A Very Good Week

This is a great week to be living in southeast Wisconsin! 

First, football fans around these parts are nearly delirious with what the Badgers have done the past two weeks.  Hosting the nation’s top-ranked team in Madison – along with the whole ESPN College Gameday crew – was it’s own kind of special.   But then to play so well under that spotlight, upsetting Ohio State and shaking up all the polls – that was a historic victory for Wisconsin.

Many of us suspected, however, that the festivities would be short-lived, for the following Saturday brought a trip to Iowa City.  The Hawkeyes were not necessarily a better team than the Buckeyes, but beating them on the road seemed so unlikely.  Indeed, rising to the occasion of beating almost any good team on the road seemed like too tall an order after such an emotional and demanding win against Ohio State. 

Nevertheless, the Badgers pulled off back-to-back, gritty wins, and they have thus vaulted themselves into the Big Ten race and the Top Ten nationally. 

Second, the Bears stunk up the joint in their loss to the Redskins.  That is obviously to our benefit since they sit atop the Division.  The greater pleasure for me personally, though, resides in the fact that I get so much Chicago sports talk radio here, and eavesdropping on all this enemy angst is quite a delight.  It’s a rather sinister pleasure, I admit, but it has a certain justification to it: for I pick up their sports talk radio whether Chicago teams are faring well or poorly.  Since I have to endure their obnoxious celebrations, therefore, I should also be able to enjoy their grief.

And boy are they grieving this week!  In some respects, it’s rather disproportionate, for they have a couple of very good weeks ahead (which I will explore in more detail in our Week Eight Preview).  But they are full of hand-wringing and second-guessing these days.  And all that optimism from the summer of 2009, when they acquired Jay Cutler, has turned into a massive “What’s the matter with this guy?” dialogue.

Finally, third – and most important of all – the Packers beat the Vikings!  Even if the other two games had not gone our way, it would still be a good week just by virtue of the Sunday Night Football game.  We needed a win, and especially this sort of win.  For we had lost our last home game, we had lost our last divisional game, we had lost our last couple of close games, and we had lost both encounters with the purplefied Favre last year.  To win a close one at home in the Division against him/them, therefore, was more than just one monkey off our backs. 

The weeks ahead do not promise to be easy ones for the Packers, but after 7 games we’re in at least a decent position within our Division and within our Conference.  We can play it from here.

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