My goodness did I ever need football season back!

Hello one and all. It’s great to be back with this 101st edition of Hello Wisconsin and my seventh(!) season contributing to Packer coverage at Cheesehead TV. I started this column for the 2020 season as a way to put together a weekly roundup of all my thoughts related to the Packers and some things not at all related to the Packers (usually Wisconsin themed). 

If you’re new around here, this column goes live at 6 AM Lambeau Standard Time every Thursday from August through February. I’ll always start off with a lead portion involving some of the biggest Packer happenings, and will follow up with a featured beer from a Wisconsin brewery. This column also always features Around the NFC North updates, weekly NFL picks, and a random smattering of other thoughts.

And for right now, I’m mostly just happy to have football to watch and talk about again. Seeing the green and gold on my television screen as I returned home from the northwoods this past weekend was quite the sight for sore eyes. 

Perhaps most special about this upcoming season is that it seems primed to be the first one that my oldest son will be enjoying with me. He’s entering first grade this year, and recently I took him to his (and my) first training camp practice (more on that later). He’s now got a jersey, a cheesehead, and a cardboard cutout of Romeo Doubs’s face on a popsicle stick. When he found out the Packers were playing when we got home from up north, he bolted to grab all his memorabilia and watched the rest of the game with me.

I was around his age (or perhaps slightly older) when my own Packer obsession got started. My earliest football-related memories are watching the Packers beat the LA Rams in 1994 (I was six that year myself, the same age as my oldest) and watching the 49ers tar and feather the Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX. The 1995 season was the first year where I watched the majority of games the team played, and by 1996, as a third-grader, I was a full-on diehard just in time to watch what remains one of the most magical seasons in over a century of Packer lore.  

Simply put, watching the Packers with my dad was one of my great childhood joys, and I’m getting really excited to introduce my own son to that this year. He almost certainly will not sit through a whole three-hour game, but this is where the fun begins. 

And that’s really the most enjoyable part of welcoming a new season: the return of traditions. I’ll be frank; while I enjoy watching the preseason games, it’s not the on-field action I’m most excited about. There’s something familial about Packer football. The long six-month offseason always comes with a sort of emptiness. The excitement of the game being back brings a lot of warmth and comfort that is hard to describe in a very precise manner, but it is something akin to the return of a long-gone family member.

So what are we going to get from this 2024 edition of the Green Bay Packers? Well, I’ll get to that in a bit. But for now, I’m just happy to have them back!

Wisconsin Beer of the Week

It’s been a summer jam-packed with all kinds of delicious beers, so I’ve got a great backlog to work through as we head into the new season!

My first feature of the year is a hazy IPA I quite enjoyed, and one I bought entirely for the name. Juicer McGavin by Rocky Reef Brewing COmpany (out of Woodruff) is ostensibly named after Shooter McGavin, who is, of course, the antagonist of the classic 90s Adam Sandler flick Happy Gilmore. 

This crisp, tropical hazy comes in at a relatively moderate (for the style) 7 percent ABV. Even though it’s from way up north, I managed to find it in cans at my local Woodman’s earlier in the summer. I’ve been seeing other Rocky Reef brews there as well.

When my family vacations in St. Germain, we regularly see Rocky Reef stuff at the various places we go for food, and everything I’ve had from them has been solid. Highly recommend giving them a try if you can track down their stuff!

What I’m watching closely

There are a lot of fascinating stories to keep an eye on throughout the remainder of training camp and the preseason. Here are a few I’m particularly interested in:

• Wide receiver battle: There are, without a doubt, four roster locks in the wide receiver group: Romeo Doubs, Jayden Reed, Christian Watson, and Dontayvion Wicks. The team will almost certainly keep six receivers, and seven isn’t entirely out of the question (there is recent historical precedent) but probably unlikely. Bo Melton entered camp as the favorite to take the fifth spot, but strong performances by Grant DuBose have got him figuring into the picture. Between Melton, DuBose, and holdovers Malik Heath and Samori Toure, it’ll be a tough battle for those depth positions. Melton has the edge in that he has proven in-game experience. My guess is it’ll be between DuBose and Heath for the final spot.

• Kicker woes: As you almost certainly remember, kicker Anders Carlson was… not good during his rookie year, to put it kindly. Carlson had a rough start to camp this year, which certainly doesn’t do a lot to alleviate the legitimate fright fans have over the prospect of trotting him out again this year. With the changes to the kickoff rules, that’s another factor that goes into the selection of a kicker as well. The Packers clearly have concerns of their own about the position, because they’ve got three kickers on the roster, an unusually high number. You don’t bring in two additional kickers if you firmly believe in the guy who kicked for you the previous season. Carlson’s big leg may not be enough to save his job this year.

