Some people are fans of the Green Bay Packers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Green Bay Packers. This 2013 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the 2013 NFL previews so far right here.


Your team: Green Bay Packers

Your 2012 record: 11-5. Hmm. I can’t seem to remember how their season ended. Oh wait!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. The Packers have won 26 games in the past two seasons, and in both of those seasons, all of those wins were negated INSTANTLY by a historically pathetic defensive showing in the playoffs. It’s as if those 26 victories were all for nothing. Hollow. Meaningless. How marvelous.


Your coach: Mike McCarthy, aka THE BEAVER. The Beav is here mainly to serve as Ted Thompson’s personal Art Howe. Thirty years from now, some kid will be perusing through the NFL record book while traveling on the Hyperloop, and that kid will see that Mike McCarthy once won a Super Bowl, and that kid’ll be like, That dude won a Super Bowl? That’s random. And then the Hyperloop will crash and kill that kid. It’s like Tom Flores being the coach of two Super Bowl champions. He didn’t WIN them, per se. He just happened to be around. That’s you, Beav McCarthy. You’re good at being around.

By the way, Dom Capers is still the defensive coordinator of this team. How is that possible? This defense has 60 first-rounders on it and BLOWS. And yet TV guys treat Capers like he’s a goddamn sorcerer. OOOOH WHO KNOWS WHAT KIND OF BLITZES COACH CAPERS WILL DIAL UP? Dom Capers’ defense can allow 7,000 yards over the course of the season, but if he gets a sack per half, he’ll be like, “Job well done, me!”

Also, have you ever seen a picture of Packers president Mark Murphy? He’s uglier than a brawl at a children’s hospital.

Your quarterback: Aaron Rodgers. It took longer than it should have, but I can proudly say that I truly hate Aaron Rodgers now. Seriously, fuck him. For too long, Rodgers was admired by millions of people merely for not being Brett Favre. But now that Favre is gone, and all his media whoring and dong self-portraiture are gone with him, I’ve begun to see that perhaps, just perhaps, I got it all wrong. After all, Favre was generally well-liked by his teammates. Meanwhile, Rodgers bros down with people on Twitter over Ryan Braun, makes that stupid championship belt pantomime in the end zone (he doesn’t even put his heart into it when he does it), and generally acts like an aloof dipshit. Any time he suddenly morphs into an inaccurate gimp in the playoffs, he makes the exact same face: He kind of stares around, as if to say THE BATTERIES IN THIS OFFENSE AREN’T WORKING! Then he stares at the ground. I’m looking forward to seeing that the next time they play the 49ers.


Your one fantasy player everyone will hate: Jermichael Finley. Always. He treats every oncoming football like a naked leper.

Why your team sucks: Don’t live in Green Bay? Go to your local sports bar on an NFL Sunday. You will find a group of Packers fans sitting together at a table. They will have been there since 9:00. There will be two men, both rocking Rodgers jerseys and both rocking full-grown beards even though they can’t grow beards for shit. And there will be two women—presumably mates for the males—rocking A.J. Hawk jerseys and frizzy bangs. These people won’t say a fucking WORD to one another until the Packers game starts. It’s creepy as hell. It’s as if they need the Packers game on in order to reanimate. They may as well live in a fucking coffin for 345 days a year. Here is what I imagine is a typical scene in a Green Bay household:

WIFE: Can you pass the salt?

HUSBAND: (stares off into nothingness)

WIFE: Can you pass the salt? KUUUUUUUUUUUUUHN.

HUSBAND: (system reboots) Sure ya LOVE OL’ KUHNY.

These people are the undead. You know what, Green Bay? You can have all your titles and your precious stadium and your elite quarterbacks and your status as the Commie Darling of North American pro sports. For real. I’m happy for you to have it because you have NOTHING else: no hobbies, no intellect, no functional thyroid glands. Christ, read a book or something. Or watch a movie that isn’t a VHS tape of NFL Films highlights from the 1995 season. Do something with your lives, man. You people will all go to the grave with the singular accomplishment of watching some team you don’t even work for win a couple Super Bowls. Lord knows you ain’t inventing the Hyperloop. You may as well have a clock hanging around your neck counting down the days until you die.


