Back to Normal

Well, the sun is rising in the east again. 

Things are back to normal.  They are the way they should be.  Life makes sense again.  At least in the NFC North.

After that disturbing Week One aberration, the Packers are back atop their Division.  (Yes, I know we’re all 1-1, but I still regard us as in the lead by virtue of having the only in-the-division win.)  And so there is around Titletown a sense of regained equilibrium. 

The same cannot be said, I’m sure, for New Orleans.  Perhaps not Boston, either, during this particular week.  But especially New Orleans.

Roger Goodell better not be planning to retire to Louisiana, for I imagine he must be about the most hated man in the state these days.  His one-year suspension of Saints’ coach Sean Payton is surely responsible for one of the most explosive teams in the NFL sitting at 0-2 here in mid-September.

As a whole, meanwhile, the league is predominantly .500.  The entire AFC East and NFC North are both knotted up at 1-1.  In addition, 3 of 4 teams in the AFC North and the NFC East are also 1-1.  To be either winless or undefeated is already rare.  Remarkably so, considering that we’re only two weeks into the season. 

And those already thin ranks will be thinned considerably more in Week 3.  Two sets of undefeated teams (Falcons at Chargers, Eagles at Cardinals) face one another this week.  Also, something has to give when the 0-2 Chiefs visit the 0-2 Saints.  Both teams (and fan bases!) came into 2012 with pretty high hopes, but one of those teams is going to drop to 0-3.  Not many climb out of that hole. 

We’ll give more detailed thought to this coming weekend’s slate of games in a day or two.  For now, we just lean back and enjoy the fact that, for the moment in Green Bay, all’s right with the world.