Tick, tick, tick. The NFL trade deadline draws near. By 3pm Central today, we will know if our cries from the stands of “DO SOMETHING” will be honored or ignored. Well, actually, that’s not even true. All we will really know is if a trade has been executed. It’s likely that we’ll never know how many tires were kicked, how many potential offers fell through or stalled out, nor how many offers we even entertained. And if any of that does trickle out from organizational “insiders,” we have to reasonably question how much of that is even accurate. In this era of mass dissemination and gamesmanship of every kind, how certain can we really be of any anonymously released nuggets of insider intel? There isn’t an operation anywhere, in any industry, that is willing to tip its cap to its competition or feed a discourse of malcontent from within. That’s just bad business.
So here we go…
Let me just start here – I don’t give Brian Gutekunst a free pass in his position as General Manager of the Green Bay Packers. I don’t believe it’s ever healthy simply to ride in the back seat down Roller Coaster Road and never question the destination. It’s good, it fosters great conversation, but let’s just keep it in perspective: there is a reason why Gutey is the GM and we are fans. One more thing to keep in the forefront of the discussion on this: “fan” is the linguistic short form of “fanatic”. While most certainly a fan of the game of football and a fan of the Green Bay Packers, Gutey’s day-to-day existence varies greatly from that of ours, the fanatics, and in some case stands in complete opposition to the single-minded, emotional mood swings that we (as fans) embody.
With our podiums firmly cemented in the error of recency, I have heard some incredible utterances from Packers fans in the last 48 hours. Just be careful, everybody. Screams of “DO SOMETHING” generally prove to be cries of extreme emotional venting in the absence of rational thought, void of a tangible and attainable answer to the question: “Do what, exactly?”
We’re all guilty of it.
“Go get a DB!” or “There’s got to somebody out there who is better than fill-in-the-blank!” or “If we just sit on our hands, then we obviously don’t care”
The equation, though we’d like to believe this is not the case, is never so simple. First of all, who is out there? Who is even available? Then, can this individual fit into our financial framework? And if we can play around with the numbers, are we sure he is better than fill-in-the-blank? Are we sure he wants to play here?
The questions are important to ask. The answers ought to be viewed as pathways to betterment, not hurdles to legitimate progress. But I have heard an awful lot of problems laid out with very few legitimate solutions presented.
Fantasy football is great. I play it, I love it, it gives a tiny glimpse into the world of behind-the-scenes maneuverings, but this ain’t fantasy football. This is the NFL, where every “something” must fit into a carefully crafted window of opportunity and financial ability, where every move requires a counter – adding one man to a roster means dropping one, acquiring a salary means chopping another, living in the now may mean mortgaging the future. “DO SOMETHING” is a great theoretical cry, but more often than not it comes from a place of, at best, ignorance, and at worst, wild irresponsibility.
I can’t wait to see if the Pack pulls off another Micah Parsons stunner, but if this roster remains unchanged when the clock strikes 3pm, it really doesn’t say anything.