By the way, the Packers DO suck this year. The defense is still a pile of loose rags. Bryan Bulaga is done for the year, meaning Rodgers will get to re-live the 2008 season all over again. Eddie Lacy (he should be a PI with that name) is fat. I know he’s NOT fat, but I still like to think of him as fat because it makes me happy. Either way, he will join the long list of recent Packers RBs who are good for three games and immediately sink into a career death spiral afterwards. Their best pass-catching threats (Randall Cobb, Jordy Nelson) will each sprain a knee six times by Week 4. There’s no Charles Woodson around anymore to bail out the front seven. And Mason Crosby is terrible. So fuck you.

Why your team doesn't suck: Remember: this is the modern NFL. So long as you have a great QB (and the Packers have the best), you don’t HAVE to play defense or run the ball. You can just ride that fucker to a title on blind luck alone.


The seven worst Packers ever:

1) Mark Chmura. EVERYONE IN THE HOT TUB!

2) Tony Mandarich

3) Lindy Infante

4) LeShon Johnson

5) Rich Campbell. I legitimately had never heard of Rich Campbell until just now. Maybe Packers fans ate him.


6) Vince Young. I have him on here because I would give ANYTHING for him to have to play this season. It would make my year.

7) Blair Kiel

Emails from Packers fans!

Jim:

Sweet fuck are Packers "fans" obnoxious. They have a top 3 team, yet have a brain aneurysm every time the opposing team scores in any fashion. That game @ KC two years ago (the "1" in the 15-1), they wanted every member of that team decapitated. It's pathetic. I wish I could count how many times McCarthy "should've been fired" over the past few seasons. But the worst, the absolute worst thing about this fanbase is how little they actually know about football and the rest of the NFL. Not only do they walk around on Sundays with their jerseys wondering aloud "WHAT TIME IS DA GAME ON?" "WHO DO WE PLAY TODAY?" "OH, CARDINALS? DEYR PRETTY GOOD, YAH?" but they act as if football doesn't matter if it's not a Packer game. Seriously. Try talking to them about another team, a certain scheme, the way a certain player is doing that season, and you'll just hear "OH YA, I LOVE MY GREEN BAY PECKERS." These people suck.

Ali:

Somebody please fire Dom Capers.

Shayne:

It seems the Packers get down early in so many games because our dumb fucking coach decides to run the ball on 1st and 10, 2nd and 9, then try a useless bubble screen on 3rd down for no yards. It's only when we get down a couple touchdowns it seems that Rodgers gets the chance to throw the ball, and HEY, WHAT DO YOU KNOW? He gets the team back in the game. I don't mind using the running game as a way of saying: oh, hey, we don't sling the ball downfield every play, but it seems McCarthy believes every game is a new chance to strike it rich on the ground. Honestly, I hope he dies before pre-season.


Danny:

The only difference between Mason Crosby and Nate Kaeding is that Crosby hasn't been put in playoff situations in which he'd pee down his leg.


Shawn:

I wish Jermichael Finley would murder 3 people so the Packers could move on and find someone who is actually competent.


Mike:

They have to be the first professional team in the history of football to have an offensive line that is worse than the one belonging to a college team in the same state. It'll be fun watching our two highly touted rookie running backs get blown up behind the line on every other run. Also, Dom Capers has to have a gay-midget orgy sex tape of Ted Thompson that he is blackmailing him with.


Andrew:

Every year, without question, a village of 300 pound idiots flock to see the only black guys they know bang heads and ride children's bicycles from their locker rooms to the practice field.



Oh, and Jermichael Finley couldn't catch gonorrhea if he swam through an ocean of Tara Reid's ass sweat.


GB:

Vermont makes better cheddar.

Dan:

Half of our simpleton fans wish ol' gunslinging dick pick Favre was still our quarterback and wear his jersey to Lambeau along with their dumb fucking cheese heads and derp faces.


