The NFL changed the overtime format today and even if it is only for the playoffs it is a mistake and makes no sense. If they wanted to change the rules in overtime to eliminate the field goal to win on the first drive, then just eliminate the field goal all together. First touchdown wins, it’s pure and it’s simple.

The “Favre Rule” gives the team that loses the flip slightly more hope if they can hold their opponent to a field goal. Basically it just prolongs the game. I can’t wait for the first time both teams get field goals on their first drives and then play two more quarters with the winner having to play another brutal playoff game the next week or losing a star player due to injury.

All the incredibly stupid suggestions I’ve seen on this subject since the end of the season show just how perfect the “sudden-death” rule is. This will come back to bite the NFL much harder than any first-drive field goal ever will.

Now as far playing the Super Bowl in New York, I’m all for that. The fact that they are even considering it is great news, after all, some of the greatest championship games in NFL history have been played in the mud and the blood and the cold. In fact the Packers have won three of their 12 NFL Championships in New York.

With the Super Bowl being pushed later and later into February, the cold weather has a lessor chance of being a factor, but winter is winter, anything can happen and usually does. Good weather in New York might open the door for Super Bowls in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh or Washington. To be honest I can’t believe they haven’t had a Super Bowl in the nation’s capital yet.

I know it’s nice to have the teams in a perfect weather situation all the time but that’s not football. How opposite would those two moves be? Change the 52-year old overtime rule and move the championship game back to a cold weather site? Something wrong something not quite right.

Locally the Packers continue to take heat for not signing “other team’s” free agents. In other words not spending money for the sake of spending money. If they want to spend money foolishly they can always hire me as vice president. That wouldn’t be any worse than paying millions to the soon to be UFL players that make up NFL free agency this year.

The Packers have as much talent as anybody in the NFL and the approach that was instituted here in 1992 with the arrival of Ron Wolf has been pretty damn successful. Unlike the NFL, the Packers realize that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

I know I’m late to the party but I’ll give my take anyway. Signing the four players they did last week was something the Packers simply had to do. Letting four starters go was not the way to build on a playoff team from a year ago. Granted Pickett was franchised but that was just to keep him off the market, the plan was to sign a long term deal all along.

The Nick Collins situation was handled perfectly. While Collins wanted a new deal last year even though his contract gave him a huge raise the Packers were wise to wait do it this year. While the Packers did give Collins $14 mil guaranteed in 2010, I bet if somebody were willing to pay the Packers the first and third-round picks as compensation, the Packers would have thought twice about matching any monetary value. My guess is they would have took the picks and said so long.

Keeping Collins though is really big, the Packers defense would have taken a step in year two under Dom Capers without him. I used to be a hater, but back-to-back Pro Bowl seasons changed my mind. Now let’s hope the money doesn’t go to his head.

Ryan Pickett was another key cog that needed to be kept, for at least two years considering the money they gave him. I think he is good for two years for sure and maybe three but will he will never see four. By then B.J. Raji will be ready to move to the nose and the Packers shouldn’t miss a beat.

The biggest debate is over Chad Clifton and Mark Tauscher. Clifton had to stay because the Packers simply don’t have anybody else on the roster right now who can play left tackle. That is sad, but very true. Maybe T.J. Lang in pinch but my guess is Lang will now be fighting for a starting position at left guard and won’t see much practice time at tackle anymore. Daryn Colledge  can’t play left tackle or left guard so I think Jason Spitz, who is coming off a back injury and Lang will battle it out for left guard now that Tauscher is back at right tackle.

My updated line would be from left to right Clifton, Lang, Wells, Sitton and Tausch. Spitz is injury prone but should be a good backup at either guard position and at center, where he actually started last year. I doubt Colledge makes the team, he is already talking about holding out which tells me he has a bad attitude and won’t accept being a backup, which he is. If the Packers can trade Tony Moll, they should be able to trade Colledge. We probably could use a few used gym bags or something, practice dummies always come in handy.

The way I look at Tauscher coming back is the Packers got him cheap. Tauschers is a year younger and arguably in better condition. I do agree with Mike McCarthy that Clifton should be more durable this year simply because he didn’t have surgery on just about every appendage like he did last year’s offseason. The same then, can also be said for Tauscher who won’t be coming off major knee surgery this year. I expect the two to be starting again this year on opening day and barring injury all season.

