Hello Wisconsin: The Bye Week Came at Exactly the Right Time

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Hello Wisconsin: The Bye Week Came at Exactly the Right Time

Some R&R is much needed at this point of the season.

Nov 07, 2024

58 comments

Yikes.

There’s not a whole lot to be said about the Green Bay Packers’ performance against the Detroit Lions this past week that hasn’t been said on here and elsewhere already, so I don’t want to dwell on it too much.

It was bad. Really bad.

And despite how bad it was, the game still should have been winnable, which is perhaps even more infuriating.

But I’m not going to dwell on what was; you guys have had enough of that on here already this week. Instead, as we’re in the midst of the bye week, I want to focus a bit more on where things can go from here.

As with any loss, the various green and gold corners of the internet were outraged, with many ready to throw the towel in on the season and calling for people to be fired. Which is, of course, ridiculous. This team is significantly better than it was in the first half of the season in both record and performance. While it has yet to hit its stride the way it did in the later portion of the 2023 season, there’s absolutely no reason to think it can’t do so again.

The most frustrating part about this team is actually that it is so talented and that the moments of excellence are so obvious, but that they’re still so inconsistent. Many of us had hoped, coming into this year, that despite having the youngest roster in the league once again, the Packers would at least be a bit more battle tested and disciplined.

Instead, what we get is a team that makes the same mistakes over and over again, without really seeming to learn from them. We see it in penalties, poor throws, and boneheaded defensive mistakes (which, to be fair, have come at a FAR lower rate than they did under Joe Barry).

This, combined with the banged up nature of the team… yeah, this is about the best possible time for a bye week.

The Packers need a good self scout to prepare for the crucial next stretch of their season. Most of their divisional matchups remain, and right now they’re in an 0-2 hole, something that hasn’t happened to this team much at all over the last several decades.

When you watch this team play, it is clear the pieces are in place for them to contend. When everything is rolling, they can stick with anyone in the league.

There’s no real magic trick or hidden secret for them to get there, either. Really, it’s just cut the mistakes. If they trim down the penalties and cut the turnovers in half, that right there does enough to get this team deep into the playoffs.

Beyond that, it’s a good mixture of consistency and luck.

I was a bit bemused by some of the vocal responses on Twitter earlier this week, with people really being down on this team’s chances. We’ve hardly seen anything yet in terms of what this team is capable of. Just remember how much they picked it up in mid-November a year ago. If they do that again, but starting from this point, I’m not sure there’s a team in the league that can match up.

Hopefully some rest, healing, and tape time will do this team some good.

Because next week, it’s Bears week.

Wisconsin Beer of the Week

I’ve brought up Supermoon Beer Company in this space several times, and while it’s been a bit since I bought anything new from them, I do still have a whole bunch of offseason brews I can feature in this space to catch up on, since I haven’t added anything new to my fridge for a few weeks.

This particular beer is their farmhouse radler. Many of you are probably familiar with the radler style; it’s a very traditional German beer that is mixed with some form of fruit juice (like grapefruits, often). Stiegl Radler is an example, a great one I had all over Germany and Austria when I was there years back. Usually it’s a blond lager like a pilsner or helles that serves as the base for the beer.

Supermoon’s thing is farmhouse ales, so they kind of twisted the radler style by using a saison base. And it works well! It’s a VERY slightly heavier base with a bit of a sweeter and funkier flavor to underlie the fruit. It’s an ale rather than a lager, which is also part of that flavor difference.

While it wasn’t my favorite radler I’ve had, it was fun to get a new twist on the style. Supermoon is doing some really cool stuff here in Milwaukee, and this was just another example of a beer that I would absolutely recommend to visitors who came across it.

If you are near Milwaukee and haven’t been, go check out their Bay View tap room sometime!

Farewell to Preston Smith

Preston Smith was the last remaining player of the big four free agency signings of the summer of 2019. In the time since, he's been a consummate professional for the Packers and contributed a whole lot of great plays and memories.

It sucks to see him traded, but he was clearly playing out of position in a 4-3. According to Smth on Wednesday, he actually asked to be traded a couple weeks ago.

It's hard to blame him; now that he's starting to get on in the years of his career, he probably wants to maximize the time he hast left playing professional football by being in a scheme that actually fits him. Pittsburgh's 3-4, then, would seem to be an ideal fit.

Meanwhile, the Packers are going to need to figure out where they're going to get additional production from at the edge spot. While they do benefit greatly in terms of getting out of Smith's contract, this is currently a position of weakness on the team. Rashan Gary is going to have to play better, and Lukas Van Ness is going to have to make the big strides forward the team was envisioning when they made him their first round pick in 2023.

