Dear Coach Crennel:
I am a diehard Green Bay Packers fan. Have been for years! And as such, I am in considerable sports-fan pain today thanks to you and your team.
And I mean that sincerely: thanks to you and your team. Many thanks!
I recognize that, in more serious issues of life than sports, pain is an unwelcome but important gift. If we didn’t feel any pain, we wouldn’t recognize certain problems in our bodies, and we wouldn’t get them diagnosed and treated.
So I recognize the usefulness of pain, and I can see great usefulness in the pain you inflicted on my team this past Sunday. Now we are forced to reckon with the fact that something is wrong.
Up until Sunday, you see, we had had hints that something was wrong, but we didn’t really have reason to believe it. For as long as we were winning, we could always say that the bend-but-don’t-break defense was doing just enough, that a running game wasn’t important when we had so many weapons in the passing attack, that no one could match up with our receivers, that Rodgers could always burn the blitz, etc. For as long as we were winning -- and winning, and winning, and winning -- it was hard to say with a straight face that we feared something was wrong.
But now we know. Thanks to you!
And while the pain you caused us did cost us a shot at history, it would have been much costlier had it come at someone else’s hands. How intolerable would it have been if either the Bears or Lions had ruined our perfection? But we bear no malice toward you, toward Kansas City, toward the Chiefs, or toward their fans.
And how much worse, indeed, if no one had caused us this pain until the playoffs?! That would have been bitter, indeed, to be perfect in the regular season and then humiliated in the postseason.
So I write to thank you. I am hopeful that we will emerge from the 2011 campaign with a record of 18-1 thanks to the help you provided… but the kind of 18-1 that will make the Patriots envious.
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