Green Bay - The Green Bay Packers didn't need any favors in their attempt to repeat as Super Bowl champions.

Then along came an off-season without football, which provided the Packers with a subtle but almost unfair advantage entering 2011.

Each day that the National Football League lockout persists represents one fewer day for 31 teams to catch Green Bay. If the labor dispute had dragged on until September, as I guessed all along that it would, the Packers might have been almost impossible to beat.

One day last month, Mike McCarthy was trying to stay sharp as a football coach without a team. When it was suggested to McCarthy that every day without football only benefited the Packers, he blanched.

"We always get a lot better during the OTAs," insisted McCarthy. "We needed them."

McCarthy's three-month off-season program (mid-March to mid-June) was run as well if not better than most other programs around the NFL. He swore by the results. So did many of his players.

It isn't that the Packers didn't need their off-season. It's that every other team needed it more.

No off-season programs basically meant every team stayed right where it was. That's precisely where the team at the top, in this case the Packers, would want everyone else to remain.

Twenty teams haven't been on a football field since Jan. 2. Of the 12 playoff teams, only Super Bowl participants Green Bay and Pittsburgh had the benefit of 15 practices after the 20 non-playoff teams were finished.

McCarthy already had planned to delay the start of the off-season program by two or three weeks so his players, coaches and support staff could catch their breath. More than any other team, the Packers will have benefited simply by getting away from football and just resting.

In the first 44 years of the Super Bowl era, eight teams have been able to win championships back-to-back but no team has ever won three in a row. The Super Bowl hangover is real. Just seven of the last 15 champions so much as won their division the following season.

Super Bowl champions face a variety of obstacles. Friends and family tell every player on the roster how great they are. And, having accomplished the ultimate goal, some players lose their desire for the punishing workouts that are at the core of their job livelihood.

In the case of the Packers, they played 24 games last season and ended up with one of the most magnificent seasons in franchise history. It would have been difficult for some players to be right back in town nine or 10 weeks later sitting in meeting rooms listening to the same stuff that they had mastered during the season.

Let's assume the Packers won't practice for the first time until the weekend of July 30-31. That's 25 weeks, almost half a year, since they beat the Steelers in Dallas.

Listen to and read the words of players in the last few weeks. There's a sense of eagerness among the Packers that simply wouldn't have been there had it been a normal off-season.

This is the perfect scenario for a team trying to recapture its esprit de corps of six months ago.

The last time the Packers were in this situation was 1997. That team overcame early season-ending injuries to Edgar Bennett and Craig Newsome, duplicated the 13-3 mark of the '96 titlists and made it back to the Super Bowl before falling to Denver.

On the eve of the '97 season, I wrote that the Packers should be favored for five reasons: the quarterback, the coach, the general manager and his scouts, the corporate structure and the continuity within the organization.

The principals are different now in each of the five categories, but the level of excellence is similar.

Not only does Aaron Rodgers have the best regular-season passer rating in history, he has the best postseason mark in history. Upon careful study, and multiple interviews with Packers and Steelers alike, Rodgers' performance in Dallas should rank among the half-dozen finest in Super Bowl history.

McCarthy became more than just a top-flight offensive coach a year ago. He grew into the leader that the organization sorely needed.

Ted Thompson will never change. He outworks many of his peers, listens to his people and keeps demonstrating the knack for picking the best of closely rated players. What shouldn't be overlooked about Thompson is the understated, professional workplace that he creates.

Mark Murphy recognized early that Thompson and McCarthy were worthy of his support and that of the board of directors.

After camp opens, the Packers should be ready to play a game in no time.

On offense, McCarthy starts his sixth season with the same scheme, the same coordinator (Joe Philbin) and five position coaches that have been with him throughout his tenure. Jimmy Robinson, the premier wide receivers coach, departed for Dallas.

On defense, the coordinator (Dom Capers) and his entire staff remain intact for a third year in a row.

It isn't only that these coaches know exactly what McCarthy wants. The collective level of expertise on this staff might match favorably against any in club annals.