Mike:

Packers fans are the absolute fucking worst, dregs of the NFL society when it comes to having even the slightest, trivial bit of remedial knowledge when it comes the game. Sorry Yinzers, chalk another ass whupping up to Green Bay on that front. It's so bad that I've spent the last 10 plus years making excuses Sunday afterSunday to avoid watching games with the mouth-breathing Packers fans so as to avoid wanting to punch my friends in their thick fucking cheese-fortified skulls for their manifest destiny-esque disbelief towards rules counting against "their" (yes, every asshole in the state uses pronouns like they are on the team, and if you call them on it, the stupid motherfuckers will no doubt pull out their $200 dollar waste of paper "owners" stock. If only I could take enough shits in my life to wipe my ass on every fucking utterly worthless stock certificate I would have lived a fulfilled life.) great Packers. And that Lambeau is the greatest stadium in the NFL bullshit. Try telling me that after you spent 3-4 hours wedged sideways between 2 350 pounders who reek of cheap beer, whiskey, B.O. and dead squirrels (last night's dinner) because the fucking bleacher seats have no line a demarcation you can nudge their FUPS across to claim your own stake. On top of that, you have to listen to the orca's blatant lack of a sense of reality as they try to convince themselves that it is just a fluke that Kapernick/Perterson/any somewhat compenent NFL player gashes the Packers non-existent defense for 200 plus yards and things will change when Dom dials up a new defense in the second half or when the refs "stop favoring the other team." Our defense is fucking horrible and unless Dom can dig up the corpse of Reggie White at half time, it ain't getting better in the second half. The only saving grace is they can't talk the entire game as 3/4 of their time is spent using cheap beer to waterslide mass quantities of fried food to their gullets. It's an utterly torturous experience, only slightly less scary than actually leaving a game because none of the asshole rednecks in camo that populate the stadium have ever heard of a designated driver. On the plus side I guess, shit-hole Green Bay will never go bankrupt like Detroit, all they will ever need to do for money is tap the unrealized billions they'd earn if they enforced DUI laws on game day.


Jared:

"Next up on the Channel 4 News at 6 there was a shooting in Milwaukee, oh wait breaking news Aaron Rodgers had a salami sandwich today, so we will talk about that instead." Fuck the local news during football season and fuck Mr. Illegal Contact Ahmad Carroll.


Sean:

Ever been to Green Bay in the offseason? It's a ghost town with the occasional fat ass alcoholic zombie stumbling out of an abandoned building.


Tyler:

In the divisional round of the playoffs, the Packers will run into a team that has a functional quarterback and a decent pass rush and get fucking MURDERED. I am talking about a 42-21 face fucking of EPIC proportions. This same fanbase claims to be amongst the most "loyal" in the league. When Brett Favre left, half of Packer fans became fucking Jets fans. They have only come back into the fold after Aaron Rodgers won a Super Bowl in 2010. Those same people will tell you that they "stuck with the team because they knew that Rodgers kid was something special HURR DURR." Give me a fucking break.



Finally, fuck Javon Walker, because he is the fucking worst.


Joe:

A green and gold stocking hat big enough to fit dreadlocks worn by a Milwaukee art school drop-out who only drinks local beer that costs $10 a bottle. That's why the Packers suck. Fat girls who honestly believe Clay Matthews would marry them. That's why the Packers suck. UW-Madison-graduated, Kimberly-Clark employed 55 years olds who wear the jersey ($100 a pop) of a 23-year-old kid from south Philly who "graduated" from the University of Middle Tennessee. That's why the Packers suck. $12 beers at a stadium that the people "own." That's why the Packers suck.

Avox:

AJ Hawk couldn't run down my diabetes-riddled grandmother and BJ Raji is an overrated piece of shit. The only qualification for being a head coach of the Green Bay Packers is looking like a fucking walrus. Oh, and our run game has sucked ass for the last three seasons. Our head coach just named DuJuan Harris is our starting RB. DuJuan Harris got cut by the fucking Jaguars. Eddie Lacy is THAT fat. Fuck Dom Capers, seriously.

Jake:

I knew this asshole in college who drove his Porsche around campus. He'd leave it outside overnight, often unlocked, and even left The Club his parents bought him in the backseat as if telling the world "fuck you, go ahead and try me." A few months later his car got jacked and, being pissed off, he asked me how such a thing could happen to him. At least Packers fans won't need to look any further than the two inexperienced bums they picked up at the bottom of the draft to protect the blind side of their $110 million quarterback for the third year in a row to know exactly why the franchise will have thrown away their chance at winning another Super Bowl.


