Generally as a fandom, when all you have is to delight in the follies of your rival, it means you have nothing of your own. The actual act is an admission of defeat, a lesser position. You’ve been beaten, humiliated, rendered to the sidelines, and all you can do is just watch and hope that the team(s) you hate will soon join you so that you can pretend it’s all the same. Teams and fans that know true victors don’t usually have to concern themselves with such desperate aims.
And I don’t fucking care.
I’ll be dining out for weeks on the Packers and Aaron Rodgers coughing up the world’s largest frozen hairball last night. I went to the bar after the game and found three Packers fans sitting silently in a row. I stood near them just to snort the air around them. Colombia could never produce a high like that. There’s a reason German has the word “schadenfreude.”
Because they know it’s over now. Now that Rodgers has pulled out every card, used every I’m-the-smartest-guy-in-the-room-because-I-say-so angle, used every avenue to complain, and then came up short against Jimmy Fucking Garoppolo and his 57.1 rating on the night and his “PLEASE INTERCEPT THIS WOUNDED DUCK” throws, the unvaxxed, Lao Tstupid fuckstick definitely has no clothes.
There won’t be a national game show he can go on to mock his coach, gloss his image, and deflect blame. Fans in Wisconsin will not be forgiving, at least for seven minutes instead of five like last summer. Maybe even the Packers themselves won’t feel like wheel posing for months again to cater to whatever whim Rodgers has decided is his latest stroke of brilliance. Maybe they just want to leave it all behind, just as they did with Brett Favre’s constant drama queen act about whether he would retire or not. No matter how great the player, patience for one’s bullshit runs out in sports when they’re pushing 40 and have specialized most in January pratfalls.
And that’s another thing for the Packers. I find myself once again circling back to Bill Simmons, which makes me make a sort of gurgling/belching noise combination. But when he was right he was right. It goes back to the 2008 NFC Championship game, when Packers followers couldn’t wait to tell us how the sub-zero temps were tailor made for Brett Favre. At 38. And Simmons was the one to point out what it’s like to be 38 and wake up on a day where the temperature is “get fucked.”
They did the same last night. “Oh, this is made for us. No one plays in the cold like Aaron!” Well, he’s 38 too. Remember that patented move, where Rodgers slithers out of the pocket to his right, the play seemingly lasts 37 minutes, and then he just hits some receiver 25 yards downfield that you swore came in from the sidelines? Yeah, he kept trying that. Except sometimes he couldn’t get outside. And when he did, he was caught from behind. Maybe those joints don’t work as well deep into January? Just a thought.
Don’t worry, Rodgers will find someone else or someone elses to blame. There’s the special teams, there’s the coach, there’s the GM. He was already starting in on the latter last night in the postgame presser. Already demanding the team be tailored to his exact specifications, which they did this year (bringing back Randall Cobb who had as many catches as you did last night). That he didn’t want to be part of any rebuild, about eight seconds after he said it wouldn’t be fair to address anything like that at that moment. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t fair to anyone, because it was fair to Rodgers, which is all he’s ever cared about.
It’s wonderful. Empowered that the Packers gave in to him after he held them hostage last summer, simply because he felt like it, feeling he could get away with anything, Rodgers couldn’t shut up. Couldn’t resist revealing what really mattered to him and what was important. Couldn’t believe that after having the entire city bend to him that he wasn’t worshipped for anything he did or said. Couldn’t believe that people might have thought it mattered that he lied to fans and team, and endangered everyone around him, simply because he was sure he knew better because his fellow airheaded dopes couldn’t wait to nod their heads in agreement. Look at this guy’s friends: Alex Rodriguez in the crowd last night, Joe Rogan as his personal idiot shaman, Ellen DeGeneres. All utterly flummoxed whenever there’s the slightest outcry about their brain dead offerings. It landed him on his ass, just like it always does. Except this time it was against a team that didn’t have an offense.
He’ll fuck off to Denver soon enough. The Packers will start over, and Packers fans will tell themselves they’re better off. It’ll certainly be quieter, which is what Sconies prefer over everything else. But mostly they’ll wonder just how in the ever living fuck they managed just one Super Bowl with Rodgers. No one was quicker to tell you it wasn’t his fault. It was always someone else’s. And yet… what’s the constant thread the past decade? The coaches change. The players change. The losses at the biggest moment don’t.
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