I think Ted Thompson got the message loud and clear last year that the offensive line had not developed. It is the one major area that Thompson has failed in. I promise you that signing Clifton and Tauscher were not the last moves to made there.

Finally, my apologies to Lynn Dickey, James Lofton, Sean Jones and Jan Stenerud. I was that half-pissed up dude gushing over you guys at Stadium View last Friday night right before you left. Thanks for coming out there though, you guys are great Packers.

Like the annual will he play or won’t he play drama of Brett Favre, the annual Ted Thompson bashing has begun in earnest on the first day of the NFL’s free agency period. It seems that most fans don’t really care who the Packers spend money on as long as they spend it. Kind of like the way I spend my money, which is pretty much why I’m always broke. Thompson, however, has more than one life to worry about when it comes to spending the Packers’ money and he is not going to break the bank and cripple the team’s future.

All Thompson has done in his five years is take the horrible mess Mike Sherman left him and after suffering through a 4-12 season in his first year at the helm is turn the team into a playoff contender and now Super Bowl contender. Since Thompson hired Mike McCarthy the Packers are 38-26 in the regular season and have reached the playoffs two of the last three years including one appearance in the NFC Championship game.

Thompson was bold enough to make the right move at the right time regarding Favre and the because of it the Packers once again have one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL and are set for years at the premier position in the NFL. It is better to get rid of a player one year to soon than one year too late. With few exceptions Thompson has made all the right moves for the Packers the last five years.

With that in mind this all-day whining today because the Packers didn’t break the bank and buy Julius Peppers or pay an outrageous amount to a 33-year old broken down left tackle is ridiculous. The Green Bay Packers don’t act that way, which is why they have one of the best records in the NFL since free agency started, and Washington has one of the worst.

***NOTE:  Chad Clifton did indeed just resign with the Packers. Three year deal with seven million guaranteed. Averages seven mil a year but he won’t play three years, don’t know what the salary is the last year but is probably a big one that he won’t see.***

With that news update I guess all the whining done by fans and especially Chris Havel on The Fan today was worth it. I hate to bite the hand the feeds me but am I alone in thinking The Fan is getting almost un-listenable? I mean between the Bear fan and the Bronco fan in the morning and the Thompson hater/Favre butt-kisser in the afternoon, it’s getting sick. Two straight hours this afternoon of making fun of Thompson and praising the injury prone Clifton. And low and behold five minutes after they are off the air Clifton signs. Maybe Havel is calling the shots now.

But this is not Dallas, the Packers won’t hosting 100,000 people to a basketball game in Lambeau Field anytime soon, and in an NFL uncapped economy the Packers could be endanger of becoming extinct if they fail to be competitive long term. They simply can’t afford to pay big money for a one-year fix then settle for five years of losing like other teams can. The best way to build a team to last is through the draft but you have to be damn good to do it. Thompson must be just that because has built a winner in Green Bay knowing the restrictions on the only publicly owned franchise in professional sports.

Thankfully Thompson, like his mentor – Ron Wolf – doesn’t give a crap about what people say about him and is confident in his ability to get the job done. The guy is almost anti-social and having to meet the press as much as he does doesn’t help his image any. But I love the way he destroyed Greg A. Bedard last January in their one-on-one interview. Bedard was clearly trying to goat him into getting mad and all he got was a chuckle. Of course, anybody you uses their middle initial in there name thinks they are hot-shit from the get-go, so Thompson knew what was coming. It was funny stuff. Go to JSOnline to check it out.

I call all-you-all Favre ball-washers so go ahead and call me a Thompson ball-washer if you want. Like with Favre, results speak for themselves. Thompson needs to take this team to the Super Bowl to justify it all, no doubt about that, but he has all the pieces are in place as far as head coach and starting quarterback. The defense is on the rise and the team has a ton of young talent. I just can’t see how adding an overpaid prima donna like Peppers is going to help the chemistry of this team. Peppers is no Reggie White.The best thing about today is all the pressure is on Chicago now. With the Jay Cutler trade last year, and the signing of Peppers and Chester Taylor today, it’s the NFC North or bust for the Bears. With Cutler at QB? Good luck with that.

