Night Game Nightmares
(Packer Addict) -Wasn’t that Dallas game fun? The fun
part being when it was over and you could forget it ever happened.
Watching a T.O. touchdown celebration never gets old, does it? Just
like you look forward to shoveling snow.
At my house, we don’t really enjoy watching night games
in any case, particularly those played during the work week. We
like to unwind in the evening, have a glass or two of wine and
read a book or watch a movie. In most films, the conflict builds
to a climactic good vs. evil battle between an evenly matched
protagonist and antagonist. And the clever filmmakers generally
make sure that “good” wins. After we see the good
guys prevail, we get a satisfied feeling that all is well with
the world and can sleep peacefully.
Football affords us no such peace. For one thing, good doesn’t
always triumph over evil. In fact over the course of NFL history,
it’s only triumphed about 56% of the time. The other problem
is we, the fans, are not just observers of how fictional characters
deal with conflict—we’re in the middle of the action.
Fans can feel the changes of momentum, the ebb and flow, as though
they were right there on the field. Otherwise we wouldn’t
be compelled to yell obscenities at the refs’ bad calls,
or lose our composure when we see the Packers’ secondary
perform with all the focus and concentration of 2nd graders on
the last school day before summer vacation.
If the Packers win the night game, then you’re so keyed
up you can’t get to sleep until 1 AM or so, playing the
touchdowns over and over in your mind or watching the highlights
on TV over and over on the 24 hour sports channels. And then you
wake up exhausted. If the Pack loses, you lie awake in bed replaying
all the mistakes that led to the Packers’ demise that night.
And when morning comes, you’re cranky.
A friend of mine has resorted to recording night games and then
watching them the next afternoon. I thought this showed remarkable
will power on his part until he admitted he peeks at the score
on the Internet.
Déjà vu?
At first glance, it might seem like last Thursday’s game
in Dallas was an alarming flashback to the mid-1990’s, when
the Packers methodically fought their way through each long, tough
football season and made the playoffs, only to have their Super
Bowl hopes and dreams crushed in Dallas. Here’s a look back
at the gruesome results, for those of you with strong stomachs:
1993 Dallas 27 Green Bay 17
1994 Dallas 35 Green Bay 9
1995 Dallas 38 Green Bay 27
You’ll notice that last Thursday, the Packers held Dallas
to 37 points, at least showing a one-point improvement from the
playoff game in the 1995 season. Definitely a sign of progress
for our defense.
But perhaps there were other positive signs as well. Not to minimize
the great performance by the Cowboys, but this was, after all,
just another regular season game. The media hype surrounding the
game had more to do with the NFL Network’s desire to generate
more cable subscribers than anything else. From the standpoint
of a young team learning how to win, those great back-to-back
victories in Denver and Kansas City were far more significant.
Brett leaving the game (especially since the injury appears not
to be serious) gave Aaron Rodgers a chance to prove he can step
in and rally the team in important situations. This was always
a question mark before, with a number of people arguing that he
didn’t have the right stuff to be an NFL quarterback. Now
the question has been answered to some extent. If the Packers’
defense had held together in the fourth quarter, I think there’s
a good chance Aaron would have led the Pack to victory. What I
wonder, though, about an ambitious young guy like Aaron is whether
his long-term career objective is to be the new Zeke Bratkowski.
I thought it was brilliant strategy on the Green Bay coaches’
part to not show the Cowboys our real offense, making them think
all we do is heave the ball randomly downfield into double coverage.
Won’t they be surprised when the playoff game comes ‘round.
Winning in Dallas is really the last significant mountain Brett
Favre has to climb, in the case of away games. He’s tamed
the dreaded Metrodome, which not that long ago looked to be a
near impossible task. Far better that Brett earns this crowning
achievement in a higher stakes situation such as the NFC Championship
game in January, than in a regular season game we will have mostly
forgotten when the playoff excitement starts. And as both a movie
buff and football fan, I’ve seen over the years that Brett
has an even keener sense of the dramatic than Steven Spielberg.
To cure his perennial struggles in Texas, one idea might be to
have the team hire a hypnotist to try regression therapy on #4
and see if maybe in a past life he had some especially unpleasant
experience in the Lone Star State that he re-lives when he takes
the field at Texas Stadium. Maybe he was involved in that famous
skirmish near San Antonio in 1836.
Reality Check
I was as disappointed as anyone after the game on Thursday. I
was pretty certain the Packers would win. Everyone is touting
Tony Romo these days, but it’s difficult to have complete
confidence in quarterbacks who have thus far had more success
with starlets than in playoff games. Joe Namath was a hell of
a lot of fun, but with the game on the line you want the ball
in Bart Starr’s hands.
So, still dejected on Friday morning I ran into a friend of mine
at the local library who was as glum as I was over the outcome
in Dallas. But then reality set in and I loudly exclaimed to her:
“Don’t worry, be happy. We’re 10-2!!!”
The librarian didn’t even try to “shussshhh”
me, which is strange because she passionately roots for the Bears.
