The sky is falling... (again!)

So, the Green Bay Packers stunk out the joint last season, going 6-10. Of particular concern was the decline in the play of the defense and special teams. Ultimately, the slip cost Bob Sanders and everyone on the defensive coaching staff except for Assistant Head Coach/Linebackers Coach Winston Moss their jobs.

With the recent hiring of Dom Capers, one of the architects of the Pittsburgh "blitzburgh" 3-4 defense in the early 90's, the shift is on from the Packers base 4-3 defense to the 3-4, along with the requisite transition personnel wise to accommodate the move.

I'm a fairly regular poster over at the Packersnews.com message board, and I have to say that it's about time for me to walk away from the scene until we get a little closer to draft time.

We went through a pretty dry spell after packersnews.com whacked the phpBB based forum and moved to a content management system called pluck. A lot of the mainstays left altogether, and the board was overrun by newbies that pretty much either subscribed to one of two schools of thought:
1. Ted Thompson (TT in message board parlance) is a total incompetent and needs to be fired now
2. Everyone else here is an imbecile and can only understand ideas communicated in the most obtuse and insulting fashion possible

Thankfully the haters either burned out or wore out, and for a while we hit a pretty nice stride on the board with some intelligent, well informed debate with people with very disparate views about how things are being run kindling respectful connections with posters on the other side of their perspective.

And then it happened. The NFL's free agency period opened last Friday, and now we've been beset with a plethora of debbie downers who have never posted a word prior to last week flooding the board with calls for TT's head on a platter and negativity for everything Packers.

This kind of reminds me of what's happened after the first few days of free agency EVERY YEAR since Ted Thompson became GM of the team.

In some respects, I suppose the fresh crop of haters is like punxsutawney phil- a rite of the dreary winter before the post draft spring has a chance to thaw the pessimism and fans have a chance to grab hold of the hope that belongs to fans of every NFL team in late April- that the season still has to be played, and that this could be the year.

In the meantime, I guess some of us will need to endure the March doldrums of complaint about how TT didn't sign the biggest name free agents and how it all spells the eternal futility of the team to get to draft day and see what kind of additions we find to make things work and get back to contending for the Super Bowl.

Until it's April, I'll be going a little punxsutawney myself on the old packersnews.com message board until I can see my shadow in at least one ray of the sunshine of hope.

Make mine Packers!