This one feels special.

I try not to get too far ahead of myself early in the season with my season-long outlook for the Packers. Teams very often look quite different in December and January than they do in September and October.

But after three weeks, it’s hard for me to contain my giddiness.

So far in this young season, this is the best Packers offense we’ve seen since the all-timer that was the 2011 unit, and it has the potential to be even better. The Packers are averaging more than 40 points per game and easily lead the league in scoring and many key offensive categories. Aaron Rodgers is playing MVP-caliber football, and Matt LaFleur is rapidly ascending to being one of the league’s best coaches, and certainly one of its best offensive game planners and play callers. 

The defense is, of course, the weak spot, and there are plenty of causes for concern. The thin defensive line is still susceptible to a strong running game, and is likely to be the team’s Achilles heel if the Packers do end up getting eliminated in the playoffs. 

The Packers do have plenty of defensive talent at the second and third level, and a more than capable pass rush. They’re making just enough plays at crucial moments that they’ve been able to escape significant negative results. Is that sustainable? Well, we’ll see.

But if the defense is able to get caught up at least to an extent to the offense after an offseason without work, this could be the most complete team the Packers have had since those 2010-2011 squads, even besting the 2014 unit that should have reached the Super Bowl.

Ultimately, the 2020 season is more likely to be defined by offense than defense, given the abbreviated preseason and the types of offenses and quarterbacks that are among the league’s elite. Teams like the Kansas City Chiefs, Seattle Seahawks, Baltimore Ravens, Los Angeles Rams and Green Bay Packers all have among the league’s most efficient offenses largely due to their outstanding caliber of quarterback play this season, but also due to the creativity and caliber of their coaches. 

With September in the rear view mirror, I feel better about this team after the first calendar month of play than I have any other Packer team since that 2011 unit. 

So while my feeling coming into this season was that of cautious optimism, I’m now a believer. This can be a championship team. It’s not going to be easy, and as with any championship team it will require a little bit of luck, but with an offense and a quarterback playing to this elite level, this is a team that can compete with anyone, and bring home a fifth Lombardi Trophy.

Packers get some lucky scheduling breaks

Some quirks of football during the COVID-19 pandemic have definitely worked out in the Packers’ favor so far in this young season. Notably, the Packers got to go on the road to Minneapolis and New Orleans to play in traditionally loud, raucous indoor environments without having to worry about opposing fans in the stands.

Talk about a treat for Aaron Rodgers. Rodgers has to be considered one of the all time greats with the hard count and drawing players offsides, and he accomplished this several times both in Minneapolis and New Orleans. One such incident was quite significant in New Orleans--Rodgers managed to draw a defender offsides, saw he had a free play and threw up a jump ball to Allen Lazard in the endzone, who was then interfered with, giving the Packers the ball at the one yard line to set up an ensuing touchdown.

The Packers hadn’t won in the Superdome in their last several tries there, and the Drew Brees-led Saints had never lost at home on Sunday Night Football. You have to feel as though the results of this one could have been different if there were fans in the stands. 

The Packers certainly don’t need to apologize for this victory; it was well-earned and does not come with any asterisks. But it’s worth acknowledging that the schedule has actually worked in the team’s favor so far, at least in this regard.

Wisconsin Beer of the Week

I’ve been on a bit of a stout kick lately, now that the weather’s cooling off. During the fall and winter, probably a good 50 percent or more of my beer fridge is stouts and porters, and there are some pretty outstanding 

selections available from Wisconsin breweries.

One of my personal favorites is from Three Sheeps, based out of Sheboygan, a brewery that is rather underrated on a statewide level, I think. Every year Three Sheeps releases a new version of its barrel-aged imperial stout The Wolf, which is, for my money one of the best barrel-aged stouts you’ll find anywhere.

At 12.3 ABV, this one is pretty hefty, so it’s a sipper for sure. But despite the high alcohol content, the booziness is balanced really well by a thick, smooth mouthfeel and molasses flavor. It’s got a very low 13 IBU; this one is sweet and enjoyable. The name refers to the phrase “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” because this is a beer that packs a punch, but dresses itself up as a sweet, easy-drinking stout.

I highly recommend you seek this beer out each year upon its release. You can also find some variants. For example, this year I picked up versions of The Wolf with vanilla and blueberry. I always enjoy the original the best, but these specialty variants are also quite excellent.

Maybe next week I'll pick something other othan a stout. Maybe.

The first COVID-19 scare of the season in Tennessee

As of the time I’m writing this paragraph (Wednesday morning), the NFL has officially had its first COVID-19 scare of the season, resulting in the postponement of the game that was scheduled for Sunday between the Tennessee Titans and Pittsburgh Steelers. The Titans had three player positives and five personnel positives, and were thus forced to shut down operations for the bulk of the week, which would have made game preparation nearly impossible.

I’ll be interested to see the NFL’s official plan for how they handle the delay. Again, the current sense is that the league will either look into placing the game on Monday night, or perform some switcheroo magic with the bye week schedules. 

This also brings to mind the circumstance with the Metrodome roof collapse some years back, when the NFL ultimately rescheduled the Vikings/Giants game to take place at Ford Field in Detroit on a Tuesday night. Different circumstances, but you wonder if the NFL would consider another Tuesday Night Football situation like that at some point if it needed to get creative with COVID-related reschedules.

The reaction on Twitter was predictably varied, with plenty of people panicking that this could be the end of the season.

Had this been even just a month or two ago I may have been one of those people, but the NFL has done a far better job than I ever could have anticipated with managing the pandemic and testing so far. I could not have foreseen myself doing this in early August, but I have to give the league props for the way it’s handled safety so far.

