it crashed in the Andes Mountains. Sam: This moment, right now, before the preseason even begins, is as good as it gets for a Packer fan. Soak it the fuck in. Run all of those scenarios of the Packers winning the Super Bowl through your head before the season begins. Because like fucking clockwork, this team will win between 10 to 14 games, win a first, and maybe a second round playoff game, and then crumble like a dried-up scone the second they play a team that has a real head coach and any semblance of a defense. Go ahead, put the Panthers, Seahawks and Cardinals down on pieces of paper, put those pieces in a hat, and pull out a name. You’ve got a one in three shot that that’s the team that pulls the rug out from under us in the fourth quarter of the NFC championship. This, of course, will come after the Packers have built a comfortable lead in quarters 1-3, with a combination of smart defensive play calling and Aaron Rodgers being Aaron Rodgers. Then, as sure as the sun sets in the west, Andy Reid 2.0 and Dom Capers’ corpse will break out the 4th quarter playbook, which consists of only two plays: the prevent defense, and Eddie Lacy running up the middle. Add a dash of blown coverage, let it bake for 15 minutes, and presto, you’ve got yourself a Packers meltdown. Fuck this season already. Chris: I swear, if Mike McCarthy ever makes a correct 4th down call between the 50 and 30 yard line, it will be his first. He’s so conservative, Scott Walker wrote him in for the 2012 election. Bruce: The running back is fat, the head coach can’t decide if he should call plays or not, and 80 percent of the fanbase hates the defensive coordinator. Oh, and the savior of the offense is a ninth-year wide receiver who’s coming off a torn ACL and is now on the wrong side of 30. Jesse: Dom “They Can Just RUN the Ball?” Capers still has a job. Christian: Can’t wait to hear from all the “OWNERS” this year! Every time some knob spouts off about being an owner, Vince Lombardi’s ghost takes a shit in the Hall of Fame. Kenneth: X-Men: Apocalypse wasn’t even that good. BJ: I know very little about football strategy. The four-play playbook from the original Tecmo Bowl still confuses me. But with all the talent on our roster over the past decade, I’d have a minimum of at least three rings if I were the head coach over the span of Mike McCarthy’s career in Green Bay. Tyler: The entire US Government could be overthrown and the top story on the local news would be about the 3rd string long snapper riding a kids bike to the practice field, followed by 29 minutes detailing each drill that was run at that practice. Last year when it was announced the Packers would be playing the Bears on Thanksgiving night, the reporting made it sound like the entire economy was going to crumble because everyone would be watching the game instead of buying $1 DVDs at Walmart. I don’t know how they manage to find news about the Packers every day of the year, but somehow they do. Charlie: The Packers have now lost seven playoff games under Mike McCarthy. FIVE of them were on the last play of the game. Rick: I’m such an entitled asshole. Cary: I’ve witnessed the 12 year old nephew of a bar owner pouring shots down people’s throats after a fucking field goal during a blow out. Grant: With each passing year that doesn’t end in a 19-0 record, this fanbase repeats its yearly trite demands: “The Packers are wasting Rodgers prime” (8 different teams/QBs have won a Super Bowl in Rodgers 8 seasons as a starter). “Ted Thompson needs to sign more free agents” (The 2015 Broncos are an exception to the rule, and for the most part you cannot buy a championship AND be contenders every year for a decade.) “Ted Thompson, Mike McCarthy and Dom Capers should be fired” (Thompson is a top 3 GM and McCarthy would be hired within SECONDS by any of the other 31 teams if he were to be fired.) I admit to being disappointed by each season that doesn’t end in a championship but for Christ sake, 90% of this fanbase thinks winning a championship is a science and that luck isnt involved just a little bit. We are the most spoiled fan base in the NFL and if karma does exist we will get 30 years of shit QB play once Rodgers retires. Justin: Don Majkowski, Brett Favre, and Aaron Rodgers have started 79% of regular season games in my lifetime. Since 