Fraters Libertas

Pay It Forward

In the spirit of my recent bi-partisan outreadh to Brett Favre, Jack the Packers fan in LA, begrudgingly gives it up for another hated black-and-blue division rival:

I'm getting downright weepy with all of the wonderful things you are saying about our hall-of-fame quarterback. As a frequent FL reader and a GBP fan, I feel it necessary to respond in kind. Here goes:

Walter Payton is the greatest running back in the history of the NFL. Each time I say that it stings, but it's true. How do I know this? I grew up in the Chicago area during the 1970's and I didn't have NFL Sunday Ticket and Tivo back then. So I saw and heard a LOT of Bears games. Packer fan or not, I had no choice. Sometimes I'd get lucky and the atmospherics would allow me to pull in WTMJ 620 in Milwaukee but this was rare. The Bears in the mid 70's had no offense except Payton. I heard a interview with Bob Avellini a few years back and he said they just didn't have many pass plays in their playbook. Everybody knew what was coming on every down and nobody could stop #34. He ran for 275 yards against the Vikings in 1977 while suffering from the flu. Power, speed, agility, indoor, outdoor, good weather, bad weather, it did not matter. He was like a bursting dam and you felt like the village at the bottom of the valley.

The NFL will never see another like him. Chuck Foreman was pretty good too. But we called him a ballet-dancing sissy because of that spin move he always did.

Thank goodness for satellite television. Professional sports in SoCal is worthless. Jack in L.A.

P.S. If you want some encouragement going into this weekend's game, look up the Packers wildcard game against Atlanta from 2002.

That does keep hope alive, but the Vikings seem to do their best to extinguish it with their daily implosion. Today, this from a Randy Moss interview with ESPN:

During the interview, Moss was asked if Tice was still the best coach for the Vikings.

"To be honest with you," Moss said, "I don't know if coach Tice is the coach for this team, and I don't know if he isn't. All I know is that if coach Tice says 'who has my back' or 'who's ready to play' or something like that, all I know is that I got his back."

With guys like that watching his back, the only thing Tice needs to worry about is knives. For more on Mr. Moss's attitude problems, read this commentary from ESPN's Randy Whitlock.