Packers Huddle

YoHoChecko wrote: ↑

09 Jun 2021 13:06

NCF wrote: ↑

09 Jun 2021 13:08

I would go back there in a heartbeat.

NCF wrote: ↑

09 Jun 2021 13:08

YoHoChecko wrote: ↑

09 Jun 2021 13:06

I would go back there in a heartbeat.

YoHoChecko wrote: ↑

09 Jun 2021 13:11

All I'm saying is that if Bakhtiari& Co. are in Germany for Octoberfest, we should probably have a bye week before AND after to be safe

paco wrote: ↑

15 Jun 2021 09:26

Looks like Sheldon Richardson is going to be a Viking.

Drj820 wrote: ↑

15 Jun 2021 09:47

Vikings are getting better this offseason. I would say every team in the division besides the Packers have gotten better on paper.

YoHoChecko wrote: ↑

15 Jun 2021 09:52

Drj820 wrote: ↑

15 Jun 2021 09:47

Vikings are getting better this offseason. I would say every team in the division besides the Packers have gotten better on paper.

I think the Packers are also better on paper. This happens every year, where the team makes few big moves and everyone thinks "if you're not getting better, you're getting worse," but actually, your young players are getting better and continuity breeds efficiency.

We lost 1 or 2 starters from 2019 to 2020 and the team got better, even with near-0 immediate draft impact. Because players got better and the continuity raised performance.

This year, we lost one starter, granted an All-Pro OC, but have second year players like Dillon and Deguara ready to contribute, and by all accounts a more-NFL-ready draft class likely to make an impact, and continuing development and continuity from all units.

The only way in which the Packers may not have gotten better is if Rodgers doesn't return, which is admittedly a massive caveat.

Drj820 wrote: ↑

15 Jun 2021 09:58

They Packers had weaknesses at DL and ILB. We have not really addressed those issues, but are hoping for improvements from in house talent.

YoHoChecko wrote: ↑

15 Jun 2021 10:13

Drj820 wrote: ↑

15 Jun 2021 09:58

They Packers had weaknesses at DL and ILB. We have not really addressed those issues, but are hoping for improvements from in house talent.

Yes. You said my last sentence was the whole game (and to an extent, I can't disagree), but THIS sentence is the whole game. In-house improvements are more fact than hope, honestly. We don't know WHERE they will come from, but the chances that no young players improve are nearly zero. Thus if you return the same roster, you have likely gotten better unless your roster is riddled with declining veterans.

The Bucs won the Super Bowl, yes, but barely beat us. We were the #1 seed. We lost by 5 in a game that wasn't well-played. They returned their whole roster, and are being lauded as having one of the league's best offseasons. I understand the Rodgers drama puts a cloud over everything. But in-house improvement is a virtual lock, to some degree. We will be worse at Center than we were last year. But we will be better at SOME positions, maybe it's CB2/3, maybe it's pass rush, maybe it's RG, maybe it's WR3.... we WILL be.

The teams that stay together improve. I agree that all the teams in our division got better on paper, but they NEEDED to. They didn't have the horses to get it done. And implementing big changes will likely take time. Justin Fields likely won't even begin the season as the starter. The Lions are putting together a whole new team (which can happen quickly or slowly, unknown). The Vikings faced a mini-rebuild on defense the past couple years. We are a top team in the league and we stayed as together as we could. That's pretty solid.

salmar80 wrote: ↑

20 Jun 2021 01:51

It's so EA Sports to call this year's Madden "MVP edition", and not have the MVP on the cover...

Tom Brady's first Madden rating at least had the speed right....

The reckoning is coming. It hasn’t arrived yet, but it’s coming.

On Monday, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court (when is the Supreme Court ever unanimous on anything?) ruled against the NCAA on the question of whether the antitrust laws apply to rules restricting the benefits that any school may offer to student-athletes.

The outcome is narrow but the future implications could be very broad. For now, schools must be permitted to compete for student-athletes by offering educational benefits beyond undergraduate tuition, room, board, fees, and books. Enhanced education-related benefits from a given school no longer can be regarded as prohibited by the NCAA, a rule that in the opinion of the Supreme Court violates the antitrust laws.

