If Super Bowls were elections, we Packer fans would have good reason to celebrate, for everyone seems to be voting for Green Bay this year.
The ESPN experts have high hopes for the Packers. On ESPN.com we discover a chart featuring the predictions of 16 different football prognosticators, and they are all but unanimous in their expectation that Green Bay will carry the NFC North. Only Pat Yasinskas (who is he?) presents the dissenting opinion that Minnesota will win the Division. Every other guy picks the Pack.
Beyond the Division, 9 of the 16 ESPN experts predict that Green Bay will win the entire Conference, representing the NFC in the Super Bowl. And 4 of the 16 predict that the Packers will win it all!
By comparison… The Baltimore Ravens also receive 4 votes to win it all, and the Indianapolis Colts are the favorite pick, with 6 votes out of 16. (So much for the slump year that traditionally follows for the previous year’s Super Bowl losers.)
The defending champion Saints, meanwhile, who seem to be a team with fewer flaws than the Packers, are only picked by 1 guy to repeat. These guys were flirting with perfection last year, and they won it all in the end. I’m not sure why they deserve to be downgraded so.
Elsewhere, the folks at NFL.com have also put together a team of wise men to forecast the 2010 season. These NFL.com experts are even more embarrassingly optimistic. There are 7 of these guys (and I’ve heard of almost all of them), and every single one of them pictures the Packers going to the Super Bowl! 7 out of 7! Three of them foresee Green Bay beating the Saints in the NFC Championship Game, and four of them see us beating the Cowboys for the privilege of playing Super Bowl XLV… in Dallas!
Finally, when it comes to hoisting the Lombardi Trophy, Green Bay is again the favorite, though not unanimous this time. One of them predicts that Indy will beat us in the big game. One picks the Ravens over the Packers. And one drunk says that the Cincinnati Bengals will win it all!
But 4 of these 7 experts say the Packers will prevail (2 over Baltimore, 1 over Indy, and 1 over San Diego). I like the sound of it.
Personally, though, I think that most of these guys are a little too in love with our quarterback. Not that I am not a tremendous admirer of Aaron Rodgers – I think he’s great! But I also think that he was fortunate to survive an entire season behind that offensive line, and I am not yet convinced that Ted Thompson sufficiently improved that group in the offseason.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment