This is therapeutic for me...deal with it

One play rarely alters the course of a team's history. This play, the one in question, is one that still salts my exposed and bleeding Packer heart. And from it have sprung both joy and grief.

A playoff loss to the Vikings at home during which Randy Moss celebrated a touchdown by offending Joe Buck's sensibilities. A 4-12 season. Months and months of multiple off-seasons spent living in fear and loathing of a Brett Favre retirement press conference. A too-good-to-be-true 13-3 2007 regular season.

The sequence receiving the most attention this week, and has been since the Jordan Babineaux sealed the Redskins-Seahawks game in the Wild Card Round, is Mr. We Want the Ball and We're Gonna Score quick cut to Al Harris's walk-off interception in overtime at Lambeau. You may have seen the clip several dozen times already this week.

The play about which I write occurred a week later.

To many, 4th and 26 means plenty. To Freddie Mitchell, a new nickname, "First Down Freddie" (Freddie Mitchell, if you are curious, used to be a wide receiver in the National Football League). To the city of Philadelphia, one of the greatest moments in Eagles' history. For Ed Donatell, it meant he was out of a job. It even has it's own MOTHERFUCKING Wikipedia entry.

I don't believe in teams of destiny anymore.

If ever there was a team that seemed to be one, it was the 2003-2004 Green Bay Packers. Beginning with Irv Favre's sudden and unexpected death and culminating with a 17-14 lead, 1:12 remaining in the 4th quarter, the Eagles on their own 25 with no timeouts, it seemed to the team, to the staff, and to the fans that the Packers were fated to be world champions. In between, there was the 399 yard-4 TD Monday night, the miracle victory by the Cardinals over the Vikings (without which the Packers don't even make the playoffs), and the epic battle against the Seahawks.

And then…the Rebs are on the right flank, headquarters is absorbing massive artillery fire, and it's Joe 'Fightin' Joe' Hooker all over again (OK, that was a thinly-veiled attempt to work the Army of the Potomac into the conversation).

It doesn't matter that the Packers blew a 14 point lead in the game. It doesn't matter that Mike Sherman's play-calling on 4th down was abhorrent. Nor does it matter that the Eagles, after that one play, still had to drive down the field to kick the game tying field goal, intercept a pass in overtime, and then drive again to kick the game winner. The only relevant fact about that game is that if the Packers hold the Eagles to 25 yards or less on that one play, the game is over and won.

How does this relate this week's Divisional Playoff against the Seahawks? Only in my head, apparently. Of the 22 starters and the coaching staff from that team, only 8 remain. Mike Sherman is blessedly gone. Darren Sharper, Ahman Green, Marco Rivera, and Mike Wahle have all left. Bubba Franks is on the bench.

But my demons need to be exorcised and the franchise needs put its post-Holmgren postseason ineptitude behind it. The woeful disappointments of the past 4 seasons have been somewhat assuaged by the Packers' performance during the regular season, however, a one-and-done performance this year would only serve to renew the agony with extreme vigor.

I need a confidence that belies the Packers' status as the youngest team in the league. I need a brilliant game plan from Mike McCarthy, who I hope will spend many years on the Packers' sidleline and have one of the streets surrounding Lambeau named after him. I need someone to put a body on Patrick Kerney. I need Matt Hasselbeck on the turf at least 10 times. And, I desperately need this not to be Brett Favre's last game.

Oh…and just for fun. Reprise, bitches.

Enter the Liverbird

This upcoming Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of “The Bowler and Benny” and it only seems appropriate that our first post was entitled Matt Hasselbeck and the Hawks: Assclowns on Parade. It appears that we’ve come full circle: 12 months, 58 posts and those pesky Seahawks and their incorrigible fans still are atop our shit list. Last year they limped out of Soldier Field in the Divisional Round after a hard fought and heartbreaking loss to the Bears. This year, they are up against (in my humble opinion) even bigger odds when they once again take their show on the road to Green Bay to assail their demons from playoffs past. We are familiar with Benny’s fractured take on Mike Holmgren, but this return engagement has got to have my esteemed colleague reexamining this old issue in a new light - from exalted head coach, to greedy egoist, to football pariah, to bad penny all in the span of ten years… The mind reels. Anyway, I’ll leave Ben to the breakdown since his team will be in the ring this weekend.

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce the newest member and welcome addition to this blog… Ladies and Gentlemen, our new Footy Correspondent, Mr. Kurt Bauer aka Dirty McLiverbird. Kurt and I attended Loyola Academy together and share some common interests highlighted by (but not limited to) Mel Brooks movies, bum wine at dawn and “taking the day off”. He also played four years of soccer in high school before destroying his knee and turning to less endurance related pursuits (such as yelling at TV during sporting events and sporadically breaking out into soccer songs). He’s the reason I am a Liverpool fan and there is nary a soul who knows more about the Premiership than this man. We’ve brought him on this January, a time when player transfers are made and stretch runs are contemplated, to add some much needed depth to our English football coverage. So like a super-sub of Ryan Babel-esque proportions, El Dirty is here for the betterment of this page… and it’s not a moment too soon.

I would say “this picture doesn’t do him justice”, but that’s not true. At all. The picture is spot on. This is the teasipper who is going to write about Footy. Hide the children.

He is the Walrus

I haven't always loathed the Seattle Seahawks. In fact, some of my earliest memories of watching football involved the gun slinging and entirely likable underdogs of the AFC West led by Dave Kreig, Steve Largent, and Curt Warner. My Pop Warner team was even nicknamed the Seahawks.

Notwithstanding any residual nostalgia of my youth, it's been personal since January 8, 1999.

It's not about the decision to transform their uniforms into something that is FUBAR. It's not about their post-realignment move to the NFC. It's not about pawning off one of the most cherished college football traditions as their own (in a stadium named after a horizontally integrated communications company in the Pacific Northwest, no less). It's certainly not about Matt Hasselbeck (bless his soul, the act isn't even comical anymore, its just irritating at this point).

The YouTube video featured in a previous post may actually have a little to do with it.

But mostly, the seminal event of my hatred is the day that Mike Holmgren resigned as head coach of the Green Bay Packers to accept a position as Head Coach/General Manager/Vice President of Football Operations with the Seahawks. I think they even threw in some canned sardines and a belly rub.

I know, I know. I'm well aware of the depth of my ingratitude. After all, the man put the "Title" back into Titletown, USA.

The one thing that I can't and won't ever forgive is the opportunity to make the Packers of the late 20th Century a historically significant team. Instead, we became the flock without a shepherd. He abandoned us. He abandoned Brett Favre at the peak of his remarkable career. He is directly responsible for the appointment of Mike Sherman as the Packers general manager (I have no doubt the Packers brass did this to spite Holmgren after his departure).

I remember his return to Lambeau Field the following season on a Monday Night in November. To see him on the opposing sideline, wearing another team's colors, is something that still, almost eight years later, induces mild nausea. The Packers were soundly beaten that night, 27-7, in a fitting summation of what it was like to have Ray Rhodes holding the clipboard.

"See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly."

It is for this that I delight in their failures (see: Holmgren's embarrassing post-Super Bowl tirade at the refs). I actively pull for their opponent every week of the season. Even this week, I back our oldest rivals, the Bears. This Sunday, I look forward to watching a wide-open Jerramy Stevens drop perfectly thrown passes. I will toast Brian Urlacher when he separates Matt Hasselbeck's helmet from his head. And I applaud any Bears fan that embarks to Soldier Field and brings with them fresh mackerel and chum. Mike might get hungry on the plane ride back to the aquarium...umm...Seattle.