Greg Bedard has the news.
The Packers have informed the representatives of former Wisconsin-Whitewater running back Justin Beaver that they will not be signing him to a contract.The Packers will sign three players. Former Arkansas defensive tackle Fred Bledsoe was told he would be one of those people, according to his agent.
That’s too bad. His story was a good one and he seemed like a down-to-earth guy. I hope he gets a shot with another team.
Rob Demovsky thinks Justin Beaver, the UW Whitewater standout who tried out with the Packers this weekend, has an important fan.
It sounds like Mike McCarthy is going to make a push to keep Justin Beaver, the diminutive running back from the University of Wis.-Whitewater.
The Green Bay Packers coach on Sunday said no decisions have been made on the 19 players the team had in this weekend for tryouts, but it likely will sign four of them to the 80-man offseason roster.
The 5-foot-7 Beaver, who won the Division III equivalent of the Heisman Trophy, got plenty of work during the weekend rookie orientation camp and opened some eyes.
“I’ll tell you what, he’s been very impressive,” McCarthy said. “He’s done a very nice job. He plays with a lot of energy. He’s very quick (and) explosive. Does he have a shot? That’s something we’ll discuss when we get upstairs, but I would love for him to have an opportunity, because he’s been very impressive.”
Also, see here for a flashback to the article from the JS Online right after Beaver’s impressive pro-day workout. Sounds like the kid could be a keeper.
UPDATE: In this item from last night, in which Greg Bedard notes that the Packers will sign DT Fred Bledsoe to a contract, Bedard writes that Beaver “wasn’t in the Packers’ plans as of Saturday night” and allows that “that may have changed.
Jim Schuman, a lifelong fan of the Chicago Bears, switched sides in the Bear-Packer rivalry. At least for one day. Schuman ran the Boston Marathon wearing green-and-gold from head-to-toe. When he was done, declared: “I looked like the biggest tool.”
A bit rich coming from a Bears fan, I know.
Actually, Schuman wore Packer gear to raise an additional $2000 (on top of $7000 from other sources) for Homes for Our Troops — a fantastic charity that provides living assistance for wounded veterans. Schuman had been a freshman in college in 1985, the last time the lowly Bears won the Super Bowl, and in news that won’t surprise Packer fans, talked about the victory incessantly. So when he asked his former roommates, both from Wisconsin, to support his fundraising, they agreed to do so, conditionally: He must wear Packer gear.
“You must also pledge that in no way will you display said Packer merchandise in a demeaning or derogatory way,” wrote Jim Wallerius, one of the former roommates, in an e-mail before the marathon.
Wallerius — whose family has had Packers season tickets since 1965, whose middle name is Vincent for legendary Packers coach Vince Lombardi, and whose mom went into labor with him at Lambeau Field and stayed until the end of the game — said he thought about just donating the money to his friend’s charitable cause.
“Then, the devil appeared on the other shoulder and said . . . ‘He’s still a Bears fan,’ ” Wallerius said.
During the marathon, Schuman was cheered by Packer fans.
“I would smile at them,” he said. “It was one of those compromising smiles, like you know you’re doing something that’s wrong.”
He was also heckled by Bears fans.
“When people would yell, ‘Go Bears,’ I was actually happy,” he said.
“Hopefully they’ll understand and forgive me at some point in time.”
I’m sure they will. And because it was for such a great cause, we’ll forgive you for your lifelong devotion to mediocrity. The whole story is here.
Jason Wilde seems to think that there is reason to be optimistic about Jordy Nelson. Nelson, he writes, “caught everything thrown his way Friday (the only practice open to reporters), including a deep ball down the right sideline from seventh-round pick Matt Flynn against second-round pick Patrick Lee.”
Wilde turned to UW quarterback Allen Evridge, who came to Madison from Kansas State.
Because Nelson was something of an unknown commodity to Packers fans before the draft — hence the boos general manager Ted Thompson received at the annual Lambeau Field draft party — Evridge has been deemed the local authority on him.