Justice Gorsuch delivered the opinion for the nine-member Court. A concurring opinion (basically, an agreement but an articulation of different reasons) from Justice Kavanaugh has gotten and will continue to get more attention than the primary submission.

In his concurring opinion, Justice Kavanaugh essentially calls the NCAA what it is, and what it has been for decades: A golden-egg factory that refuses to properly compensate the geese.

“The NCAA has long restricted the compensation and benefits that student athletes may receive,” Justice Kavanaugh writes. “And with surprising success, the NCAA has long shielded its compensation rules from ordinary antitrust scrutiny. Today, however, the Court holds that the NCAA has violated the antitrust laws. The Court’s decision marks an important and overdue course correction, and I join the Court’s excellent opinion in full.”

Justice Kavanaugh explains that his separate opinion is aimed at underscoring the fact that, beyond the rules at issue in the current case, “the NCAA’s remaining compensation rules also raise serious questions under the antitrust laws.”

“The NCAA couches its arguments for not paying student athletes in innocuous labels,” he writes. “But the labels cannot disguise the reality: The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America. All of the restaurants in a region cannot come together to cut cooks’ wages on the theory that ‘customers prefer’ to eat food from low-paid cooks. Law firms cannot conspire to cabin lawyers’ salaries in the name of providing legal services out of a ‘love of the law.’ Hospitals cannot agree to cap nurses’ income in order to create a ‘purer’ form of helping the sick. News organizations cannot join forces to curtail pay to reporters to preserve a ‘tradition’ of public-minded journalism. Movie studios cannot collude to slash benefits to camera crews to kindle a ‘spirit of amateurism’ in Hollywood.”

Amen to all of that. And those words will set the stage for broader and more aggressive attacks on a system that has allowed the various universities to stuff their coffers full of cash, to pay everyone involved with its sports programs except the athletes, and to continue to delay inexplicably the moment at which those who deserve to receive real financial rewards for the billions flowing from their talents, efforts, and sacrifices finally will be treated fairly.

“Price-fixing labor is price-fixing labor,” Justice Kavanaugh states. “And price-fixing labor is ordinarily a textbook antitrust problem because it extinguishes the free market in which individuals can otherwise obtain fair compensation for their work. . . . Businesses like the NCAA cannot avoid the consequences of price-fixing labor by incorporating price-fixed labor into the definition of the product.”

Here’s the kicker from Justice Kavanaugh, the ultimate truth from which the NCAA has been running: “The bottom line is that the NCAA and its member colleges are suppressing the pay of student athletes who collectively generate billions of dollars in revenues for colleges every year. Those enormous sums of money flow to seemingly everyone except the student athletes. College presidents, athletic directors, coaches, conference commissioners, and NCAA executives take in six- and seven-figure salaries. Colleges build lavish new facilities. But the student athletes who generate the revenues, many of whom are African American and from lower-income backgrounds, end up with little or nothing.”

The NCAA tries to hide behind the notion that there’s a magic or a purity to amateur athletics and the traditions they have spawned. That facade is beginning to crumble. Justice Kavanaugh takes a flamethrower to it.

“[T]hose traditions alone cannot justify the NCAA’s decision to build a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated,” Justice Kavanaugh writes. “Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate. And under ordinary principles of antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different. The NCAA is not above the law.”

No, it isn’t. And the NCAA surely knew it before today. Roughly a decade ago, as society began to ask tough questions about a billion-dollar business that fails to fairly compensate its most important workers, the NCAA likely realized that the reckoning someday would arrive. The goal has been to delay it for as long as possible.

Today’s ruling shows that the NCAA and its members will enjoy several more budget cycles free from line items for on-field labor costs. Justice Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion shows that the NCAA can run, but it can’t hide.

go pak go wrote: ↑

21 Jun 2021 13:35

Is it that colleges won't be able to afford to pay players or more that only your top 10 schools will pay players big bucks and the rest won't and therefore you have say 200 players actually making any decent money and the rest still playing the "amateur" college ball?