All I ask is that we let it play out before rushing to judgment. If  indeed Thompson was asleep at 11:00 PM last night when free agency started, I bet it was a sound sleep.

Are you kidding me? The almighty punter has spoken. Apparently upset by the fact that the Packers were no longer interested in the services of a shitty punter Jeremy Kapinos had this to say:

“While I do admit I needed to improve and I was at fault for some of it, I won’t agree with anyone I was the lone liability. I think it’s very irresponsible to place the blame on one person. (Special teams) won’t improve if that’s the philosophy, I would hope there is a sense of accountability across the board.” (thanks to the Press-Gazette)

Kapinos must have learned from the school of Ryan Longwell. Longwell never missed a kick while he was in Green Bay. “We” might have missed one, but Longwell was perfect. I suppose there may be a lot of other things involved in punting a football high and long and we layman will never know the intricacies of the art (insert smiley here). Good luck in your future endeavors Mr. Kapinos.

What pisses me off is I was going to comment on this tomorrow but the little baby beat me to it. I loved Mike McCarthy’s quote about Kapinos at the combine – “For him to be on our team next year, he needs to improve. The performance in that position will improve with him or without him.”

I think the coach hurt the kid’s feelings. Anybody want to take bets Kapinos never punts again in the NFL?

That is good stuff, Maynard. Good stuff.

Judging by the comments by both Packers’ general manager Ted Thompson and head coach Mike McCarthy, the Green Bay Packers may be a landing spot for the biggest enigma in this year’s NFL Draft. Thompson and McCarthy had nothing but good things to say about Tim Tebow in surprisingly candid reviews of the Florida phenom. McCarthy even saying he “would love to work with him.”

Tebow is generally regarded as a second or third-round pick and if he does slip to the third round I could see the Packers taking him. I know the Packers don’t need a starting quarterback but they could certainly use a solid backup. The Packers could develop Tebow over the next few years and maybe toss in a few Michael Vick-type plays like the Eagles did last year with Vick playing behind Donovan McNabb.

True, the Packers have more pressing needs but the Packers are also pressing their luck with quarterback health (knock on wood hard after reading the next sentence). The last time a quarterback for the Green Bay Packers was injured in a game so bad he couldn’t start the next week was 1992 – 18 seasons! That is ridiculous. We all thought Aaron Rodgers was injury prone but if he didn’t get hurt in the beating he took last year he may well be on to an iron man streak of his own. Still, 18 years is a long time not to have a QB go down, the Packers would be wise to be well stocked at that position.

Drafting QBs worked well in the 90′s under Ron Wolf. Guys like Matt Hasselbeck, Aaron Brooks, Ty Detmer come immediately to mind. None were world-beaters but Hasselbeck went to a Super Bowl in Seattle and Brooks and Detmer started in the league after leaving Green Bay. Guys like that could at least get you through the year, granted any championship hopes would have been gone had Favre gone down back then and that certainly is the same case now under Rodgers.

The Packers right now are as thin at QB as at any time in recent memory. Matt Flynn is not NFL caliber material, if Rodgers goes down the Packers become the St. Louis Rams. If you can get one year of development out of Tebow I think he can become an NFL quarterback. The man is a winner and a hard worker and has succeeded at every level. And  Mike McCarthy already has changed the throwing motion of Rodgers after Rodgers came into the NFL from the Jeff Tedford school of quarterbacking which had’t had much success in the NFL until A-Rodge.

Tedford’s QBs do include Super Bowl winner Trent Dilfer, but you or I could have quarterbacked his Baltimore Raven team that year. Guys like David Carr, Joey Harrington, Kyle Bollar and the all-time colossal failure Akili Smith are his other graduates. McCarthy himself didn’t want anything do to with Rodgers when McCarthy was offensive coordinator in San Francisco when the 49ers drafted Alex Smith instead of Rodgers with the first pick in the draft in 2005. What McCarthy has done with Rodgers since then is nothing short of remarkable.

If not Tebow, the quarterback position is one area that has flew under the radar this off-season and the Packers do need help there. Is it a priority, I don’t know, but QB isn’t like any other position, you can’t game-plan around a QB who can’t play, not unless you have the best defense and the best running game in the league. The Packers will need to upgrade here at some point and a third-round pick on Tebow that could turn into a second down the road would not be a bad investment.