Taking a cue from the wildly popular “This Week In the Packer Blogosphere!” segment of the podcast, (and yes, I just made up the fact that it’s popular. I like to THINK it’s popular because, well, it was my idea. Corey really likes to make fun of it) I thought it would be a good time to take a quick look at a few items from a number of Packer blogs today.

• Railbird Central: The Silver Lining

After every game, win or lose, Railbird gives us what they like to call ‘The Silver Lining’ - at least one positive to take away from the proceedings. This week, Brian spotlights the play of the young corners pressed into action this past Sunday, from Tramon Williams to Will Blackmon and Patrick Lee.

• ACME Packing Company: Fixing the Offense

Brandon has three good points about the struggling offensive unit, but his second offering is the best: The best players are already playing - there’s no hidden gem waiting to be unearthed on the bench. The offense as a whole needs to play better.

• PackerGeeks: Really? Frost Still Around?

Can’t really argue with a single word Steve writes here (even the parts about the Packers signing Andy to handle the punting duties) about a third putrid performance from the Packers punter. I will admit I applauded the move when Thompson made it, thinking there was no way he would sign a player that could possibly be, even if not fantastic, anywhere near a major drop off from Jon Ryan. Boy was I (and Thompson) wrong. Frost is simply killing the Packers in the field position game.

• PackerChatters: Not Panicking, But Concerned

A pretty thorough laundry list of what ails the Packers. One nit I need to pick however. PackerChatter staffer Graham Knight writes:

Poor Aaron Kampman is seeing triple-teams.

You would think so, wouldn’t you? The way he’s disappeared the last two games? The trouble is, the tape doesn’t bear this out. Trueblood and Columbo handled Kampman almost exclusivley one on one the last two games. Sure, they had help from a back now and then, but over 85 percent of the snaps in both games, Kampman was given the one on one matchup that supposedly favors the Packers. Kampman just hasn’t delivered, and that is concerning, especially in light of today’s news that Cullen Jenkins, who was actually playing better than Kampman, is done for the year.

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• Say What?

In the latest installment of the PackerChatters‘ podcast ‘Packers Therapy‘, hosts Chris and Dave opine on the loss to the Cowboys and pontificate how the Packers didn’t HAVE to win Sunday night because this year is a ‘transitional’ year due to the switch from Favre to Rodgers.

What complete tripe.

I don’t have time to go into all the reasons that assertion is absurd, but frequent commenter ‘Keith’ sent me an email about this very subject (We are both regular secret Therapy listeners. Don’t tell Corey) and put it rather perfectly:

I understand I was reared to be an impatient New Yorker, but this team is talented. Period. This team didn’t make the NFC Championship because of Brett Favre. They made it because while young, they’re a very balanced and talented team.

I just find it incredible that anyone would expect anything less than 10 wins from this team. Now, if Rodgers ended up looking overwhelmed, then it would be reasonable to  adjust your expectations. Otherwise, there is no way you can rationalize Sunday night’s loss as anything other than a disappointment.

Could not agree more. In fact, anyone rationalizing any loss this year as acceptable for any reason would just baffle me. McCarthy said it best - he’s here to win the world championship. That’s what this team is built to do. Losing is not acceptable. Period.

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• The Right Move

…and after all the nice things I said about them.

C.D. Angeli over at Tundra Vision has put up one of the most ludicrous posts ever to be formulated in the Packer Blogosphere. In a nutshell, Angeli is upset that Aaron Rodgers is getting press for hosting weekly barbeque’s for his teammates. At least, I THINK that’s what he’s upset about. The post is War and Peace-esque in length and yet never makes a coherent point as to why it upsets Angeli that Rodgers is being portrayed as a good guy for hosting his teammates every week during the offseason.

Angeli seems particularly chapped at a comment Rodgers makes to USA Today about the attendance, or lack thereof, of Jennings and Driver. As written in USA Today:

Jennings and (Donald) Driver never came,” Rodgers, with a wry smirk, says of the starting wide receivers. “But Ruvell (Martin, the No. 3 receiver) came. That’s why he’s my No. 1.

Now, anyone with a reading comprehension level above the 3rd Grade can tell that Rodgers is making a joke here. Apparently, Mr. Angeli’s sense of humor has gone missing, because the above is taken as an obvious clue to Rodgers nefarious hidden motives in hosting his teammates every week:

…it is comments like these that make you question the whole intent of why he did it. On one hand, the article states that there were “no strings attached” for attending the Rodgers Party. However, there apparently are consequences for not attending.

Really? C.D. Buddy. It’s called a joke.