Nathan:

Mike McCarthy has gone on record saying his dream job would have been a NASCAR driver.


Jeff:

Walk into any Packer fan's home and you’ll see a framed share displayed prominently alongside deer heads and Shopko portraits of FAS-stricken children. This share is probably the most expensive thing the fan has ever purchased ($275), yet is still utterly worthless. In a fire it would get rescued before a baby or pet.


Adam:

Bench seating? You have to be kidding me. This isn't some stupid high school game.


Jon:

Fuck this team and fuck our fans.

Andrew:

It's fucking happening already. I'm going to blink and it's going to be Week 10 and the team is going to be held together with spit and duct tape and I'm going to be on my knees praying that Aaron Rodgers can pull another Super Bowl out of his ass before someone reveals out defense to be the frauds that they are. Also, fuck Greg Jennings.

Robin:

They won't let you into Lambeau with a BMI less than 29.

Jimmy:

If the Packers were a shitty B-Movie, Mike McCarthy would be played by Rosie O'Donnell crossing her eyes for 90 minutes.


Adam:

The greatest cultural movement of the last century in Green bay is when people started bringing Fat Tire to tailgates.


Josh:

Every single goddamn training camp about half of our players' bones are replaced by popsicle sticks. Just once I'd like to see what a full-strength team looks like.


Robert:

I've disliked many Packer players, but I've never had a pure hatred for a player like AJ Hawk. I don't give a shit about the fact that he looks like Rocky Dennis, I hate the fact that the Packers have cut two quality linebackers(Nick Barnett and Desmond Bishop)to keep him around. The day they cut him, I was so damn happy to only find out that we brought him back for five more years. For every play that he charges through the line and tackles a guy for a five yard loss, there is five or more plays when his short-ass T-Rex arms gets ran over or knocked on his ass by a lineman. I knew people talking this guy like he was the second coming of Ray Nitschke for Christ sakes. I cringe every time the Packers play the 49ers and watching Vernon Davis out-jumping and stiff-arming the little fucker knowing that we could have had him instead of a Jermichael Finley. And fuck John Kuhn.

Andrew:

We are one Aaron Rodgers concussion away from this team being one of the worst in the NFL. Our defense couldn’t stop ketchup coming out of a bottle.


Steve:

You know how the St Louis Cardinals have the "smartest fans in baseball"? We have the opposite football version of that.


David:

On more than one occasion, I have heard Green Bay fans say in all seriousness that the Packers are God's favorite team.


Chris:

We could be entering the season with Marshawn Lynch. Instead we have arguably the worst RB group in the league. Fuck Ted Thompson.


Aaron:

In the '90s that ESPN ran a special on how black players on the Packers could even live in Green Bay. Answer: Most of them didn't, they spent as much time in Milwaukee as they could. Green Bay was so white that if people saw a black man in the mall they would automatically think he was a Packer, sometimes even asking the poor soul for an autograph. Hell, when they signed Reggie White, part of his contract included the ability to travel to Milwaukee each week to work with black youth, because Green Bay didn't have any!


Ken:

Our fan base is littered with slobbering, ungrateful drunks. If Donald Driver was named GM or Head Coach tomorrow, the townies in the Fox Valley would drink enough brandy to fill Lake Winnebago twice.


Louis:

When discussing worst Packers ever, #1 should be Mossy Cade. He went to prison for Raping His Aunt.


Sam:

