GREEN BAY – It was a good day when I didn't have to fight traffic for the drive north to Titletown Thursday afternoon to watch the Packers play the Kansas City Chiefs.
It would've been great if some of the starters for the Packers played at least three quarters. As a precaution, some of the key players sat out their last fake, I mean, exhibition game.
I guess the Green Bay coaching staff knew something that the fans didn't know: Save the guys for the regular season, which starts next Thursday.
While driving, I turned on the radio and heard that some of the starters were sitting out.
I understood why head coach Mike McCarthy wanted to keep them out. You don't want any freaky injuries happening to any of those guys if they played in the game that didn't count.
When the real season starts here on Sept. 8, this town will be turned inside out with a big game day party. People will be celebrating all day before the 7:20 p.m. kickoff.
Coincidently, the kickoff will interfere with President Barack Obama's jobs creation speech plan, which will be shown to a national audience and going up against the NFL. His people will have to talk to the NBC Sports people to iron things out.
If the speech cuts into the pregame show, there will be problems because NBC sold all the ad space for the pregame segment. No one wants to hear a jobs creation speech. They want to hear football coming out of the mouths of the studio guys and Al Michaels from the site of the world champions.
In the last several weeks, the Milwaukee Brewers graced the cover of Sports Illustrated. This week, it was the Packers turn on the cover as the magazine previewed the NFL season.
As you know by now, when a team or an athlete is on the cover of SI, there's a jinx attached to it. The same thing used to happen to NFL players who were on the cover of John Madden's video games. They got hurt.
I hope the jinx doesn't happen to the Brewers. They had a chance to put the St. Louis Cardinals out of their misery by taking two of three games. The visitors came into Miller Park and took the broom with them as they walked out of there with a sweep.
The Brewers had a 10½-game lead over the Cardinals on Tuesday. Now, that lead is down to 7½ games. If they lose the weekend series in Houston to the Astros and suffer another meltdown in St. Louis next week, then it will be time to panic.
Packer Nation has a strong belief that the team will beat the New Orleans Saints at home next week to start another run to the Super Bowl. The pressure will be on Aaron Rodgers to take the Pack back to the promise land. In Mississippi, there's a guy who probably wishes that Rodgers falls flat on his face and come up short.