It’s this kind of manipulation to create negative impressions of Rodgers that I can not stand. Rodgers is a great teammate. His teammates love him, no matter who went to his gatherings and who didn’t. And yet Mr. Tundra Vision would have you believe that Rodgers has deliberately planted his hosting-a-weekly-barbecue story in the press to augment his image as a great teammate when in Tundra Vision’s alternate reality Rodgers was creating a hierarchy in the receiving corps, no matter what the depth chart says.

In a way, the post is instructive of the ridiculous level of scrutiny Rodgers is under. Only a Packer fan could take something as simple as Rodgers having people over as a way to open himself up to his teammates and twist it into some sort of Machiavellian plot. Good grief.

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• Rodgers and Jennings Need A Sit Down

Mike McCarthy during yesterday’s presser:

We have a lot of work to do. I say it all the time, and I mean it. We’ll correct it with the players tomorrow. It’s important to get it corrected. We don’t ever sweep anything under the rug around here. That will never change, because we feel like we’re going to go into a hornet’s nest up there in Detroit with their home opener.

He’s right of course. The Packers’ performance during Monday night’s game was hardly optimum, on any level. In fact, about the only two players you could grade out as having nearly perfect games were the two Aarons - Rodgers and Kampman. And even their efforts can be improved upon.

McCarthy has a long list of things he wants to work on, I have no doubt, but if he’s looking for suggestions he could do worse than BratsandBeerGuy’s suggested To Do List. It covers the major points that the team needs to address, the most important of which is the inability of the defense to get off the field on third down. Where I would differ with my esteemed fellow blogger is item number 4 - Opening Up the Playbook.

B&BG writes:

Overall it was a pretty conservative gameplan MM used last night, an understandable strategy given it was Aaron Rodgers’ first start. Next week against Detroit I would expect to see a little more variation and more aggressive play calling leading into the Dallas game.

I understand the impulse, but I think following it would be a mistake. Perhaps we’ll see a few more multiple receiver formations, but as I wrote last week, McCarthy needs to keep things tight and heavy formation-wise the first couple of games. The Packers don’t need to open things up against Detroit to win. Now Dallas and Indianapolis? That’s a different story.

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• What If…

I don’t know how I’ll figure out what to watch tonight! The Green Bay Press Gazette has exchewed the time honored tradition of providing its readership ‘5 Things To Watch’ and given us instead ‘3 Keys To Monday Nights Game’ And who knows where Railbird is. Probably working on his Baseball book. (Ugh. Baseball…) So I’ve turned to ACME Packing Company who have given us 3 things that have changed since last season. You know, when the Packers whooped the Vikings something fierce.

Keys? Things to watch? Things that have changed? I’m so confused. I may not even be able to watch the game now, since I won’t know what to watch for…

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• 10 Things To Watch Tonight

…to Fire Kornholio, otherwise known as Tony Kornheiser.

Bob Wolfley of The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel writes about the ESPN Monday Night Football announcing crew this year.

You hope when the games are for real, the Monday night crew will see fit to talk mainly about the football down there on the field.

You give ESPN credit for its willingness to adjust, but it’s a shame you have to get permission from a focus group to go ahead and call a football game, a version of needing a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows.

It’s really a shame that ESPN didn’t just consult the Packers blogosphere. BTW- according to wikipedia Tony Kornheiser makes $1.8 million dollars to announce Monday Night Football.

Bobby at Green Bay Booze and Broads:

If you’re like me and want to donkey punch Tony Kornheiser in the back of the head, make sure you tune into Wayne and Larry for an intelligent radio broadcast with the TV on mute.

I hope Bobby doesn’t mind I’m using a huge chunk of quote - I have to share this classic:

So if you were able to get past the amazing insight provided by the Monday Night Countdown team (by the way, it’s friggin Thursday!!!) you’ve been treated to one of the worst human beings on the planet….Tony Kornheiser. Kornheiser (or Kornholer as Mike Florio likes to call him) is simply the most irritating, unfunny, s!@*bag who actually gets paid to make horrible horrible jokes on national TV. Tonight, he’s thrown out zingers like “this just in.. Brett Favre has been traded to the Knicks because the Jets don’t seem like they want him anymore,” and I swear he laughed at his own joke for a good ten seconds. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! And what’s even worse is when Jaws laughs with him! I’d rather listen to John Madden babble on about whatever the hell he babbles on about. Dare I say that I miss Joe Theismann? I’m pretty sure Kornholer sold his soul to the devil to be on TV, but he has to go through life looking life Gollum from Lord of the Rings with an even worse comb-over. Ehhh.. can the season get started already so I can listen to Wayne Larrivee and Lary McCarren?