• Defensive differences: There’s only so much you can glean about a defensive scheme in the preseason, when you’re only getting starters for a short amount of time and not seeing a lot of wrinkles put into place. However, there certainly does seem to be a buzz about the new defensive system implemented by new defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley, who mercifully took over for the incompetent Joe Barry this offseason. Hafley’s approach to defense seems to be quite different to the other two coordinators who have worked under Matt LaFleur. Where Mike Pettine and Barry were content to sit back with a shell and wait for offenses to make mistakes, Hafley wants to press the other team and put more stress on offenses to force them to make mistakes. This comes with a bigger risk of giving up big plays, but as we saw with Barry’s scheme, the Packers were giving up everything, so anything is an improvement. It’s fun to see some young guys on defense already flying around, and I’m especially looking forward to seeing how these changes manifest in the regular season.

• Good vibes only: The offseason leading into 2023 was a breath of fresh air from a “vibes” standpoint; there was a whole lot of positivity and enthusiasm that had been missing for a number of years previously. It feels like those vibes have only improved going into the 2024 season. Now that the Packers have a much better idea of what they have in Love, there is legitimate reason to see this team as a contender for at least the next couple years, as basically all of their key players are now under contract through the end of the 2025 season. Obviously roster construction is critical to a team’s success, but there’s something to be said for guys wanting to play with and for each other and their coaches and for everyone to be on the same emotional and mental wavelength. This feels like a unified team, and that can go a long way in creating a champion.

My first training camp experience

I’ve had a lot of pretty cool experiences as a Packer fan of some 36 years, but one thing that has eluded me for my entire life is a trip to Green Bay for training camp. 

With my son being old enough to probably be able to manage the day trip plus the long practice, I decided this was a great excuse to go experience it for myself as well.

So my friend Matt, his son, my son, and I all made the trek from Milwaukee to get to Green Bay with plenty of time to spare before practice started. We managed to get pretty good seats, too! We hit a bit of a snag when my boy got the meat sweats from inhaling too much beef jerky before practice even started (that kid knows how to snack), but that was all handled by the time practice started.

They were giving out cutouts of players’ faces on popsicle sticks. My friend’s kid got Jordan Love (who was still a couple days away from his contract extension), and mine got Romeo Doubs. As of that moment, Doubs became his favorite player, and I had to continually point him out throughout the entire practice. At one point during early route running drills, Doubs made a pretty routine catch and the kid screamed out “YEAHHHH! GO ROMEO DOUBS! GO ROMEO DOUBS! GO ROMEO DOUBS!” So at least we know he’s not going to be the kind to sit down and be quiet at Lambeau.

What struck me about watching my first training camp practice was just how much is happening at once–especially when you’ve got 90 players present. With two small fields of play set up at the same time and position groups spread all over, you sort of have to decide whether you’re going to focus on one specific group or try to scan the field for as much as you can watch. I came out feeling as though I need to go to more practices just to practice watching practice, if that makes sense. There’s definitely an art to gathering information as it happens while about 10 other things are happening at once, though it gets easier in the team sessions.

After practice we grabbed some lunch at Hinterland Brewing in the Titletown District, then made our way back over to Lambeau Field for a stadium tour. We took the shortest tour (one hour) because of the age of our kids. It was really well done. While I’ve been to plenty of games over the years, I haven’t actually toured the stadium since 1997, and, uh… things have changed since then. 

Our guide was great. He took us up the atrium elevator into the luxury box area, where there was some really cool Packer-related artwork I had never seen or known about. He then sat us down in one of the boxes to tell us about the history of the team, then took us down a service elevator into the field. We walked right through the area Taylor Swift graced with her presence during the primetime game against the Chiefs, and then got to go out through the home tunnel on to the field ourselves.

After a couple “go Pack go” chants that reverberated through the empty Lambeau Field stands, we made our way back up the stairs and walked through the concourse, then got a great view out of the Oneida Gate before finally heading back to the atrium where we started.

Great tour experience, and we capped it off with a visit to the pro shop, where the boy was told he could pick any kind of shirt or hat and ended up selecting his very first cheesehead.

It’s those kinds of days that will help build a fan for life!

Around the NFC North

As always, it’s time to go around the NFC North. 