In the personnel department, the Packers have been as stable as just about any group in the NFL over the last 10 years. When the Eagles and coach Andy Reid pursued Eliot Wolf hard after the draft, the Packers promoted Wolf to a position akin to what John Schneider had and retained his services

Compare that checklist to what's going on around the league.

Eight franchises will have new coaches with, for the most part, entirely new schemes. Minus an off-season, none of them really has a chance in 2011.

Depending on your definition of "set," 14 of the 32 coaches either don't know who will be their starting quarterback or, if they were honest, recognize that their starter isn't good enough to win the Super Bowl. Six quarterbacks were drafted in the first two rounds, but in the wake of the lockout there just aren't enough hours of preparation for them to stand out as rookies.

Six of Green Bay's 16 games are against teams with new coaches or teams unsettled at quarterback, or both.

When the gong sounds for the start of free agency, the Packers won't be signing anyone. They'll try to re-sign some of their own veterans before they hit the market, add a dozen or so undrafted rookies and take the practice field with all but a handful of players from their Super Bowl 53 supplemented by eight to 10 of the 15 players that ended the season on injured reserve.

No one in their right mind should ever think that the Packers would even entertain lavishing $18 million or more this year alone on Raiders cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha. They'll continue developing Sam Shields, hope for another good year or two from Charles Woodson and see what fourth-round pick Davon House has to offer.

The Packers have more than enough players. Even if they didn't, a blockbuster deal in free agency might be hard to handle given their cap situation.

In late February, the players under contract to Green Bay for 2011 totaled $128.6 million against the salary cap that was in effect through 2009. Only the Cowboys ($134.2 million) had more cap commitments, although A.J. Hawk's new deal on March 3 did reduce the Packers' charge by about $8 million.

The proposed collective bargaining agreement approved by the owners Thursday includes a salary cap of $120.375 million for 2011.

Cullen Jenkins will be leaving for what should be a huge contract in free agency. Jenkins was the team's second-best pass rusher, but he's 30 and Mike Neal was drafted high a year ago to replace him.

The decision to pay Hawk enormous money means he'll keep starting alongside Desmond Bishop, Brandon Chillar will back up at inside linebacker and Nick Barnett will become a cap casualty.

McCarthy still thinks James Jones can become consistent even though he has dropped 30 of 285 targeted passes (10.5%) in four seasons. Now it's up to Jones.

The Packers are expected to offer him a reasonable contract even though Randall Cobb was drafted to do more than return kicks as a rookie. The market, however, likely will provide other opportunities for Jones.

Mason Crosby's next contract will be with Green Bay. So will John Kuhn's. I wouldn't offer Daryn Colledge a representative multiyear deal, but someone might because players from Super Bowl teams often are overvalued in free agency.

The flurry of developments that transpire over the next few weeks will be newsy. Still, they'll be merely window dressing in comparison to the arresting level of talent residing on the depth chart.

Jermichael Finley, one of six key Packers sure to be inspired by a contract year in 2011, heads the list of five tight ends, four of whom can get downfield. Drafting Derek Sherrod all the way down at No. 32 in the first round gives McCarthy the luxury of having three tackles. And then there are three or four respectable candidates to succeed the mediocre Colledge at left guard.

Few teams can match the Packers' collection of three running backs, all of whom at least have the size and ability to be every-down players.

Wide bodies B.J. Raji, Ryan Pickett and Howard Green, a stubborn three-man front down the stretch, have had weight issues and will be monitored closely next month. Defensive end C.J. Wilson might not have Neal's ability but he is no slug, either.

The Packers won a Super Bowl with Frank Zombo, Erik Walden and Brad Jones playing opposite Clay Matthews. The return of Morgan Burnett and the re-signing of Charlie Peprah give Capers three safeties.

Perhaps Cobb will help improve the special teams that haunted McCarthy in four of the six defeats.

McCarthy's enemies are selfishness and greed in the locker room. Everything else, at least when compared to the competition, couldn't be more to his liking.

The lockout locked in the Packers as the team to beat. Pick against them at your peril.

Send email to bmcginn@journalsentinel.com