I could not agree more. I do not understand- Just what demographic does Tony serve? People that annoy us so much we Yell at the TV? Old white guys who think New York City is still the center of the world?

Dig deeper and you will find the Packer blogosphere is not done.

Mark at The Fontenot:

Last year I really never watched a whole Monday Night Football game, because I taught a class on Monday nights until late. This means that last night’s game was really my first Game Length Kornheiser Experience.
Guess what? Now I see why people really don’t like him much! I get that the national audience is more interested in the Favre story, and the lovable qualities of Green Bay, etc., but couldn’t Tony have at least said something vaguely original about the subjects? Apparently not. He is a bearded hot air balloon, with sandbags filled with horsecrap. The other two weren’t much better. Only in the late third quarter did they start to remember that some of us might want to know a few things about the players actually on the field, actually playing football. I found myself almost wishing for Dennis Miller.

Guys. I could not have said it any better. I guess some people think I’m mean. I don’t have any actual personal feelings about the man. In the reality of the business of the world there are people who have set the standard for Commentary during a game. Not only does Kornheiser not possess a broad enough knowledge of Football, he is too concerned with national headlines and “seeming” big picture items, and not enough about the game of Football. That’s why people love Madden, it’s also why people like Aikman and some other former star players who have a passion for the game. Even though some of us may think Aikman is too skewed to the Cowboys or John Madden is an overblown windbag- those guys have as much passion for the game as any Die-Hard Packer fan.

Most NFL announcers understand that when it’s the fourth quarter of a pre-season game, it allows for discussion of the broader NFL (NOT EVER BASEBALL. NFL and National issues ONLY please- it’s an NFL game for goodness sake, have some respect) but during the regular season it’s time to Talk About the Game. They LOVE Football. Just like Ron Jaworski.

I guess it’s more a question of ESPN programming executives. Do they really understand the game of Football?

Clearly the original Monday Night Football crew knew how to keep it about Football. (they now have a nice corporate heavy glossy Sunday night product on NBC with some Standard-Bearer announcers) But to the people who run the program now, numbers might be more important than value. They actually may be brilliant. Am I writing a post about how great Al Michaels is right now?

Meanwhile, the Monday Night Football brand erodes before our very annoyed eyes. (and ears)

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• Worldwide Leader In Redundancy

We have officially gone feed crazy.

Remember when you learned about Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase? This is bigger.

Here at Cheesehead TV we strive to adhere to our mantra “devoted to Green Bay Packer Fans”.

Welcome to the new Packer World, with all new pages including:

• Packer Blogosphere
  How about we take the Top 32 Packer blogs from around the web and sort them in order of what we (subjectively of course ) believe to be the most relevant to being a Packer fan today.
• Fan Forum Central
  Besides being a great way to access our very own wonderful Packer Fan Forum here at Cheesehead TV some of us (not naming any names) belong to way too many forums, so we’ve included some of our favorites (more to come ) as well as our favorite comment feeds.
• Audio Webscape
  When it comes to Packer audio there are many options, from Podcasts to Internet Radio. We have official Packer audio feeds, podcasts on Itunes, links to podcasts, Packer Songs. All in one place.
• Video Launchpad
  It’s out there…video all over the web. This is a tap of it. Like sparkling water. Official packer video feeds like Inside 1265, ESPN embeds, u name it. Packer video by playlist, flavored and sorted.
• Stats & History
  What about those links you don’t necessarily need everyday but are some of the greatest ways to waste time or answer packer questions like finding statistics from the Gory Years or how rare your packer program from 1942 is. They all have a home now.

As fans of Cheesehead TV, you know this is nowhere near the end when it comes to feeding the hard-core Packer fans daily caloric news intake. Packer World started organically and it remains that way, feel free to make suggestions or add features. We strive to feed the Packer Beast within us all.

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• Packer World

I would absolutely love to take credit for this observation, but I can’t.

I am usually loathe to venture into the comment sections on any Packer news site, but this gem had me grinning and cursing its truth at the same time.

From a commenter over at the JS Online Packer Blog calling himself windycityPacker, after reading Greg Bedard’s account of newly acquired from the Odessa Roughnecks DT Rodney Allen faring very well in one-on-one drills:

Rodney Allen already has done more than Harrell.

Sad but true.

If this kid Allen makes the roster and contributes in any way, he will instantly become one of my favorite players on the team.

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• Thompson Comes To Play