“I don’t need the YouTube. I know exactly what he’s capable of,” said Evridge, who sent Nelson a congratulatory text message on draft day. “Everybody keeps texting me asking me, ‘What’s this Jordy Nelson all about?’ Well, I know Jordy pretty well, and they got a good one.
“First of all, character-wise, you’re not going to find anyone better. And on the football field, he’s so gifted — 6-3, 220, runs like a deer, extremely strong, physical player. He’s definitely a good catch.”
There are several YouTube videos of Jordy Nelson highlights. It’s worth taking a look at all of them. Here’s a good one. (Sorry, can’t embed the video due to a glitch.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIUu-nLx0lw
Not a lot of news out of Mike McCarthy’s first practice with the rookies. You’ll be shocked to learn that he likes the rookies and is glad Jordy Nelson is on the team. Here is the transcript of his post-practice press conference
See Greg Bedard here for a more detailed description of the day’s activities and mini-evaluations of the prospects.
This article is one reason why I think Jason Wilde is one of the best sportswriters in America. No, that’s not hyperbole. He reports on the ride Ken DeBauche and Justin Beaver took together to Green Bay to try out for the Packers and even manages to work in the make of Beaver’s girlfriend’s car in the lede. Fantastic.
Riding shotgun in Justin Beaver’s girlfriend’s Mercury Mystique Thursday afternoon, Ken DeBauche found himself thinking about all the times he had made the very same drive between Madison and his hometown of Suamico — starting up on Highway 151, shortcutting on Highway 26 and finishing up on U.S. 41 — by himself over the years.
“I just told Justin, ‘I can’t even count the number of times I’ve done this,’ ” DeBauche said.
But this time, the drive was different. This time, it was a work trip.
The former University of Wisconsin punter was on his way to Friday’s opening practice of the Green Bay Packers’ post-draft rookie orientation camp. He signed with his hometown NFL team shortly after the draft ended on Sunday.
So while he knew all the ins and outs (”The the first thing I told Justin was not to go 1 mile an hour over 30 in Rosendale”) and was enjoying the company (”We thought we’d try to save a little gas money and car pool,” he said of Beaver, the former UW-Whitewater running back who will be trying out for the Packers today), DeBauche knew this was more than just a homecoming.
The details are so telling. These two young guys will be attending a tryout to play in the richest sport in the world. But things are so uncertain going in that they decide to carpool to save money. And DeBauche’s familiarity with the area conveys that the tryout for him is so much more than just another tryout. Really, you should read the whole thing.
For more on rookie orientation camp go here.
In my first post, I wrote: “Preliminary grade from me? B+” (emphasis added).
In my second, I wrote: “I understand that giving grades is premature and overly simplistic. I trust that most of our readers do, too. But Aaron, if the guys giving grades are just wasting time, what about the guys who write long posts opposing the guys who waste time giving grades?” (That was a joke.)
And I end my third by acknowledging that the entire exercise is “mental masturbation.”
And yet Aaron’s response is to pretend he’s caught me agreeing with him that these things are meaningless? Uh, uh. I agreed with Aaron from the beginning — in a sense before he even weighed in — that these grades are not something people ought to take seriously. I never imagined that anyone would take them seriously enough even to oppose them. Indeed it was that fact, and the rage-filled condemnation of the practice, that prompted me to offer my half-hearted “defense” of grades in the first place.
If Aaron’s Radio City post was an “A”, and his previous post was a gentleman’s “C,” then this latest one is an “F.”
Which means he’ll have to try again next year.
Aaron has responded to my post questioning his curious anti-grade fervor. His answer contains lots of words but few new insights. Like his first post, it never really gets to the roots of his rage, which leaves the reader wanting desperately to understand better his fervent opposition to post-draft grading.