Around the NFC North

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

The CHICAGO BEARS are starting to see some of the shine come off their hot start. They were easily dispatched by the Cardinals this past weekend, and had some absolutely atrocious offense. Caleb Williams was 22-41 for just 217 yards, and the team just could not move the ball consistently. They’ve got a game they should win against the Patriots this weekend at home, and a failure to do so could be catastrophic with the Packers on their schedule next weekend.

The DETROIT LIONS are without doubt the best team in the league, and yet they weren’t outrageously impressive against the Packers this weekend; certainly, had the Packers not been hell-bent on committing the same mistakes over and over again, this team would have been in jeopardy of losing. But they didn’t, and good teams win games even when they don’t play their best football. What was wild to me: this was the first time the Lions had played an outdoor game this entire season. Insane.

The MINNESOTA VIKINGS got back on track against the Colts and picked up a hard-fought home victory. Back at second place in the division, fans are hoping the team’s two-game skid was an aberration and that this Vikings team can get back to the dominance it displayed in much of September and early October. If they can, this is going to be a hell of a divisional race through the next couple months.

This or That in Mr. Backes’s classroom: Week 9

As some of you may recall, last year I started doing weekly “this or that” polls on the whiteboard in my classroom at school for laughs. I decided to make it a weekly part of this column to keep you updated on what the youths are saying these days about entirely unimportant issues.

Here are some of the results from the last week:

Hot chocolate defeated hot apple cider
Billie Eilish defeated Taylor Swift
Ham defeated turkey
Writing essays defeated giving presentations

I’ll continue to keep you updated on the most pressing issues of our time.

Stepping back in time at Three Brothers MKE

My wife and I had a rare opportunity to go out on a date and leave the kids at home with a babysitter. We went bowling and then had dinner at a place I’ve been wanting to go to for quite some time: Three Brothers, a Serbian restaurant in Bay View.

Entering through their doors is like stepping back in time. The decor feels like something you’d have expected to see decades ago. They have a cassette tape player for music behind the bar. The bar itself is long, old fashioned, and impressive. There aren’t that many tables. There are old-fashioned beer signs. They don’t accept credit card.

The menu itself is packed full of items that feel like they would be cooked at home by a Serbian grandma for a nice family dinner, and I mean that in the absolute best way possible.

We had a quick appetizer course that featured a Serbian salad and stuffed grape leaves. I’d never had stuffed grape leaves before, and they were SO good.

The entree I had was “Branko’s Special,” featuring a piece of Sarma and a stuffed pepper with tomato sauce and potato dumpling. Just delicious.

My wife and I were talking with each other at the restaurant about the lack of really authentic European restaurants like that in Milwaukee these days. There’s Mader’s downtown and Kegel’s in West Allis. There’s a couple legit French places. But it really does feel like these sorts of places are getting fewer and farther between.

Part of it is that we are getting more and more removed from the generations of immigrants who founded many of these types of establishments. Milwaukee has some significant German and Polish roots, and a whole lot of other ethnicities also represented in the cities, but the bulk of people who came here from those European countries did so generations ago, meaning that for people my age and younger, we’re probably a couple generations removed. These places seeming to be not as common any more is almost certainly tied to that.

So while they’re still here, I intend to enjoy the heck out of places like this, because they feel like a window into Milwaukee’s past.

Quick social media update

Quick note: I’m doing my best to cut down and eventually eliminate my time on Twitter. The platform really isn’t for me any more.

You can find me on Bluesky. @timbackes.bsky.social

Week 10 Picks

Mercifully there is no Packer game this weekend, but there’s plenty of other great football happening. Here are my picks for this weekend’s action!

LAST WEEK: 13-3

SEASON TO DATE: 94-45

THIS WEEK, give me…

RAVENS over Bengals

PANTHERS over Giants

BEARS over Patriots

49ERS over Bucs

CHIEFS over Broncos

BILLS over Colts

COMMANDERS over Steelers

VIKINGS over Jaguars

FALCONS over Saints

CHARGERS over Titans

CARDINALS over Jets

EAGLES over Cowboys

LIONS over Texans

RAMS over Dolphins

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHEESEHEAD NATION WEEKLY NEWSLETTER HERE.

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Tim Backes is a lifelong Packer fan and a contributor to CheeseheadTV. Follow him on Twitter @timbackes for his Packer takes, random musings and Untappd beer check-ins.

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Comments (58)

Fan-Friendly This filter will hide comments which have ratio of 5 to 1 down-vote to up-vote.

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Cheezehead72

November 07, 2024 at 06:28 am

As for the Smith trade. This was good for both sides. He is back in the 3-4 and the Packers get cap space the next two years. The young guys get a chance to show what they are made of.

The Lions are not the best team in the league. The Chiefs are and they show it every week. They are undefeated for a reason.

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