Relax, Packers fans: Green Bay has lived through much worse. | Opinion
A core memory from my childhood: Buying crullers, hot ham and rolls from Meurer’s on the south side and racing home to the Sunday newspaper spread out all over the water bed and the TV tuned to the NFL. With no remote control, this was a three-hour commitment, so the bakery rations were essential. And this:
“Catch the ball, you (expletive) rapist,” regarding a Green Bay Packers player who was acquitted of sexual assault charges.
The quote is from my mother, a probation and parole officer, may she rest in peace. And her team was the Green Bay Packers in the 1980s, may that decade also rest in peace. Because, dear reader, it was dreadful.
Which is why I, and so many of us, find the Millennials and GenZers to be just adorable with their "Fire LaFleur" and "Ax Aaron" TikTok tantrums.
Yes, things are bad right now, so much so that I actually agree with (just) one take from Colin Cowherd: Packers fans are spoiled.
Spoiled rotten. The current five-game losing spree is repugnant, but the Packers have given the world seven seasons with an MVP QB and nearly annual playoff appearances for the last 25 years. So, please, a little respect, for those who still thank Yancey Thigpen for ending our long suffering.
“When Lynn Dickey finally got healthy and they had James Lofton and Paul Coffman and John Jefferson, and that strike year in ’82 - they actually had a winning record. They won a playoff game,” said retired sports broadcaster Dan Needles. “It was like, OK, here we go!
“But every year after that they were, like, 8-8.”
No, today's Packers could be so, so much worse – because they already have been. An entire generation came of age debating future draft choices over Thanksgiving turkey (already). It was so dire for so long that 1990s coach Mike Holmgren once called the hottest free agent in history, Reggie White, with a last-ditch recruiting pitch: “Reggie, this is God. Come to Green Bay.” That was our original Hail Mary.
“I remember Walter Stanley returning a punt in the Detroit Lions Thanksgiving Day game and thinking that was a big deal,” said Mark Tauscher, our home state treasure. “And the Bears always beating us with Walter Payton.
“I vividly remember the Don Majkowski throw to beat the Bears. That was, like, the highlight of the ‘80s. Those are the things that kind of stick out, because the rest of that time period there was a lot of low points.”
Packers fan/reporter Aaron Nagler had some solid advice on Monday, after the Packers lost a soccer-score of a game at Detroit:
“I have now received earnest replies to both the ‘punt-on-first-down’ tweet and the ‘Welcome Back to the 80s’ sweatshirt. Guys, trust me when I say, the rest of the season will be a lot more bearable if you try to relax and have a little fun from here on out.”
He’s right. Some of you are still loyal and sympathetic to the Packers who have not yet toured the blue medical tent, and that is true devotion.
The rest of you are an absolute mess. Just in time for Mike McCarthy – everyone’s favorite youth basketball parent in the stands – to come back to Lambeau with his 6-2 Cowboys.
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I asked an older colleague, who grew up in the Lombardi era, if I should remind fans of those glorious 1980s, in the Era of Excess (and INXS) and Reagan Republicans.
Him: Sure, why not add to the depression? Like our story said: "The whole thing is broken." That's a country song.
Me: Packers fans are so spoiled!
Him: I lived the nightmare from 1968 until 1993. I paid my dues to sing the blues!
Me: Let me ask Lions and Vikings fans if they agree.
... They said: they don't!
Him: Did you see this analysis of Yankees/Mets fans and boys?
If a boy's hometown team wins a championship when he is 8 years old, he is hopelessly engaged emotionally with that team for the rest of his life.
The Packers won the Championship when I was 8, 9 and 10 years old. I don't even think they know what that means – just that it's worse than heroin.
That really helps me understand today’s entitled Packers fans. To be fair, you had a Vicodin-addicted QB win a Super Bowl and then become the NFL’s ironman in one of the greatest sports stories ever told.
And then Brett Favre's successor, Aaron Rodgers, took over when no one, and I mean no one, expected him to last to a contract extension, and he won a Super Bowl too – with a team so beat up and injured, the cheap and weird Packers brass actually considered not flying the guys on injured reserve out soon enough to be in the team picture on Super Bowl media day. This generation of fans assumes winning is a birthright.
But some of us remember when “completion, No. 84, Sterling Sharpe” was really the only weapon Green Bay had.
“Most of my memories center around watching with my dad and getting really upset when they lost, and they lost a lot,” said Nagler. “At least they were fun with Lynn Dickey and James Lofton because they could score with anyone. But then Forrest Gregg arrived and it got so ugly. I'll never forget watching Charles Martin slam Jim McMahon to the turf. It was the only time I was ever truly embarrassed to be a Packers fan.”