This is as close as he comes:
Perhaps it’s because I start each post here at Cheesehead TV with the assumption that you, dear reader, are not an idiot. That every person compelled to follow a professional football team to the point where they check multiple blogs about their team is well aware of the tried and true axiom of needing to wait AT LEAST three years before one can truly begin to take stock of what transpired on draft day.
But that, dear reader, is precisely my point. Of course we can’t know whether the draft is going to be great right after the draft and of course readers know this. But the same is true for evaluating individual players. Brian Brohm is only a “steal” — as Aaron put it — if you’re projecting future performance based on his play in college.
Aaron answers this objection — or tries to — by writing:
Assigning value to individual selections is a much more subjective exercise (and therefore well suited to blogging) than giving out letter grades for an entire draft, with a universally agreed upon standard of what constitutes “A” through “F”.
First of all, I don’t agree with his claim that individual evaluations are “a more subjective exercise” than giving out grades for a class. How is that true? They’re both subjective. And I’m not sure that there is such a “universally agreed upon standard” of the meaning of grades A through F. (What accounts for the difference between my English grades from, say, Mr. Bearden and Miss Shapiro, with consistent effort and quality?)
More to the point, doesn’t this claim undermine his broader argument? If draft grades are “bullshit” because they are an attempt to apply universal standards to the unknowable, then aren’t these “more subjective” evaluations of the unknowable even more meaningless?
Now I think it’s completely harmless to slap a grade on a draft immediately after the draft is over. Real fans don’t take grades too seriously and understand that we won’t be able to evaluate a draft for years.
But I agree with Aaron that it’s possible to get carried away with the whole grading thing. The guys at footballoutsiders.com, for instance, have aggregated grades given by so-called experts and run standard deviations to evaluate the evaluations. This is what a friend used to call mental masturbation (unlike, say, the rest of this post).
BratsNBeerGuy has the last (and funniest) word on the inane commentary suggesting Aaron Rodgers might have had his feelings hurt when the Packers drafted Brian Brohm and Matt Flynn. Here.
Plus, he demonstrates that drinking beer can curb global warming. Even if you’re skeptical of global warming alarmists, you should not be skeptical about beer as a problem solver.
That’s what a commenter called “Cheeseheads” wrote to protest our labeling of Peyton Manning as a “whiner.” This Manning fan also wrote that Favre has been “stuck in mediocrity” for years. (Anyone in reading the entire comment can do so at the end of this post. If you do read it, be sure to treat yourself to PackerBelle’s devastating smack-down immediately afterwards.) Let me address that second point first, because it’s so easily dispensed with, and return to the second.
A quick check NFL.com’s passing statistics rankings for 2007 show that this guy simply has no idea what he’s talking about. Brett Favre is #4, Peyton Manning is #7. Favre had three fewer touchdowns than Manning and one more interception. But Favre had more yards, a higher completion percentage, a higher yards/game average and was sacked six fewer times than the cement-legged Manning. Put simply: Favre was better this year than Peyton Manning. And Favre was statistically the fourth best quarterback. That’s not mediocre.
The “interception machine” point is something you hear frequently about Favre. Yes, the guy threw a lot of interceptions. 288 to be precise. But what this kind of claim fails to recognize is that Favre threw more passes than any other quarterback in NFL history. When you consider interceptions-per-attempt, Favre’s numbers are worse than several Hall of Fame quarterbacks and better than several others.
Brett Favre
Att: 8759
Int: 288
Ratio: .0328
Peyton Manning
Att: 5405
Int: 153
Ratio: .0283
Joe Montana
Att: 5391
Int: 139
Int: .0257
Troy Aikman
Att: 4715
Int: 141
Ratio: .0299
Steve Young
Att: 4149
Int: 107
Ratio: .026
Dan Marino
Att: 8358
Int: 252
Ratio: .301
Johnny Unitas
Att: 5186
Int: 253
Ratio: .0487
Bart Starr
Att: 3149
Int: 138
Ratio: .0438