1992, Favre and Rodgers have started 98% of regular season games. Show me another team with that level of consistency. Yet Packers fans are the most ungrateful bunch of slobs in the league. Fuck Davante Adams straight to hell with a barbwire fiberglass dildo. Sean: Do you know how painful it is to have Aaron Rodgers as your QB when you have a mindless boob like Mike McCarthy as your head coach??? It’d be like owning a Ferrari with the speed capped out at 60mph. No matter how well Rodgers plays, no matter how many times we make the playoffs McCarthy will always be there to fuck it up against any team with a somewhat competent coach in the playoffs. Ron: Packers fans are the worst. They think cheese curds are a vegetable. Landon: The Packers nearly killed one of the most beloved players in team history (Bart Starr) when they brought him out last year during a crappy, rainy night game to honor… Brett Favre. I think they were honoring Favre for finally staying retired long enough to qualify for the Hall of Fame or something. Anyway, someone thought that Starr needed to be there for unknown reasons, which is stupid since I guarantee Favre didn’t give a shit that Starr was there. Ultimately, the 81-year-old team icon got pneumonia from sitting in the cold and rain for too long. Seriously, who thought this was a good idea? Fans were harassing Eddie Lacy on Twitter last season by saying he was fat and needed to hit the treadmill. I couldn’t believe what I was reading: A Packers fan knows what a treadmill is? I had so much more to say about this whole mess, but it can be condensed into a much shorter summary: Brett Favre can eat shit. Stephen: I was with watching the 2nd round of the playoffs with a friend who was a Arizona fan (go figure) when the Hail Rodgers (staring a petition to change it to that instead of Hail Mary) play happened. This dude was legit about to puke he was sick to stomach at what just happened. I was jumping like a school girl, and then my mind went straight to using this momentum by going for 2 and the win and cut these motherfuckers’ throats out. But nope good ol fat fuck McCarthy plays it safe just like he did in the NFC champ game the year before and we lose in OT like a bunch of dopes. Dan: Fuck you with a cheese head, Ted Thompson. Aaron: We’ll go 14-2 or 15-1 and Mike McCarthy will promptly fuck it up in the playoffs. Doug: Aaron Rodgers was trying to hit a UFO with the football in Detroit last year and happened to have Richard Rodgers catch it. Julie: If one more Wisconsin-living lady describes Aaron Rodgers, Clay Matthews, or Jordy Nelson as “her boyfriend/husband,” I am going to kick a baby. David: Jason Pierre Paul has better hands than Davante Adams. Eric: If Mike McCarthy is yelling at you to lose weight, you should honestly just retire. Zachary: Dom Capers single-handedly fooled the league into thinking Colin Kaepernick was good. Brendan: Every postseason gets undone by a rash of injuries and Coach Fucky McFuckFace calling fade routes to John goddamm Kuhn (this actually happened last year). Meanwhile, the delusional ass fan base convinces themselves every year that things will be different even though their team is run by a guy who has all the freewheeling creative thinking of a houseplant. Seriously, look at this fucking guy. I bet more interesting conversations have been had with hitchBOT. Pete: By far, our highlight of last season was beating a shit Lions team on a Hail Mary. I’ll attest to the general hick nature of our fans. I live and work in the heart of Packers Country, and a co-worker of mine who is her mid-50s and announced she is giving up on the dating pool for a while. Why you ask? She can’t seem to find a man her age with, as she puts it, “a full set of teeth.” Michael: We’re wasting the best years of one of the most gifted quarterbacks the league has ever seen. We’re favored to win the Super Bowl practically every year, and somehow we always shit the bed, but not before our expectations of the season are reaching the crest. Fuck you Brandon Bostick. Double fuck Larry Fitzgerald (all due respect). And super fuck Jesus if he really is a Russell Wilson fan. Here’s to blowing another 4th quarter lead in the NFC Title Game. Submissions for the Deadspin NFL previews are now closed. 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