Through a series of injuries, lesser-serious injuries and general roster concerns, we have learned over the past two weeks that the National Football League season is a marathon and not a sprint.
This may come as disquieting news to those dressing in the locker rooms, who will wonder in the face of all these running races what gives with the football cleats.
We were just getting used to the chess-match thing. When a coach makes a non-rote strategy move, or any move late in the game, it is often referred to as his being in a “chess match” with the opposing coach. He’s going to castle his tailback and flanker, what? As tired metaphors go, the chess-game dead horse needed mothballing long ago.
One guy talking sense last week was Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who injected some sanity onto the landscape of fringe delirium in the wake of injuries to wide receivers Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb. As some worried fans pronounced the season over, Rodgers pointed out the simple truth of the quest to win a Super Bowl: Just worry about getting into the playoffs. The team playing the best at the end of the season will probably win it.
If there is any game that is not football but can be compared to an NFL season, it is Space Invaders. The throwback video game featured a laser-firing shooter trying to ward off the charging rows of 11 attackers, each of whose shots takes a chunk out of the laser shooter’s defensive “bunkers.” The bunkers are your roster. At the end of the shooting, you hope to have a good piece of the bunkers still intact.
The NFL season is ultimately a battle of attrition; those having the most able bodies on hand at the end have a big advantage.
But even that doesn’t always apply. The Packers went 15-1 in the 2011 regular season, securing home field throughout the NFL playoffs … and lost their first game to the New York Giants, who went 9-7 in the regular season but got hot at the end and won the whole thing.
On the other side of the coin, the Packers finished a mediocre 8-7-1 in 2010, but were playing great ball at the end, despite having 14 players on injured reserve. They won three playoff road games impressively before knocking off Pittsburgh to win the Super Bowl.
So the cliché about the importance of getting to the playoffs, because you never know what’s going to happen once you’re there, holds.
The Packers’ fate this year seems to run parallel to that of the theoretical two men in the Serengeti approached by a lion. One guy starts running away, and the second guy tells him he’ll never outrun the lion. The first guy tells the second guy that he doesn’t have to outrun the lion, he only has to outrun him.
The Packers don’t need to outpace the rest of the NFC. They only have to finish ahead of Minnesota, Detroit and Chicago.
The balance of power in that division will eventually shift someday, but for the time being the NFL North is still about as user-friendly as it gets. Detroit lost its best defensive lineman, Ndamukong Suh, who is also the best defensive lineman in either conference, to free agency. The Vikings and their young quarterback are improved but still a work in progress. To see Chicago’s chances of winning the division you need a decent-sized telescope.
So, there is the usual concern for Packers fans entering this season. It’s hoped that Cobb’s shoulder sprain is something he’ll be able to play through all year. It’s hoped that the defense can stay healthy, and that the offensive line does a good job of protecting Rodgers.
In a perfect world, they go 16-0 and win every postseason game by four touchdowns. In the real world, that’s not going to happen. It wouldn’t even happen in Madden 2016 if you wrote the program yourself.
The best that the Packers can hope for – the only thing, really – is that they will be playing their best football when there’s snow on the ground.
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