This is not a roster prediction. Well, it is. But this is mostly an exercise in two things. First, it’s a vibe check on the overall roster. How do we feel about individual positions? How do we feel about individual battles within those position groups? How do we feel, man? Second, it’s a reminder that this thing is basically done. We’ve got the 2024 Packers already, and here they are. Most of these positions are essentially set. When we talk about position battles, we’re really talking about stuff on the margins. Fringe guys, basically. There’s not going to be much turnover between now and wh ..read more

Hello there! It’s been far too long since we’ve talked like this, but it’s been an eventful first third of 2024, and now that DRAFT SEASON is winding down, I thought we should take a few minutes and catch up about a few things. Usually I like to do these “state of the site/project/blog/podcast/whatever” updates early in the year, but this feels like an appropriate time for a few reasons. First, the first third of 2024 has been complicated for me in an “off the field” sense. The finer points don’t really matter, but I’ve had some health stuff to deal with for the past few months, and it’s rest ..read more

Even though I did my final podcast on the NFL Draft already, I can’t stop thinking about the various permutations of the event itself. It’s a strange thing: I don’t know if I’ve ever been less confident in how a draft was going to go, but I also expect to be completely surprised. Tomorrow night is too far away, so instead of going and being productive somewhere else, I want to drop a few more thoughts about this year’s NFL Draft, how it could play out, and who the Packers should be targeting. 1 - I said on Tuesday’s podcast that I’m about 60% certain the Packers will trade up, and I still fee ..read more

For a guy who’s no longer with the Packers, we’ve heard a lot over the past week or so both about and from De’Vondre Campbell. That, of course, is understandable. When a player leaves a team (or, in this case, has the team leave him), there are bound to be some complicated emotions on both sides. But what stands out about Campbell’s comments online is how specific he gets. He makes it clear he has no problem with the Packers as an organization overall (even if he would have preferred his release be handled differently), but he specifically criticizes how he was used by former Packers defensiv ..read more

Even though Xavier McKinney is the more expensive, important, and perhaps impactful signing, I can’t help but be fascinated by the Packers’ move to acquire Josh Jacobs, recently of the Las Vegas Vikings. Jacobs, who briefly made up the league’s most dynamic running back duo with Aaron Jones, comes to the Packers under unique circumstances. While McKinney enters a safety room that was essentially empty, Jacobs will be a virtual one-to-one replacement for both the now-departed Jones and AJ Dillon. And with the Packers’ long-running investment in Jones via his contract extension and subsequent r ..read more

I can’t watch a Packers game without a pen and notebook with me. I started taking notes during games when The Power Sweep launched in 2016, and I’ve kept the habit since then to the point that I can no longer imagine sitting down to watch a game without it. My note-taking practice is not one of beauty, though. It gets down all the information I need, but as you can see in this post, it’s…not pretty to look at. I’ve never been one for good handwriting, and even though I’ve worked to improve over the years (honestly, I have!) it’s still not great. No one will ever confuse my notes for a work of ..read more

Two years into his NFL career, most of what was true about Quay Walker as a prospect seems to still be true today. He’s still an elite athlete. The Packers have not seen the like of him at linebacker this side of Y2K. His size, speed, and movement skills are incomparable in Green Bay and rare throughout the league. He’s still a little bit on the raw side, as he was coming out of Georgia. He wasn’t a full-time starter there until late in his career and is still feeling his way through the position at times. He still has unique versatility. Even if he has yet to fully live up to his potential ..read more

There are significant “what” and “how” components to everything a player does on a football field. What a guy does on a particular play, over the course of a game, or even in an entire season can be neatly, if incompletely, encapsulated by traditional stats. Even if they don’t tell the whole story, a “bigger numbers = good” understanding of the game will help you in a lot of circumstances. But if you’re looking for the whole story, examining how a player gets his stats is crucial. Film analysis helps with that a lot, and so do advanced stats. Along those lines, understanding how a player does ..read more

Certain people bend the world around them, and the people in their orbit have to order themselves accordingly. That seems to be the case with Vince Lombardi, a singular figure in sports, the world, and in the lives of just about everyone he encountered. His death left a gaping hole, and the people who had to carry on without him never seemed to find a way to fill the gap he’d left.  Marie Lombardi, as you’d expect, suffered the most, making for a sad ending to a difficult life story. For so long it seemed like she was a prisoner to her husband’s ambitions, but the last few chapters of th ..read more

Working through our annual position-by-position recap, I thought of something I really haven’t considered before: we don’t really do grades for players. Sure, I make a ruling on whether or not a player has “met expectations” or not in a given year, but we really don’t go deeper than that. It’s always struck me as the intuitive way to do things, but I’ve never really tried to articulate why that is. Why do things that way instead of assigning one player a B+ and another player a C- or what have you? For starters, I think if you try to come up with an established grading system, you’re going to ..read more