• The CHICAGO BEARS may have something in Caleb Williams, who had a number of impressive throws that showcased his elite arm talent in his first preseason appearance. Obviously there is going to be an adjustment period to the NFL, but of all the prospects the Bears have taken a chance on in recent years at the QB position, Williams is far and away the most talented and most NFL-ready. Now what remains to be seen: how powerful is the Bears’ ability to completely ruin anyone who steps under center wearing the navy and orange?

• The DETROIT LIONS enter the season as defending division champs for the first time in 30 years, and now the pressure is on them to repeat what they did last year. While the Bears and Packers have both clearly improved since a season ago, it’s hard to make an argument that the Lions are going to be substantially better this year and last. With more competition within their division and more expectations than they’ve had in decades, it will be interesting to see how this team fares. Will they thrive or crack under the pressure?

• The MINNESOTA VIKINGS are once again likely to be bad, especially with no hope of a rookie sensation in JJ McCarthy. McCarthy's ability to succeed at the NFL level, especially as a rookie, was never a certainty, but with his season-ending meniscus surgery, a lot of the wind has to have been taken out of the Vikings' sails. It is likely the Vikings will have to hitch their boats to Sam Darnold this season, which means this team is heading nowhere.

Summer reading

As a high school English teacher, you might expect that I spend a lot of my time reading. Unfortunately, the reality is that once the school year starts I’m so engaged in reading and giving feedback on student essays that I don’t read at nearly the pace I do during the summer.

This fall I’m teaching AP Literature and Composition for the first time, so much of my summer reading has been focused on the materials I’ll be offering in that course. But here’s a quick look at the novels I’ve read this summer, ordered from June to August, and which I’d most highly recommend:

• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver: I read this because it won the Pulitzer and was getting a whole lot of hype, and it didn’t disappoint. Easy 5/5 stars for me. It takes a while to get through and can be difficult to stomach at times, but it tackles poverty and the opioid crisis in Appalachia in a very sensitive and compelling way.
• Iron Lake by William Kent Krueger: Several people in my family are big into Krueger’s books, which are primarily mysteries set in the northwoods (especially Minnesota). Mostly enjoyable read with some expected tropes. You could tell it was a first novel. 3/5
• I Am One Of You Forever by Fred Chappel: Another Appalachia book, but this one features a lot of tall tales and magical realism with a nonlinear structure. Re-read, for AP Lit. Love this one. Quick read, lovable narration. 5/5
• How Lucky by Will Leitch: I didn’t realize until after getting through it that this was by a former Deadspin guy. Quick read (I finished it in a day) that is a mystery featuring a protagonist with significant physical disabilities. Fun, not a ton of depth. 3/5
• The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James: I read and enjoyed her other book, The Sundown Motel, last year, so figured I’d give this one a crack. It was similar in that it was easily readable and was a good page-turning mystery with supernatural elements. Good popcorn read.3/5 
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe: A classic that helped put African literature on the global map. Can be tough to get through but it’s a fascinating character study. This was a prep for AP Lit. 4/5 
• Harry’s Trees by Jon Cohen: This was one of the last book recommendations my dad gave to me before he passed a couple years ago, and it definitely feels like him. Fun, not always realistic, but incredibly charming fairy tale-like story. 4/5 
• The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan: Great kaleidoscope look at a number of Chinese immigrants to the San Francisco area and their Chinese-American daughters and the changes in how generations of immigrant families address or embrace their ethnic identities. 4.5/5. AP Lit prep.
• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel: This was a re-read, and holy cats, I forgot how steamy this one is. Beautiful story of the power of love with a lot of magical realism in a turn-of-the-century Revolutionary Mexico setting. 4/5, AP Lit prep
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison: Another re-read and AP Lit book. Forgot just how tough to read this one is. It follows (from various perspectives) a poor black girl and her self-hatred and her deepest wish to have blue eyes like the blond haired white girls at school that are adored by everyone. Heartbreaking, shocking, great work. 4.5/5. 
• The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb: This was recommended to me by a friend. A thriller about a young Black violinist who, by chance, inherits what turns out to be a Stradivarius violin, which is then stolen for ransom. Along his journey toward becoming a respected concert violinist (and to getting back his instrument) he has to fight back against racial prejudice and stereotypes. Fun first novel, easy read. 3.5/5
• Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby: Another one recommended to me by the same friend, but this one I just couldn’t really dig into. I actually made it over halfway through the book but ended up stopping. While the storyline had some interesting possibilities (a white father and black father of a gay couple end up taking justice into their own hands when their sons are murdered), a lot of the dialogue was bad and the messages and themes were a bit hamfisted for my liking. 2/5, DNF
• How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu: Fascinating sci-fi thriller that took a multiple-perspective look over many years at a world torn apart by a pandemic after melting ice caps reveal the body of an ancient human with a previously undiscovered disease that had been preserved by the ice. 4/5
• Authority by Jeff Vandermeer: This is the second book of the Southern Reach trilogy, the first of which, Annihilation, I read a couple years ago. It was made into a movie starring Natalie Portman. I loved Annihilation, and while this one wasn’t quite as good, it was still very compelling and I blew through it in a day. 4/5
• Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel: I’ve read two of her previous books (Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel) and enjoyed them both. This one is similar to How High We Go in the Dark in the sense that it has a very large scope of years and also features a pandemic, but this one also involves time travel and other elements of sci fi thrillers. Fun read, and made more fun if you’ve previously read The Glass Hotel. 4/5
• Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb: The second book by the author of The Violin Conspiracy, this one I enjoyed much more. There were still some moments where it felt like there were some character cliches or plot tropes, but the two different timelines and the stakes of the plotline were more compelling to me. Definitely recommend. 4/5
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir: If you liked The Martian, you’ll definitely like this. Same sci fi nerd stuff, same sort of snarky nerd protagonist, but a completely different plot and a fun look at humanity’s possible first connection with an alien species. Good stuff. 4/5
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck: Another AP Lit re-read. This is my favorite novel of all time. I’ve now read it at three separate stages of my life, and it feels like I take away new things from it each time. Steinbeck’s prose is so fascinating and philosophical and the story is captivating. 5/5 classic.

