It was a tough phone call to place.   I called my Expedia.com rep this week to cancel the 8 day trip to Glendale, Arizona following the NFC Championship game loss to the Giants.  I know what you're thinking, why book the trip before the game?  Did you, like the Packers, look past New York?  No, it was strictly budgetary, the cost of the trip would have risen dramatically if I hadn't done the 14 day advance purchase. Still can't believe how the season ended though, neither can the team.  Mike McCarthy held his end of the year news conference this week and said the most disappointing aspect of the loss was how such fundamental things broke down in such a big game, run blocking, throwing, man coverage in the secondary, things they had practiced and for the most part, done welll all season.  While McCarthy and his staff got a consolation prize of coaching the NFC team in the Pro Bowl, I'm stuck in the sub-zero dead of winter in Green Bay, decompressing after another long Packer season.  With that, some thoughts on the squad, position by position.

Quarterbacks:   Brett Favre put of career best numbers in several areas, smashed several career NFL records, but will stew in the off-season remembering his last pass of the season.  Just like the 4th and 26 game in Philly, Favre's last throw of the year was picked, which led to the game winning Giants field goal.  While Favre has backed out of the Pro Bowl again, I still feel he wants to return for another run with a talented, young team.   Aaron Rodgers may be wasting on the vine, but you got a chance to see that he can play when given a chance.  His performance in Dallas shows he can move an offense but the wait will likely continue.   Craig Nall was a stop gap number three who wants to play and likely won't return.

Running Backs:   Ryan Grant will earn a hefty raise over the two years left on his original New York contract now that he's become the feature back.   Brandon Jackson made strides down the stretch, leaving me to wonder if DeShawn Wynn remains in the plants and Vernand Morency may be shipped out after he was in line to become Grant at the start of the season.  I like both young fullbacks.  Korey Hall and John Kuhn aren't asked to do much more than block, but they did that pretty well.

Receivers:   Donald Driver scored only three times but had one of his best years.   Clearly the leader of the group, he's helped Greg Jennings become a big play threat and James Jones become a productive rookie.  Ruvell Martin did the most with his opportunities, hitting the end zone one out of every five times he caught the ball.   Koren Robinson will be better with a full year of training.   Donald Lee's new deal ensures he'll be the number one tight end for a while.  Bubba Franks may still be dependable, but might be too expensive for next year.

Offensive Line:    Loved the work of the tackles, the guards are another story.  Nice to see Chad Clifton go to the pro bowl as an alternate after Walter Jones dropped out.  Mark Tauscher's season should be remembered for how he dominated Patrick Kerney in the Seattle playoff game.   Jason Spitz is the best of the young guards, but the front office has to find more consistency that Darryn Colledge and Junius Coston provided.  Keep an eye on Allen Barbre, a tough kid who may get a chance next summer.

Defensive Line:    No complaints here either. Aaron Kampman was high energy all season, Ryan Pickett's biggest impact was in the games he didn't play.   Look what happened to the run defense when he missed the St. Louis and Chicago games late.  Corey Williams is in line for a big pay day as a free agent, but I'm not convinced it will happen in Green Bay.   Sure, he had 7 sacks, but three came in one game.   Less expensive production may be coming from the likes of Johnny Jolly and Justin Harrell down the road. 

Linebackers:   Wanted-depth.  Absolutely nothing behind the starters.   Brady Poppinga's motor still runs too hot sometimes, but the top three are top notch.  Desmond Bishop has potential, Tracy White may never be more than a solid special teams player.   The team was lucky one of the starters didn't get hurt.

Secondary:    Al Harris and Charles Woodson have pushed well past 30 and the nickel position may have been saved by Tramon Williams coming on late.   This is a position the Packers have to address, not so much for next year, but say, 2009 or 10.  Good luck finding press man corners in college, they all play zone.   Nick Collins needs to make more plays at the back end but Atari Bigby was a big upgrade from the strong safeties of recent days gone by.

Specialists:    Would hate to see Rob Davis hang it up, even nearing 40, he's mighty good at his craft.   Jon Ryan's gross and net averages went up, but it was a nightmare in Chicago for him.   Mason Crosby missed a few field goals, but wow, 144 points and more than a dozen touchbacks on kickoffs.  He has the makeup to be solid for a while.

So ends the remarkably surprising ride of 2007.   Hated to see it end the way it did but keep an eye on this blog, I'll have updates from time to time and there really is no off-season.  The Senior Bowl is this week, the scouting combine is next month and McCarthy plans on bringing first and second year players back into town in mid-March.   Here we go again......

Mark

Perhaps in the end, it was too perfect.   A 13-3 North Division winning regular season, a playoff romp in the snow, an underdog New York Giants team at Lambeau Field with a kickoff temperature of -1 and skin tingling wind chills at minus 18.   How could the Green Bay Packers fail?   They did, in unsightly fashion, dropping the NFC Championship game 23-20 in overtime, sending the Giants, not the Packers, to Super Bowl XLII.   The Lambeau mystique was there for the boys, unexpecetd fumbles, missed field goals, an overtime toss that came up "Heads", yet this team could not take advantage and now must ponder the what ifs for the next 7 months.

