2012 NFL Season – Week 3
“… I take my social committee responsibilities seriously on The Lounge and since we started a pool, followed by a good heapin’ of trash talk, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to give y’all an update from time to time. (This will not be a weekly post, I don’t think.)”
Is anybody talking about the awful first half the Packers played (if that’s what you want to call those cheese holes in the offensive line), that led them to this? Yeah, didn’t think so. Forget about the 9 sacks. Irrelevant, right? Ignore that little fact. It’s all the ref’s fault, right? Yeah. Sure. Whatever.
Oh, and on the Harold Lounge Pool standings after 3 weeks:
| Team | Rank | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Chicago Realist | 1 | 27 |
| PhiloDave | 2 | 25 |
| William Edwards | 2 | 25 |
| Ephrem Rabin | 4 | 24 |
| Jenny Favre Forever A. | 4 | 24 |
| Joe Hinton | 6 | 23 |
| Chris Sabino | 7 | 22 |
| marta lacor | 7 | 22 |
| Chris Craft | 9 | 8 |
I’m enjoying the view from the top for as long as I can. You would too, if you was me.
W.E. is making it interesting.
What happened, marta?
The Harold Lounge 
Been busy packing more than fifteen years in three suitcases. I’ll be back when I’m settled. And I’m a Rodgers fan.
That was marta.
Oh marta,
I hope this silliness is a good distraction for you.
Espero que este bien dear colleague.
I’m simply glad that we’re still in touch.
I can’t talk about any of it yet…Oh, wait, I can say this: at least they beat the Bears.
Go Sox.
And good luck packing, Marta. I hope you feel lighter and maybe even a little free on the other side of it; that’s the only thing I’ve ever enjoyed about packing up to move. I hope Messi is there to meet you at the airport, too. That would be cool.
I feel for you, PhiloDave, and all you upset Green Bay fans.
If that had been the Bears, I’d a been up in arms about the call. As a good friend of mine stated, “As much as I don’t like the Packers, that was a pick.” My friend didn’t get an argument from me.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder a couple of things:
1. How the Packer fans would be denying a bad call if Rodgers had been the one throwing that last pass. They’d be as silent as the Seahawks.
2. If the Packers had put some distance between themselves and the lowly Seahawks during the first OR second quarter, it would not have come down to this.
3. For this one game, were the Seahawks that good, or were the Packers that bad?
Yes three points, not two. Make fun of the Bears fan. Let out some more steam Packer fans. You’ve earned the right. I’ll be your punching bag this week.
Goodness, don’t get me started with those Sox? They don’t want the Central Division? They’re wrapping the lead with a side order of fries to the Tigers.
Be good marta.
1. I don’t blame the Seahawks players or fans for being silent. They didn’t make the call. It’s not their fault, nor their responsibility to disclaim it.
2. The Seahawks are not lowly. They played with Arizona (who are no joke), and beat the Cowboys who aren’t terrible either. I’m sure the Packers would have liked to have “put some distance between themselves” and the Seahawks, but this is an unhelpful counterfactual. Imagine someone who supported the invasion of Iraq responding to a critic by saying, “Well, if the Democrats had managed to win the 2000 election, we wouldn’t be having this argument.” It doesn’t do anything for anyone. If the Packers had scored a touchdown rather than a mere field goal on their earlier scoring possessions it may not have come down to it. If they’d kicked the extra point instead of going for two, it may not have come down to it (they could have taken a safety (or at least risked it) on their last possession. Maybe they would have come out throwing and held onto the ball and never given Seattle the chance. Without the specious third down pass interference call against Seattle, the Packers’ touchdown drive would have ended out of field goal range. Maybe if the Packers had signed Scott Wells instead of Jeff Saturday, their interior line wouldn’t be struggling so badly right now. Maybe if Derrick Sherrod hadn’t had his leg bones snapped last December, they might have better play from their tackles. Maybe if Shields or Woodson had been able to hold on to either of the passes they touched on the two plays before the Hail Mary, or if Erik Walden had managed to miss Russell Wilson’s legs at the beginning of the drive, the Packers would have won by nine or ten. A thousand things could have happened that would have made it “not come down to this.” But they didn’t, so it did.
3. I would say, Yes and No, respectively; it was a good game. Both defenses played really well. All NFL teams lose some games (with one exception from a very different era). It happens.
4. Personally, I’m more interested in hearing the intellectual gymnastics involved in pairing an opinion that the owners should settle with the Ref’s union because the Ref’s competence is such that the game is dysfunctional without them with the anti public union vitriol that informs much of the NFL’s core constituency; I’d like to see how many of the commentors who posted that Emanuel should “fire the striking teachers like Reagan did with the air traffic controllers” were of the opinion that the owners should fire the refs like Reagan. I’d like to ask them all if they still believe a bunch of amateur or volunteer teachers could (or would) walk into a classroom and teach to the same quality as those with experience and expertise. But of course they’d never accept the analogy, of themselves as the owners and the teachers as competent, much as many football fans did not understand the excellence of the regular refs until they weren’t there.