Welcome back to the Coach Clarahanson Show!!! We hope you find this week's show humorous, educational, and a little scary. This might the best time to play the Pot Smokers from Puget Sound. They are banged up, and we are healing. They are shaky, and we are on a roll. Their colors are “college navy, action green, and wolf gray” and our colors are forest (as in Gregg) green and cheese gold. Seriously. Look it up. Time to buckle your chin straps, boys, and bring out the can of whoop-ass! Create a seam here - X' & O's about the game or a scheme Rodgers continues his undefeated streak in December at Lambeau because he is more careful with his footing – he stays in the pocket and goes through his progressions across the entire field. Starks is now relegated to only being serviceable as a 3rd down back, picking up blitzes or catching safety valve screen passes; cue the emergence of one Ty Montgomery (thunder) and one Aaron Ripkowski (plunder). The O-line was, for the most part, solid; save for the lack of a running gap on 4th and 2. Jordy is back, thanks to winter weather slowing down D-backs. Cobb doesn’t drop passes when he is made a starter on Special Teams ... it knocks his “Cobb” webs loose (get it?). The D is still struggling to get off the field because Clay can only use 1 arm to rush the QB and tackle RB’s…keep an eye on that. The return of Damarious Randall has helped the safeties maintain their responsibilities. Dean Lowry deserves a little more sprinkling of play time, as his knocking down passes and sacking the QB tends to help out the DB’s, too, and he could become a dorky looking X-factor as Clay nurses his arm. WTF – The Coach’s take on a bad ref call or a bad play call or the like When will he take that Game Management 101 course? McCarthy needs to stop falling for the “my dick is bigger than yours” dare. He’s worse than Trump (“No puppet, YOU’RE a puppet.”). Just because the other team goes for it on 4th down when they are on their side of the field doesn’t mean you have to. Especially when they didn’t get it, and you’re ahead! They are doing it out of desperation, you are doing it because… we’ll, I guess there is no reason. You’re just doing it. The downsides far outweigh any upside (momentum gain?). You have a Super Bowl; you don’t need to prove you have balls. Nobody cares. Just win the game. See also, the list of elite coaches who have won multiple championships by understanding that football is a game of field position (hint: especially in December). Not to be outdone by MM’s architecture of incompetence, the Big Legume clearly needs to dust off the Coach Clarahanson archives. We’ll spare you the details that are laid out ad nauseam on why you shouldn’t play more than 5 defensive backs at one time (and only do that very sparingly), but holy-man, man, what are you thinking? We can’t get 4th and 2, but they follow our failure with a run for a 1st down on 3rd and 12 because we pull all our D lineman to defend the pass. Stupid. What’s equally WTF’able, is our execution of the “prevent nothing” defense (heard this before?). The prevent D late in the game gave up the very play it is supposed to prevent: a long pass with YAC. Everybody HATES the prevent D, so if you’re only half-ass (at best) with it, can we just abandon it altogether (please)? Nobody ever screams, “Why aren’t we playing Prevent Defense!” And, as far as I can tell, zero teams have lost a game because they didn’t go into the prevent defense. So let me be the very first to utter these uniquely contrived words: Fire Capers. Bears Still Suck – the Coach has proof Jay Cutler Throws 2 Interceptions While Visiting Children’s Hospital Bears quarterback Jay Cutler was put on IR to prevent him from playing football in hopes that, as head coach John Fox explained “the team can remain competitive against bottom-feeder teams like the San Francisco 49ers.” Cutler’s publicist, Harold Poon, said that Jay wanted to make good use of his time away with a scheduled appearance at Northwestern Childrens Hospital of Illinois for the purposes of “improving his image with Bears fans and lifting the spirits of kids that don’t feel so good.” While touring the halls, Jay surprised kids in wheelchairs by throwing footballs at them, trying to restrain his emotions when they were unable to complete the catch or hospital staff members impeded his field of view. “Obviously it wasn’t the performance of his career,” said Cutler’s wife Kristin Cavallari, who accompanied him throughout the infirmary. “After his second interception when he doinked one off of that little girl’s IV bag holder, I knew this would be one of those outings he’d just have to shake off.” One youth became visibly emotional when it was apparent the football player’s visiting time was up, as the child tearfully exclaimed “They said Matt Forte was coming!” Udder stuff – commentary from the Badger Underground We are now looking ahead to the rest of the #17 Badgers basketball season. Oh yeah, we have one more non-conference football game on neutral turf in Texas against another Mid-American Conference patsy, Western Michigan. Some call it the Cotton Bowl. Wait a second! The Broncos are 13-0 and ranked 15th! But, they had a whole season of playing Mid-America patsies and also beat Nortworstern and Fibbinoise. Whoop de friggin' doo! All Bucky needs to do is play like they did for the first 22 minutes in Indy and they will romp. Never mind the hot steaming turd that was the final 38 minutes. In related news, Ohio State won the Big Ten without the nuisance of playing in the championship game. #2 Wisconsin and #3 Penn State duked it out in Indy. Penn State won. The end. If playoff teams were chosen in the NFL in the same way as in the NCAA, the #12 power ranked Packers would be in a wild card slot right now. Nice! We’re gonna kick you’re a$$ - predictions for the next game It’s December. Time to stop asking “Is it Thompson’s fault, or is it McCarthy’s?” This is supposed to be a happy occasion. Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who. (Click on Link) We haven’t had any impressive victories, but we are on a roll. In case you missed it, we got something back – that swagger. That mojo. The “It” factor. It’s what the French call a certain “Idun tnoa waat.” (Click on Link) If we can keep that chip on our shoulder, we can beat anybody because nobody in the NFL is really all that good this year – so it’s still a tossup if/when we make it to the playoffs (see also, 2010). So why not us? Why not now? Plus, it’s gonna be cold, and Seattle don’t do so well when it’s chilly. Plus, their D is a shell of its former self without Earl Thomas on the field (see also, Buccaneers 15, Seahawks 5). But seriously folks, we can beat the Seahags by (wait for it…) using the West Coast offense! Short dink-and-dunk passes underneath to RB's, slot receivers and tight ends will be the way to eat up clock, keep our defense off the field, and score points. Seattle’s talented DB’s will be able to lock down our wide-outs (assuming no snow), and our running game isn’t what it used to be, so keeping those DB’s away from the middle of the field (using our wide-outs as decoys) will open up the middle for Thunder and Plunder all day. This could be Russell Wilson’s 1st game this year when he scores a TD but does not win. Wear your long johns: Packers 20, Seahawks 14. (Helpful hint to those of you braving the cold at Lambeau Sunday afternoon … if you’ve only got 3-inches of pipe, don’t go to the Men’s room with 6-inches of clothes.) JB – Packer greats you forgot about, but stories you’ll remember about them Speaking of group pictures, here’s one of Coach’s favorites… In 1946, St. Norbert student Vern Biever (nice name) approached the Packers and, in exchange for a field pass, became the first NFL team photographer (which came with no monetary stipend at the time). Photographing NFL action in the 1940s was not as simple as it is today. Because photographers had to pre-focus their lenses, it forced them to stalk the sidelines and guess where the action was going to be. Besides having to follow the action so closely, shutter speeds in cameras were much slower, which made it difficult to take action shots without a blur. In all, photographers like Vern could only take 6 to 8 good photos per game. Check out some of his classics… While football photography was not easy in the early days, it did have its benefits. Biever photographed the majority of great players and coaches throughout Packer history. Starting in the early 1940s, he photographed such Pro Football Hall of Famers as Curly Lambeau, Clarke Hinkle, Don Hutson, and Tony Canadeo. Ultimately, Biever’s legacy was established with his work during the Vince Lombardi era. From 1959 to 1967, the Green Bay Packers won five world championships and had twelve future Pro Football Hall of Famers. Biever’s photos of Bart Starr, Paul Hornung, Willie Davis, Jim Taylor, Ray Nitschke, Jerry Kramer, Willie Wood, Forrest Gregg and others would be publicized widely for decades. While his photos became well known, Biever’s working conditions for the Packers in the 1960s were not ideal. In order to take photos, he had to sneak around the sidelines and capture images from afar. According to Biever, Lombardi disliked having his picture taken, and by all accounts saw Vern as a bit of a nuisance. Some of his best-known photos from the era were shot from far away or without Lombardi’s knowledge. Additionally, Biever was still not being paid by the Packers in the early 1960s and used his own money to finance travel costs to away games. He made photographing the team profitable by selling his photos to publications.
One of the more curious aspects of Vern’s popular photos from the 1960s is the mood of his subjects. Although the Green Bay Packers of this era were the most successful NFL team of any decade, winning five world championships in only seven seasons, many of Vern’s most beloved photos show team members looking dejected, worn out, and beaten up. These images, in particular, show the brutality of football and the emotional toll championship expectations took on players. And even though the Pack's success took a turn for the worse in the ‘70s and ‘80s, his photos remained excellent, earning Biever the NFL Photographer of the Year award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1984. In 2002, he was inducted into the Green Bay Packer Hall of Fame as a contributor to the franchise. Packer great Bart Starr nominated and then inducted him claiming “you wouldn’t have a Packer Hall of Fame without Vern Biever.” Following the 2007 season, Vern hung up his camera bag after 60 years of sideline photography. Biever passed away in October of 2010, but his pictures still line the Packers and Canton Halls of Fame, preserving the essence of what we all regard as Packer football. So, I know what you’re thinking… “Geez, Coach, that was actually a touching and remarkably well written, if not completely plagiarized, article exemplifying excellence and pride in the history of the Packers organization – what gives?” Well, Danny, don’t worry, Coach still has a double-jointed funny bone that will continue to push the envelope of potentially inappropriate entertainment. (Click on Link). You're welcome!
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Author"Coach" is the insightful collective brain and funny bone of a few legendary Packer fans who provide everything you need to know (and what Packers beat writers often plagiarize) about the Green & Gold, plus a weekly guest appearance by The Badger Underground. Archives
November 2022
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