The Packers ... (fill in the blank)

After all these years I finally understand what a paradigm shift is. More on that in a minute. Its five weeks into the 2005 season and my GBPs have pretty much sucked. Why is that?

For a decade now my beloved Green Bay Packers have been a very good football team and sometimes a great one. A combination of aging stars, poor draft position, poor drafting, and poor free agent signing have combined to gut my team. Like a Hollywood building facade, the side facing the camera may be pretty but the other side is just a couple of 2x4s and plywood painted nice.

The better a football team's record, the lower their draft position and no team has been more successful than the Packers since 1995. Dating back to 1995 the GBPs average draft position has been 25.75 out of 30 and (after expansion) 32 teams. Put another way over 80% of the league picked before the GBP after expansion and 85% before. I can't overstate how much consistently poor draft position can cripple a football team. From the starters to the backups the players drafted were judged lesser players. For every Mark Tauscher (high-quality right tackle picked in the 7th round) there'll be twelve Rondell Meallys; a 7th round nobody. The better your picks the better your players.

Poor draft position is part of the price for success, and is a price happily paid by all. Still, when you draft lower it becomes even more important to draft wisely. Ron Wolf seemed to have a knack for finding great players in the lower rounds but his 1st and 2nd round players were sometimes suspect. I'd rather not even talk about Mike Sherman's first round picks. Sometimes a team gets locked into trying to find a particular kind of player and it leads to disaster. Ever since Reggie White retired the GBP has been trying to replace him. The trouble is that great pass-rushing defensive ends are always signed high in the draft. Picking lower you have to take chances to find great players. Those players are there to be had, for sure, but everyone else is looking for them too. Enter one Jamal Reynolds. By trading away players and picks the GBP were able to move up to #10 from #28 in 2001 and pick Jamal Reynolds, an undersized speed rushing defensive end from Florida State. Reynolds never reached the potential that was hoped for him and was eventually traded to another team to avoid the embarrassment of having to cut a former first-round pick. The Packers were desperate for a great defensive end and they gambled on him. On this gamble the house won and Reynold spends his days fishing and hanging out with his friends while the Packers are still looking for that great pass-rushing end.

Joe Johnson was picked up in free agency with the hopes that he could be the pass rusher so desperately needed. But in the few years he was with the GBP he spent most of his time on injured reserve with serious injuries. He was clearly at the end of the line and when cut by the Packers he retired. The money wasted on Johnson could have brought in several mid-level free agents or been used to help keep other players lost because they couldn't match offers by other teams.

I mentioned aging stars, but thinking on it now the GBP don't have any. Brett Favre is still one of the better quarterbacks in the league and all of the old guys are gone except William Henderson; a fullback who is still better than most in the league at what he does.

So, back to the paradigm shift. In the last ten years I've always looked at the Packers and felt that they could go deep into the playoffs and contend for Super Bowls. Now, I watch them play and I say to myself "Well they lost but they looked good doing it." The shift is in my expectations of the GBPs success. I no longer expect them to go far in the playoffs; hell I don't even expect them to make the playoffs. I hope for them to play hard, win the games they should and pray for them to win the games they shouldn't.

Maybe next year.