Make no mistake, the Giants earned this victory, but carried a silver platter onto the tundra throughout. They did it by controlling the line of scrimmage in the all too telling ground game.   New York's defense held their former teammate Ryan Grant to 29 yards on 13 carries.  The offense cracked open holes to allow Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw to gather 130 yards combined.  While the Green Bay pass protection held up against the league's best sacking team, too often an extra back or tight end stayed in the backfield to help, limiting the available receivers in patterns and only one receiver, Donald Driver, was able to consistently win against the perceived weak link in this game, the Giants secondary.  Consider Driver's 90 yard touchdown which put Green Bay in front 7-6.   That one play took only :23 and accounted for more than 30% of the total offense and more than 30% of the points scored.   Green Bay was a dreadful 1 of 10 on third down conversions.   With the score tied at 20 in the 4th quarter, Brett Favre could not generate a first down.on two consecutive posessions and it was Favre, making his first pass of overtime his last pass of the season as Corey Webster snatched an errant toss toward Driver for the interception that set up Lawrence Tynes for his game winning 47 yard field goal.   The longest three pointer in Lambeau playoff history, came after he pulled a 43 yarder wide left, and badly jerked a 36 yard try off a bad snap on the final play of regulation.  Without consistent pressure against Eli Manning, the young QB exploited a weakness in the game of Al Harris.   Plaxico Burress said Harris has trouble finding the ball immediately after his patented line of scrimmage jamming.   Burress roasted Harris for most of his 11 catch, 154 yard performance.  When the Packers did get third down stops, mistakes kept drives alive. Harris was flagged for holding moments before intercepting a third down pass.  On the same drive, Nick Collins barrelled into Manning for a roughing the passer flag as the defense was about to come off the field. New York would cash that drive in to take a 13-10 lead. A huge Tramon Williams 49 yard kickoff return helped set up Donald Lee's 12 yard scoring catch as the lead swings came fast and furious into the 4th quarter.   Mason Crosby eventually tied the game with a 37 yard field goal, minutes after the McQuarters fumbled interception.    A golden opportunity was missed when McQuarters fumbled a punt return, only to have young Jarrett Bush try to pick it up and run rather than fall on it at midfield with just over two minutes to play.  The statistics were a lot more one-sided than the score would indicate.  24 first downs to 13, 380 yards to 264 and a whopping 40:01 to 22:34 advantage in time of posession.   For the Packers to win that game, when they were not the better team, would have been a criminal injustice for New York, but they easily could be packing their bags for Glendale, instead, a dreadful OT pick, a season ending field goal and a third home playoff loss in their last 5 post-season apperances at Lambeau will make this a big chill of an off-season for the record 72,740 fans who braved the frigid night and the scores of those in the warmth of their home who hit the pillows still believing it was just too perfect, except for the perfectly horrible ending.

I'll wrap up the season, dish out final grades and bring the curtain down on this year's Packer blog later in the week.

Mark

Whew!  That was quite a week, no less than a dozen press conferences, conference calls with the Giants' coach and quarterback, apperances on countless talk shows around the state, even the country (Davenport, Iowa, Los Angeles, San Diego, St. Louis), and at last, it's time for the NFC Championship Game.  On Sunday, I'll cover my 4th conference title game, but this one has created more sheer hysteria among the Packer faithful than the other three combined.   Back in the 1990's, the first one against the Dallas Cowboys was rough, but you knew the Packers were on the rise and it was just a matter of when, not if, they'd break through to the Super Bowl and win it.  This season was so unexpected, fans are delierious with the possibility of going to Arizona and play in Super Bowl XLII.   Lest we forget, the New York Giants stand in the way.   Two of the NFL's most treasured franchises, playing on the tundra at Lambeau, a league marketing dream. Before I break down the game itself, a few more random thoughts from the practice field and locker room.  The team worked out with footballs left in a freezer overnight just to get the feel of an ice cold pigskin.   Every available player appears healthy to go, including Will Blackmon who aggravated his non-stop foot injury.  The team is playing crisp football.  One player told me there were only 7 mental errors in the entire Seattle playoff game, among the lowest counts of the season.  The confidence level is extremely high, the awareness of both the challenge and reward is acute.  The New Yorkers got riled up Thursday when word headed east the Packers didn't appreciate some after the whistle activity back in the Meadowlands in September, which should only add to the on-field intensity.  The weather is going to be brutal, no avoiding that.  Kickoff temperature could be 2 to 5 degrees BELOW zero, with wind chills in the -20 range.  It will be a test of will as much as a test of football skill to determine the winner.  So who's going to win and how?

