Now He Can Retire

With this, Brett can really go out on top.

Milestones

Just this moment -- at roughly 25 seconds after 5:00pm -- I turned ONE BILLION SECONDS OLD. Happy Gigasecond to me.

Also, my car is sitting in a parking lot downstairs with an odometer that reads 199994. Shortly after I begin my battle with the snow and idiot drivers on the Beltline on my way home tonight, I'll see the 200,000-mile rollover.

Truthfully, the reason I'm waiting a bit to leave is that I'm kind of worried about what would happen if I reach the billionth second and the 200,000th mile simultaneously. I might just hit the nexus of the universe and cease to exist.

Spectral.

McCarthyism in Green Bay

Yes, I know, I haven't blogged about it. Here:

In a move that was made only slightly more popular due to George Clooney's sleeper Good Night, and Good Luck, and in keeping with the recent tradition of going after guys named Mike, the Packers hired Mike McCarthy as their head coach last week. And I slammed a beer.

This solidifies Ted Thompson's apparent conviction to personally sabotage any hope of a championship season for the Packers for at least -- you may want to sit down for this next part, kids -- eight more years. McCarthy has worked with the Packers and Brett Favre before. He was the quarterbacks coach in 1999, when Ray "Only Slightly More Healthy than Dick Cheney" Rhodes coached us to an 8-8 season, which now stands as Brett's second-worst season with the Pack.

McCarthy comes in having coached both the New Orleans Saints and the San Francisco 49ers into the ground as offensive coordinator. The Saints are picking second in the draft next year (the 'Niners picked first in '05), and we're picking fifth. Wow. Big step up for McCarthy. In which direction do you suppose that means we're stepping, though? Yeah.

Meanwhile, while we can look forward to another season of "West Coast" offense, we can also expect to drop to the basement in defensive production, as bright spot Jim Bates decided to ditch earlier this week. Now we're seeing all kinds of new coaches popping up all over the place in Green Bay. 116-year old Mike Stock will join us as special teams coordinator, for example. And, in a surprise move the other day, McCarthy hired Joy Philbin as our offensive line coach. Luckily, someone at the William Morris Agency caught the typo on the FAX before she could board the plane, and a relieved Joe Philbin was told he could have the job later that day.

Incidentally, while surfing Packers.com earlier this week to try and figure out if I'm going to recognize the team at all next season, I ran across this ad:

And one of these things is not like the other. Think like a Packers fan and I think you'll figure out which one:

Overrated

See? We didn't want Bush or Leinart anyway.

Losers.

Happy New Year! Indeed!

Packers 23 - Seahawks 17

The NFL shafted us back on December 13th by dictating that the Packers were no longer a marquee team and booting us from the national-audience 3:15 slot to the regional noon slot. Then all of the same sports announcers who bashed Favre all season long fell all over themselves during the highlights of this game, just in case it turns out that it was his last.

That sucked.

After the game, as we drove back south awaiting the post-game press conference, we were told that, for the second time this season, Brett would not be speaking with the media. Then, a few minutes later, we were told that Brett had called a press conference for Monday at 11am. Uh-oh. Then, a little later still (or yet), we learned that Brett wouldn't be involved in the Monday press conference, either. Um...?

Cut to me at work on Monday at 10:45, my Outlook reminder just having dinged at me telling me not to forget to pull up the internet feed soon. The phone rings. It's my wife. "I just thought you'd want to know: ABC is showing a crawl at the bottom of the screen during the Rose Parade. They fired Sherman."

That sucked more.

Ted Thompson probably decided Brett's future with that decision. I won't argue much about this. Yes, the play calling this year sucked ass. (And yes, last year I thought Sherman was a genius when he took over the play calling -- we were winning then.) But I'll just ask one thing: Don't you hang on to the guy who, over the last five years, led your team to three consecutive North Division Championships? One bad season was enough for Ted, I guess, and he must not think Brett still has enough left in him to turn it around for us next year. Favre already said he won't stick around to learn a new system under a new coach. If I knew that, then Thompson knew it. So the wait begins to see what new no-name losers we interview and eventually hire. Meanwhile, Brett will hunt and mull, and eventually decide that he's done, and then he'll call his own press conference.

That will suck.

The game, though? That rocked. As I expected, the crowd was wild and incredibly supportive of Brett. At various points during the game, pockets of the crowd would break into chants of "one more year!" In our section, we got greedy and all political-conventiony and switched it up to "four more years!" He is number 4, after all. That was nice. We were optimistic back then. Ah, memories.

Packers.com does a poll after each game asking who the MVP was. I checked it before the press confererence, and 70% said it was Brett. In actuality, it was the guy who had 21% of the votes: Donald Driver. He and Brett were rock stars on third down plays Sunday. Five of Double-D's six catches were on third down plays. The only catch that wasn't was his longest -- a 59-yard bomb near the end of the third quarter that brought us to Seattle's 5 yard line. Unfortunately, the next play was a sack/fumble that the 'hawks recovered.

But this is the most important thing that no one is talking about: When the Pack won the coin toss, I swear Brett Favre said, "We want the ball, and we're going to score." I couldn't hear it because the crowd was cheering the fact that we had won the toss, but I was looking at the big screen with the specific intent of seeing whether Brett would say it. On the drive up, I mentioned that I thought he should say it, mocking Matt Hasselbeck's "famous last words" in one of our greatest Playoff victories ever, two years ago. I'm not the greatest lip-reader, but I have particular experience watching coaches swear on the sidelines during NFL games, and I am certain that Brett said exactly that.

That was awesome.

Brett loves the game. He loves the competition. I have loved watching him, even when I've hated it. I've watched three college games in the last two days, I will watch one more tonight, and then four more NFL games this weekend, but I miss football already.