Dom Capers for President (and other premature conclusions)

How much can you tell about your team from watching its preseason games? It's so hard to say!

Is the coach trying to win games, or just make roster decisions? Are they practicing everything, or hiding some things? And, likewise, what are the opponents doing and trying to do?

Whatever conclusions we reach from the Packers' preseason performance thus far, they must be lightly held.

A win at home against the lowly and dysfunctional Browns can be the source of only so much excitement. The Bills, likewise, are an uncertain standard against which to measure oneself. On the other hand, the dominating first-half performance against the defending NFC Champs on the road was very encouraging, indeed.

It certainly appears that our first team offensive and defensive units are functioning at a high level. Aaron Rodgers is loose, decisive, and confident. And the defense has been absolutely eye-popping.

I have seldom been inspired by Ted Thompson's offseason moves with players, but you have to like the offseason hiring of Dom Capers as our new defensive coordinator. His enthusiastic unit is flying around the field. They are ball-hawking with ridiculous effectiveness. And the 3-4 scheme is looking very good in its auditions. I haven't been this excited about a Green Bay defense since Fritz Shurmur and the mid-90s.

All that said, the performance of our back-ups has been dismaying -- especially since these are guys presumably fighting for their jobs. The way that we gave up a big lead in that marathons second-half in Arizona was particularly unsettling.

Still, we recognize that, barring a catastrophe, these guys will never be on the field all together. Instead, what playing time they'll see will be spelling the first-teamers, and that is a very different picture, indeed.

Winners and Losers in the Favre Saga

Now that Brett Favre has signed with the Minnesota Vikings, perhaps it is time to go back and evaluate his other post-Packers NFL experience. A thoughtful evaluation of Favre's impact on the New York Jets last season seems like an useful exercise (though it appears that Brad Childress passed on it). For it seems to me that the Jets may well have been the biggest losers in last year's "The Old and the Restless" soap opera, starring Brett Favre.

It was March 2008 that Brett Favre announced his retirement from the Green Bay Packers in an emotional and memorable news conference. The news of Favre's retirement dominated all talk radio, sports, and news coverage here in Wisconsin for days. Even national outlets talked of little else. SI.com dedicated its home page to all-things-Brett on that day, and ESPN had every analyst imaginable talking about Favre's career and his place in history.

Favre was an almost universally beloved icon around the sports world. True, people had grown a little weary of the annual "will he or won't he" routine in January and February. But now that he had finally retired, it was HUGE.

But then July rolled around, and the NFL icon turned into a comic character. The events that unfolded during the next few weeks -- painful weeks for Packer fans -- resulted in an almost unthinkable conclusion: the Green Bay Packers trading away Brett Favre. Even all these months after that dust has settled, the headline --"Packers trade Favre" -- remains shocking.

For years, NFL fans had joked at Jerry Glanville's expense that the Falcons had foolishly traded away Brett back in 1992. But Glanville's only error was that he didn't know what he had in Brett Favre. How could the Packers not know what they had?

The fanfare for Brett in New York was amazing. Even if he wasn't getting any love from the Packers' front office, he was getting a ton from the Big Apple -- including a welcoming ceremony from the Mayor of New York himself.

Upon Brett's arrival in New York, the Jets released Chad Pennington. The speed with which they jettisoned Pennington for the 38-year-old Favre was mind-boggling, and their division rivals -- the Miami Dolphins -- seized the opportunity with equal alacrity.

Now all the water of the 2008 season has gone under the bridge, and what are we left with?

The Packers went from a 13-3 team in 2007 to a 6-10 team in 2008. During Brett's last season, the Packers won their division going away, and went all the way to the NFC Championship game, where they lost to the eventual Super Bowl winners (New York Giants). During the first season without Brett, however, Green Bay limped to a 6-10 record, falling to third place in the division behind both the Bears and the Vikings, and missing the playoffs altogether.

The Jets, meanwhile, enjoyed a surge from a 4-12 2007 team to a respectable 9-7 in 2008. Nevertheless, after early and mid-season excitement, New York fell flat at the end and missed the playoffs.

What mitigates the Jets' sense of progress still more is that the Pennington-led Dolphins went from a 1-15 2007 to a division-winning 11-5 in 2008.

So the Jets lost Pennington, they fired their coach, and Favre retired again (though again only temporarily).

The Packers lost their icon, they bungled the 2008 season, and it's too early to say with confidence what we have in Aaron Rodgers.

And Favre dragged his reputation through the muck, prolonging his career in the wrong shade of green, and inspiring a pervading sense that he played too long.

It's clear who the surprise winner in the whole saga was: the Miami Dolphins. But who was the big loser? The likelihood that it was the Jets makes one wonder about the decision Minnesota has made this year. Cast your vote in the poll on the right, and offer your thoughts in the comments below.

What's a Packer Fan To Do?

Brett Favre in purple. Who could have imagined such a thing just two years ago?!

Many of us spent sixteen years rooting for the guy. We cheered for all the guys on the Packers' roster, of course, but he was different. For the others came and went, but he was always there. Even coaches and general managers came and went, but Brett was always there.

And it's not as though he was in a position that you might overlook or temporarily forget about. He wasn't the punter or a defensive player in the nickel package. He was the starting quarterback, for heaven's sake -- the undeniable and unmistakable face of the franchise.

After a while, we didn't just cheer for him because he was a Packer. We cheered for him because we loved him. We loved his boyishness, his gunslinger confidence, his legendary playfulness. We loved seeing him talk to the guys on the other team's defense and throw blocks for the occasional end around. We loved watching him run down the field gleefully after a long touchdown pass. We loved his exuberance as he tackled or potato-sacked teammates after scores.

And we loved him through the other stuff, too. The addiction. His father's death. His wife's cancer.

After Super Bowl XXXII, we may have hated John Elway, but deep inside we wanted that same thing for Brett. We wanted him to go out on top -- as a triumphant Packer, hoisting the Lombardi Trophy.

But then last spring and summer happened. Ugh. We still loved him, but we liked him a little less. And, mostly, we liked Ted Thompson a lot less.

We cheered for the Jets on the side during 2008. We were glad to see Brett pad his numbers. We wanted him to succeed, proving that Thompson was wrong to let him go.

But now what? The Jets were a harmless team to cheer for, and Brett's successes there didn't cost us anything as Packer fans. But what to do about Favre the Viking?

Every fall weekend for many years, I have rooted against the Minnesota Vikings. And every fall weekend for the past 17 of those years, I have rooted for Brett Favre. Now, on the weekends this fall, something's gotta give.