Tauscher, who grew up in central Wisconsin, would become a starting right tackle in the middle of the renaissance in Green Bay and he would contribute to the skyrocketing expectations. But everything was different when he was a kid.
“I still wanted to go out and be Paul Coffman catching a seam route – on the farm after the game,” said Tauscher. “For me, it was just, man, we got a professional football team that we like. I don't think we had expectations. I think it was more, can we get in the playoffs?
“To everybody else back then we were a joke. I mean, people would say, ‘We'll send you off to Green Bay if you misbehave or if you are bitching about your contract.’
“Everybody here was still super prideful, but we had no expectations. That's why when anyone can remember the ‘70s and ‘80s, there's a real badge of honor, and that’s why that generation is a little more forgiving of a season like Green Bay is having right now."
Needles was a college student and then cub reporter in the 1980s. He remembers a professor at UW-Oshkosh starting class by saying: I’m in a bad mood today, one of the Packers got arrested. Needles was drawn to this team, regardless.
"I went to Oshkosh from '81 to '85, so I went to some games. It was really easy to get tickets.
"But they'd always choke at the end of the year. They'd have these monster offensive games; defense was horrible. And then the defense would play well and they'd have just a horrible game against Tampa Bay or somebody. It was entertaining as hell.
“Look back on some of the stats from Lynn Dickey in ‘83, he threw a team record of over 4,400 yards passing and then 32 TDs, but he had 29 interceptions. Every game was a roller coaster.”
Needles and Packers fans didn't dare hope for much.
"It was like – ohh, they might make the playoffs this year! And they wouldn't and it was like, well, Bart Starr is a great guy. Give him another chance," said Needles.
Needles remembers when Forrest Gregg was supposedly going to turn things around.
“And everybody just turned a blind eye to all the thuggery,” said Needles. “Not just the Charles Martin thing but Kenny Stills drilling Matt Suhey about 10 seconds after the whistle blew. Somebody else got tangled up with Walter Payton to go flying over the bench.
“And then you get Lofton arrested and Mossy Cade arrested (in separate cases) and they're both in the same courthouse in different rooms at the same time. You felt kind of dirty to be a Packer fan at that point.”
Our Super Bowl was actually the 1985 Snow Bowl win against Tampa Bay. Nobody could get to the game because the streets were full of snow. Steve Young in his white uniform was 1-for-22 with a suffocating facewash from Alphonso Carreker.
Needles said being a Packers fan and then a sports reporter in the 1980s was just a lot of fun, because it was so bad.
"I didn't even mind when the Bears had William 'Refrigerator' Perry run over them on Monday night football. I thought that was hilarious," said Needles.
"I had no idea how bad of a GM Bart Starr was. They could have Ronnie Lott, they could have had Joe Montana. But it was the Packers, so you didn't get really mad. I don't think people got mad until Forrest Gregg. And not only the off-the-field crap. I mean, he's got Jim Zorn and Randy Wright, Chuck Fusina and Vince Ferragamo, just all any quarterback they could find. It was just awful.
"Then Lindy Infante has that one year."
The Packers were 10-6 in 1989.
"And there was some poll by a Green Bay TV station. And he was voted the greatest coach in Packers history," said Needles. "Comfortably ahead of Lombardi. The naivety of people was just unbelievable."
By the time Needles was on the Packers beat in 1990, the franchise was a mess. Some 20 players were contract holdouts before training camp. Reporters could hear a fight among coaching staff members inside the locker room.
"The thing that killed me: I grew up in Waukesha, and my idol was John Anderson. He couldn't have been a nicer guy. It looked like John Anderson's finally gonna win the playoffs in '89 – and they don't go. He had two playoff games his whole career."
The 1980s, the mullets and that penitentiary green siding on Lambeau Field. We lived through it and survived.
By the time I got an internship with the Green Bay Press-Gazette, this is how bad it was: An editor made me call Brian Noble – at home – to ask this totally ridiculous question for a story: The Packers made the playoffs in 1972, 1982. Does that mean they’re destined to go in 1992?
As if we were telling horoscopes now. Asinine.
The Packers did not make it to the playoffs in ’92 after all, but they finished with a 9-7 record and somehow this was newsworthy enough that I was dispatched to Austin Straubel Airport to meet and interview the team after they returned home from the season ender in Minnesota. The crush from the crowd of Packers fans was so dense that Chuck Cecil, and that bloody nose, was half leaning on my shoulder to keep from getting pushed over.
That was the dawn of a new era, which, apparently is so brilliant and bright that some of you can’t remember or never realized there were the dark ages. Learn your history, people. These Packers aren’t anywhere near the lowly 1980s.