I really believe the Packers are the better team, have shown more consistency and they're at home.  The energy the Giants will bring to the game should be exhausted before the first quarter runs out.  The cheeseheads have an opportunity to extend the Packer energy throughout, a huge advantange.   The plan should go like this, get Ryan Grant productive early and avoid downs which lend themselves to the New York pass rush.  When the blitz comes, attack wide on slants, rather than over the middle because oftentimes, defensive linemen drop in those zones as linebackers rush.  Against a weakened secondary, Packer receivers will have a chance to turn short catches into bigger gains as they've done all year as the best, yards after the catch team in the league.   Brett Favre must avoid the dangerous pass, turnovers, while not deadly in the case of the Seahawks game, will be much harder to overcome this time.  No one has effectively stopped this offense all year, I don't see the Giants doing it either.  On the other side of the ball, get ready for 265 pounds of thunder in Brandon Jacobs.   The run defense was gashed by another big back, Stephen Jackson in St. Louis, but that game was played without Ryan Pickett, a very underrated run defender.   Pickett says the key is getting Jacobs hit before he gathers downhill momentum.   Eli Manning has played two error free games in a row in the playoffs, but that's not his history.  With 20 interceptions and 7 fumbles during the regular season, he was the most turnover prone player in the league.   If the run defense holds, Manning may start cracking under the weight of both the Packer press man coverage of Al Harris and Charles Woodson, and the magnitude of the game.  Field position is large again, kicking and pinning teams deep, forcing long drives is important.   The chance for a mistake on a 12 play march is much higher than a 5 play drive on a short field.  Same for the return game, allowing the play calling of McCarthy some flexibility.   The spread says a touchdown, I think the Pack will cover that on a next to impossible night, with the homefolks roaring, watching the Halas Trophy presentation with joy after a 27-13 victory.  On to Glendale!

Random thoughts and notes during NFC Championship Week.....

Outside of the crush of national media, Chris Berman and Ed Werder of ESPN among them, writers from New York, Los Angeles and all points in between, the practice week has been remarkably similar to any other for the Packers.  The team worked in shorts and shells on Wednesday inside the Hutson Center, with the doors thrown open to catch the chill, and Thursday's practice was intense in pads, upbeat and with great tempo, finishing 8 minutes ahead of schedule. Inside the locker room, the players understand the stakes of Sunday's showdown with the New York Giants and there's an unspoken confidence about how ready they are to seize this opportunity.   The forecast for kickoff now has the temperature hovering right around, and likely below zero by a couple of degrees, with a breeze, but not a strong wind that could drive chills to minus 10 to minus 15.   The two coldest NFL games in history, based purely on temperature, the Ice Bowl at a minus 13 and the 1981 AFC title game between San Diego and Cincinnati when it was minus 9 at the kickoff in Ohio.  This NFC title game could make it to number three.    The guys don't seem phased.  The linemen won't be wearing long sleeves, not because they don't want to, but it's an old clubhouse rule.  Chad Clifton said it was Frank Winters who told him as a young pup the linemen don't wear sleeves, deal with it.  Ryan Pickett tried putting on long sleeves upon his arrival two years ago and was told, take 'em off, not here, anyone over 300 pounds is sleeveless, regardless of the temperature.  It's a macho thing apparently.   Donald Driver won't wear them either, but he says they feel unnatural and will hamper the concentration required to catch the ball.  Speaking of receivers, Ruvell Martin got a call from his high school coach saying how proud he was for being the first athlete from Muskegon Central Catholic High to make Sports Illustrated.  In this week's issue, there's a spectacular full page photo of Ruvell and Seattle's Brian Russell diving for a ball in the snow.   Brett Favre is back on the cover (hope there's no jinx), but the owner of a downtown news stand may be able to vacation because of it.   Steve Jorgenson told me people were lined around the block before he opened Thursday morning to get a copy and he sold 3000 within hours.  When I asked safety Nick Collins if this was the biggest game he's ever played in, the answer was easy, yes.   From tiny Bethune-Cookman college, nothing came close, he said he made it to the state high school semfinals once in Florida, now he said, he's in the NFL's final four.  Charles Woodson held a very interesting press conference Wednesday, detailing how he never planned on coming to Green Bay as a free agent.  He said he was told it was no place for a black man and after no other teams showed interest, he had little choice.  He got off to a rocky start with Mike McCarthy, was fined for several rules violatons, but learned the city was kind and respectful if he went out, ate dinner or headed to the store.   Now he's a huge part of the defense and says this is the most fun he's had playing football in quite a while.  On Friday, the NFL takes over the media show, parading a handful of players including Brett Favre and Aaron Kampman, along with McCarthy into the Lambeau Field Atrium ballroom for the final press conferences of the week.  The Giants also arrive Friday night, get acclimated to the nearly 6 inches of new snow that fell on Thursday and put the final preparations to bed.    I'll matchup the teams and throw out a prediction in the next blog entry.

Mark