I've been a Packers fan my entire life, and it continues to astonish me how idiotic the fans are. For instance, prior to the team signing Vince Young as a veteran backup, people were persistently calling local sports radio shows insisting that the best option for a backup quarterback available is JAMARCUS FUCKING RUSSELL. Even when the hosts calmly explained that Russell was terrible and even read his career stat line - essentially failure personified - still people continued to press the matter by saying that he "has a cannon arm" and "he's lost weight." I suppose that's to be expected when half your fan base are bona fide alcoholics and the other half are just unbelievably fat people who think IHOP is where you go when you're on a diet. And then there's the fact that the fans here are so fucking entitled. The Packers lose in the playoffs to a team that outplayed them and the fans immediately want to run Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy out of town on a rail. No decision the franchise makes is ever right, it's always doom and gloom, until 20/20 hindsight kicks in. Only winning the Super Bowl every single season would satisfy the fans, and anything less should result in SOMEONE being fired. It's like everyone has gotten so caught up in 20 years of pretty much uninterrupted success that they've forgotten the 25 years of being completely shit-awful before that. And the lack of perspective just completely ignores the fact that there are teams out there who would kill to have our GM or Head Coach, not to mention our quarterback. Not that I'm letting the franchise completely off the hook. Take it to the bank this year that AJ Hawk will start at inside linebacker, and he will continue to do sweet fuck all. I understand that the guy was a #5 overall pick, and he isn't exactly bad, but there was a justifiable sense of confusion around Wisconsin when the Packers told Desmond Bishop to hit the bricks while relying on the guy who led one of the worst defenses in the league last season to do it again. Hawk will continue to pad his stats by joining in gang tackles while being completely embarrassed in the open field. It's embarrassing.



Oh, and Marshall Newhouse is probably going to end up starting at tackle again, despite doing his level best to get Aaron Rodgers killed for the last two seasons. Fuck Marshall Newhouse. Fuck watching Jared Allen and Julius Peppers blow by him like he's not even there. Fuck the Packers for paying Aaron Rodgers truckloads of money and then relying on Marshall Newhouse to keep him upright.


Matt:

Watch the Green Bay nightly news sometime to learn all you need to about the Packers' fan base. A few weeks ago, their LEAD STORY was about the heat at training camp. They covered the Ryan Braun story with what AARON RODGERS FANS felt about it. I swear to fucking Christ, they even led with the news of Reggie White's death on the same day the 2004 tsunami was dragging about 5 trillion people into the Indian Ocean. They covered Brett Favre's first trip back to Green Bay as a Viking like it was the goddamn Kennedy assassination and 9/11 all rolled into one.



I grew up a Packers fan and still watch every week, but after thirty years of this shit, I have to admit that I actually root against them most of the time. Just to watch those fat fucks moan like the devil when they lose. I grew up HATING the Vikings, yet it was one of the biggest let-downs of my sports-watching life when Favre threw that interception in the 2010 NFC title game. If he could have taken the Vikes to the Super Bowl and won, Lake Michigan would have turned red from the blood of a million instant suicides and I would have jizzed strawberry ice cream nonstop for a year.


Nick:

As good as they are, Rodgers and Clay Matthews cannot consistently carry the sorry bunch of undrafted free agents and low round draft picks that Ted “Albino Pigeon” Thompson continues to assemble each year. Even if they could keep it to within a few points of the NFC's top teams, I would rather have Ray Finkle kicking in a close game than Mason Crosby.


Kingston:

Jermichael Finley. Typing his stupid fucking name even makes me angry. Two stone slabs for hands combined with all the asshole features of a Jerramy Stevens or Jeremy Shockey.


Eric:

A huge percentage of people at the games are completely clueless. They don't go to the games because they're diehard fans. They're drunks who go to the games because it's the only acceptable time to be completely hammered by 9 am on a Sunday. I never fail to encounter fans who are completely plastered by the time the game starts at Noon. People like these seem to do their best to ruin Lambeau for all the normal people that just want to watch football. But at least they aren't walking thinking they own the team because they decided to buy a piece of paper in a glorified corporate fundraising event.


Kevin:

The Packers have the best quarterback of this generation, a guy that can put up 40 points playing blindfolded for the Taliban against a fully armed Seal Team 6. So why do we still embarrass ourselves in the playoffs year after year? Because the team sees fit to keep the architect of the worst defense in the history of the NFL, that gave up 577 bajillion yards to a sophomore fucking quarterback who broke the playoff record for yards before anyone bothered to touch him. The only thing worse than Dom Capers is how the media praises him like he's Vince Lombardi 2.0. Fuck Dom Capers.


Wanna be part of the Deadspin NFL previews? It's simple. Just email me and give me ample evidence of why your team sucks: personal anecdotes, encounters with fans, etc. I'll throw any good material into the post and give you proper credit. Next team up: San Diego Chargers.