In addition, let’s not forget that Major League Baseball ran into an early outbreak, but quickly got things under control. While there is much greater flexibility with baseball rescheduling, the good news is that like with baseball, this outbreak happened early in the season, giving the NFL plenty of wiggle room for how it will address necessary rescheduling.

So far, the NFL has earned some faith that they will handle this first bump in the road the correct way.

Around the NFC North

As always, it’s time to take a brief look at what the rest of the NFC North accomplished (or failed to accomplish) over the weekend’s action.

Are the Chicago Bears for real? Well, I’m not going to go too crazy singing their praises yet as their competition hasn’t exactly been stiff, but you can’t sneeze at a 3-0 record no matter who the victories are against. The fact that the Bears were able to find an excuse to put Mitch Trubisky on the bench and still win games is bad news for the rest of the NFC North, as this is a team that’s better when Trubisky is on the sideline. This Bears defense is still legit, and while a Nick Foles-led offense isn’t particularly frightening, he can at least do enough with the pieces this team has on offense (particularly Allen Robinson) that this team could wind up being a wild card contender. But will they threaten the Packers for a division title? Heh, no.

The Detroit Lions notched their first victory of the year over the Arizona Cardinals in a bit of an upset, and a rematch from the wild week one game from last year that ended in a tie. The Lions still need to get healthy on the defensive side of the ball, but they showed some feistiness in a game few predicted them to win. They get the Saints next week in what is an important game between a pair of 1-2 teams; 2-2 looks a whole lot better after the first quarter of the season than 1-3.

The Minnesota Vikings can kiss their playoff hopes goodbye; it is incredibly rare that a team comes back from an 0-3 start to reach the postseason. The Vikings are in sole possession of last place in the division, and while they showed some signs of life against the unbeaten Titans this week, their defensive deficiencies and offensive inconsistencies indicate this will be a long year for the men in purple. This could very well be the beginning of the end of Mike Zimmer in Minnesota.

The Packers and Rodgers are lethal in October

I was curious about how October has traditionally looked for the Packers, because I was remembering several years in a row during the Mike McCarthy era when the Packers would get off to slower starts in September, only to quickly dig themselves out of a hole.

I went and looked back at the team’s schedules since Rodgers took over as a starter, and by my count, the Packers are 32-10 when Rodgers starts and finishes a game in October. What’s more, half of those losses came in Rodgers’ first three years.

Now, of course, this doesn’t necessarily have any bearing on what’s going to happen this October. But it is a sign that the team tends to start hitting its stride in the second month of the season. 

Can you imagine the kind of magic that could be coming our way if we can assume this team hasn’t hit its stride yet?

Here’s hoping that October mojo continues through 2020!

Some spooky season movie recommendations

We’re now into October, and with it comes everything spooky, from decorations to horror movies. Now, I’m nowhere near the connoisseur of horror that my CheeseheadTV colleague and film guru Dusty Evely is, but if you’re in the mood, here are a few that I’ve seen over the last couple years that I’d highly recommend, that will most likely be available on one of the major streaming services:

• The Conjuring: Who doesn’t love a good exorcism horror movie? By now it feels like most people have seen this one, but if you haven’t, it’s a good popcorn horror movie that will provide plenty of enjoyable scares. The sequel is also enjoyable, though not quite up to par with the original.

• Hereditary: Whoah, this one was weird and a bit messed up, but it was a lot more enjoyable to me than a lot of those cheap movies that rely on jump scares. It deals with a lot of occult/demonic sort of stuff and is just beautifully unsettling.

• Hush: This 2016 horror movie felt like a classic, taking some elements of “at-home” horror movies like Scream and perfecting them for a modern audience. The conceit here is that the main character is deaf, and thus cannot hear when the intruder breaks into her home. This is edge-of-your-seat suspense horror that had me gripping the arms of my chair. 

• Midsommar: Not sure if you’d qualify this one as horror or suspense, but it’s by the same director as Hereditary and is one that I enjoyed immensely. It’s rather long, but that allows for the tension to build perfectly. It’s extremely unique and has a very satisfying payoff at the end.

• The Witch: If you’re into something a little headier, here’s one that takes place in colonial New England that plays on the fears of witchcraft that were common in the area at the time. Really weird, but really excellent.

Other favorites I’ve seen at scary movie nights in recent years include The Babadook, The Grudge, Lighthouse, The Amityville Horror, The Autopsy of Jane Doe and Split.

Week four quick forecast

I actually find myself more concerned about the matchup against Atlanta than I was about the matchup against New Orleans, and think there is a legitimate chance this could be the Packers’ first loss of the season.

I know, I know, the Falcons are snakebitten, and have been finding outrageous ways to lose games this season. They’ve allowed 30 points or more in each of their first three weeks and are tasked with taking down the best offense in the league. Their coach is a dead man walking. 

But this is an offense that’s been putting in some impressive work as well in the first three weeks. Even if Julio Jones doesn’t play, it’s a team capable of hanging a lot of points on defenses, and the Packers’ defense hasn’t exactly inspired a whole lot of faith so far. While the Saints’ only real weapon on Sunday night was Alvin Kamara, the Falcons have plenty more tools in their arsenal that could give the Packers’ disappointing defense fits.

Now, to be clear, I think the Packers win this game. Their offense is playing at such a high level at the moment that I’m taking them in a shootout against just about every team of the league. Their coaching is significantly better than that of the Falcons. 

But I do think this could shape up to be the most frustrating game of the season so far for the Packers. Expect another high-scoring affair that doesn’t get settled until the fourth quarter, with the Packers coming away victorious by less than a touchdown.

Hey, I’ll take 4-0 going into the bye week no matter how it happens.