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Sundays are rough without football, especially after how the Packers season ended.

I love Sundays, but I love Sundays more when football is on. Football makes you forget about your hangover from Saturday night and the fact that you have to go back to work on Monday. Football also makes you feel less guilty for lazing around on the couch all day, eating food that raises your cholesterol and swearing at your TV.

Now we’re stuck with the NBA, NHL, MLB and golf on Sunday for the foreseeable future. I like all of those sports, but none of them makes a Sunday like football. Those other sports are for the other six days of the week.

Sunday is for football.

To kill the time on these offseason Sundays, I’m going to publish Surviving Sunday: Packers New, Notes and Links for the Football Deprived.

It’ll be a regular notebook-style column that opens with a random thought or rant (like the one you’re reading now), followed by some quick opinions on a couple of key issues related to the Packers that I didn’t have a chance to cover with a full post during the week. From there, I’ll include links to must-read/must-see stories, videos and blog posts from the previous week and a preview of possible Packers storylines for the upcoming week. I’ll close each Surviving Sunday with a few words on a subject unrelated to the Packers.  Read more... (914 words, estimated 3:39 mins reading time)

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Green Bay Packers tight end Jermichael Finley has opened his mouth again.  At least this time, it’s nothing too controversial.

On Monday, Finley made it known he wants to “retire a Green Bay Packer,” and be a “Packer for life.”  He went on to “compliment” the city of Green Bay by saying there is nothing to do there so there is a much smaller risk of him getting into trouble.

There’s no doubt Finley has the skills of a superstar. Anyone who has watched him play agrees he is a freak of athlete, a wide receiver in the body of a tight end.   He is a matchup nightmare for opposing defenses.  Just his height of 6-foot-5 gives him a big advantage over an opponent’s secondary.

He’s also one of quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ favorite weapons.  All offseason, Rodgers talked about excited he was to get No. 88 back on the field and that Finley had the chance to become a truly special tight end.

So Finley wants to stay a Packer and the franchise quarterback agrees with him. That’s fine, but what do the people that truly make that decision, general manager Ted Thompson and head coach Mike McCarthy, think?  Read more... (858 words + 1 image, estimated 3:26 mins reading time)

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"The Playmaker"

It was just a week ago that Jermichael Finley was upset about not being thrown the ball enough in the Denver game. Here were his comments:

“For sure, they took me out of the game. I don’t know what I came out with, but hopefully we can go back and dial something up for the double teams. We’ve got to have something for it. We’ll have to go back, not being selfish or nothing, but go back and dial up something so you can get your playmaker the ball in games like that when it’s close.”

From reading that quote, one would think that he was totally ignored in that game. Not having seen the game live, it’s certainly the impression that I had. But looking at the game stats told a different story. Finley had been targeted 6 times but caught only 3 for completions.

Fast forward to the Falcons game, which I did see live. Finley appeared to me to be a big part of the game plan. He was thrown to 7 times and caught 4. He did not always display the excellent hands he possesses. In fact, Finley had a particularly egregious drop at the goal line just before the second half, which cost the Packers 4 points. Here it is:  Read more... (569 words + 1 image, estimated 2:17 mins reading time)

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Jarius Wynn's sacked Jay Cutler twice on Sunday and earned a spot on this week's stock report.

The Green Bay Packers showed why they are the best team in the NFL on Sunday by beating the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field and improving to 3-0. The Packers were by far the more talented team on the field Sunday, and should have won by more than 10 points.

The Packers stock continues to rise, but there are still a few things the Packers need to do in order to be considered dominant:  Read more... (876 words + 1 image, estimated 3:30 mins reading time)

• Put teams away. Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers finally figured out how to win close games last season. Now they need to figure out how to not make games so close.
• Improve against the pass. I don’t know if it’s possible to be a dominant defense in today’s NFL, but the Packers need to do a better job against the pass.
• More consistency in the pass rush. I’m looking at you Clay Matthews. We can talk about containment and setting the edge all we want, but Matthews needs to get in the QB’s face and bring him down. He hasn’t done that so far.

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Award #5: Green Bay Packer Most Likely to Win Comeback Player of the Year:

(Be sure to place your vote in the poll below.)

Adam: Grant — I’ve always like Grant, even though he basically just runs straight ahead as fast as he can. The Packers offensive line took a major step forward last season, which helps Grant’s cause.

Al: I really wanted to go with an off-beat pick here, and was leaning towards Mike Neal. I really think he was on his way to establishing himself as a full-time starter before being lost for the year. Then I was considering Grant, but with McCarthy’s token commitment to the running game and 3 options at RB, I don’t see Grant getting enough snaps. However, there’s one guy at a skill position that is sure to have more of an impact on the team if he stays healthy – TGIFinley. It can be nobody else.  Read more... (594 words + 1 image, estimated 2:23 mins reading time)

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When Jermichael Finley found out the final bad news about his knee injury suffered in the week five game against the Redskins, he turned to twitter to let Packers fans know that, “YOTTO has been rescheduled for the 2011-2012 Green Bay Packer Season.”

Of course, whether Finley likes it or not, the Packers’ “Year Of The TakeOver” continued on just fine without him in 2010. In fact, it continued on just fine without more than a dozen Packer players lost for the season. I’m still amazed by that…

But getting back to Jermichael Finley, he’s talking about his knee again, but this time it’s all good. Back on April 22, Finley tweeted, “Today was the first time since Week 5 that I caught a ball & ran routes. An my my my I look good.” (never one afraid to kiss the mirror is Finley…)

Yesterday, just 20 days later, Finley let Packer Nation know, “I just thought to myself that its May & this knee feels brand new already. smh. This what my Pack Fans been waiting 4 huh.”  Read more... (424 words + 1 image, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

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First off, congratulations to the Green Bay Packers for winning the NFC Championship and going to the Super Bowl. Also hats off to the Chicago Bears, they went down swinging till the very end and almost made a comeback with a 3^rd string quarterback.

Now with that out of the way, the one question I had after watching the game was “what is it with the Chicago Bears that gives Aaron Rodgers so much trouble?” Do they have the blueprint other teams should be studying to nullify Aaron Rodgers?

Rodgers has been up and down against the Bears this season; during week 3 he played remarkably well and lost, in week 17 he played quite poor and won, and in the Championship game was more a combination of the two, where Rodgers started out well and ended poorly.

Does it have something to do with the Tampa-2 defensive scheme that the Bears run or could it be Soldier Field itself, which was thoroughly criticized prior to the NFC Championship game? Could it be the loss of key offensive weapon Jermichael Finley? Or could it be that we fans are so fixated with the Packers-Bears rivalry that we tend to scrutinize and criticize Rodgers more when it comes to playing against the Bears?  Read more... (1469 words + 1 image, estimated 5:53 mins reading time)

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