Trying to get a couple more in before the school year starts… we’ll see if that’ll happen!

Tip of the hat to Brian Gutekunst and his roster building

Heading into the 2024 season, I think it’s important to acknowledge what a remarkable job Brian Gutekunst has done in building this roster and remaking the team so quickly over the past couple years to allow the team to continue to thrive in the post-Aaron Rodgers era.

The team enters the regular season once again as the youngest team in the NFL, and yet they’ve got some postseason experience and confidence as a result. Almost all key players are locked up for at least the next two seasons, and with the youth of this team, they should only get better.

Moreover, consider some of the weaknesses this team has filled the last couple seasons, almost entirely through the draft:

• Wide receiver: This position was considered by many to be a major area of need for several years, which came to a head after the departure of Davante Adams following the 2021 season. Since then, Gutekunst drafted Christian Watson, Romeo Doubs, Samori Toure, Jayden Reed, Dontayvion Wicks, and Grant DuBose, and added Bo Melton off the Seahawks’ practice squad. What an incredible hit rate in just a couple of years. The Packers have gone from having one of the league’s worst wide receiving corps to possibly one of its best.

• Tight end: It had been many, many years and many failed experiments since the Packers really nailed the tight end position. While there was a year where Robert Tonyan looked promising, ultimately he could not end up being the guy. Last year the Packers drafted Luke Musgrave and Tucker Kraft, two dynamic young players with very complementary skill sets who both showed a ton of promise. They also grabbed Ben Sims as a depth pickup. This year, there were no concerns over the tight end position.

• Safety: Oh my goodness, was this ever an area of need. The Packers got some solid to great play out of Adrian Amos for several years before his decline became noticeable, but Darnell Savage never quite blossomed into the player fans hoped he could be after his first two seasons. As Gutekunst is wont to do, he tossed resources at this area of need this offseason, and now the Packers have a proven stud in Xavier McKinney and a couple promising rookies in Javon Bullard and Evan Williams. Let’s not forget the potential for Anthony Johnson Jr. to really improve in a rotational position!

• Defensive line: Another area of the team that was a weakness for many years, it’s suddenly become an area of strength. CHTV’s own Aaron Nagler was beating the drum of “give Kenny Clark some help” for a long time, and that finally came to fruition. TJ Slaton is a reliable run stuffer on early downs. Devonte Wyatt continues to show more and more athleticism and ability to get after the passer. Perhaps the real surprise stud was Karl Brooks, who made a big impression as a rookie a year ago. Then you’ve got Colby Wooden, who was solid as a depth/rotational player. 

These are just four position groups; overall, the transformation of this team has been remarkable. For a guy who took a whole lot of grief over the last couple years for how he’s handled the decisions to move on from Davante Adams and Aaron Rodgers, he’s sure followed up with some incredible maneuvering in the draft and free agency to get this roster where it needs to be to contend again. 

Now the players just have to go out there and produce to the level of their abilities.