The first time I visited Green Bay, I asked for directions to Downtown.
I followed the route exactly as it had been explained, but didn’t see it.
So I asked a couple walking out of a J.C. Penny store in what appeared to be mostly a residential area.
They looked at me as if I had landed from Mars.
“This is it,” the husband said, next to his bewildered wife.
The Packers, again, routinely beat the Lions Sunday at Ford Field. They clinched the NFC North title and are primed for another potential deep postseason run, while the Lions are making another regime change.
How come the Packers are outstanding decade after decade while the Lions consistently falter?
Green Bay’s media market is less than 250,000, Detroit’s nearly four million. The Packers’ stadium opened in 1957 in an older neighborhood of small homes. The Lions began occupying Ford Field during 2002 in Downtown Detroit, which was thriving pre-pandemic.
The Lions are owned by an iconic business family, the Fords. The Packers are essentially owned by stockholders and fans known as “Cheeseheads.”
I get it, Vince Lombardi was a great coach, perhaps the best of all time. But he left Green Bay more than 50 years ago.
The Packers develop truly great quarterbacks, literal generational talents like Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers. They already have their next QB in the pipeline, last spring’s first-round pick Jordan Love. The Lions pretend Matthew Stafford is in the same class as Rodgers when he isn’t.
The Packers have hired general managers like Hall of Famer Ron Wolf, Ted Thompson and Brian Gutekunst, and coaches such as Mike Holmgren, Mike McCarthy and Matt Lafleur.
It’s a far cry from the Lions employing the likes of Russ Thomas, Matt Millen and Bob Quinn in the front office, and Marty Mornhinweg, Rod Marinelli and Matt Patricia on the sidelines.
The Packers’ team president is a former NFL player and Big Ten athletic director, Mark Murphy, not an accountant by trade like the Lions’ Rod Wood.
The Packers make smart football decisions. They traded for Favre after he barely played for the Falcons as rookie, snapped up Rodgers when he unexpectedly slid in the draft. Packers’ running backs Aaron Jones and Jamaal Williams were fifth- and fourth-round draft picks. The Lions have traded up for running backs in the early rounds five times since 2004. The Packers' two best receivers after star Davante Adams -- Allen Lazard and tight end Robert Tonyan -- were undrafted players making their NFL debuts with Green Bay.
The Packers took a cornerback, Jaire Alexander, in the first round not long ago. He is an outstanding NFL player. In other words, Alexander is everything Jeff Okudah doesn’t appear to be. Few NFL teams have struck gold to the degree the Packers did last year with free agent linebackers Preston Smith and Za’Darius Smith.
The list of smart moves by the Packers is exceptionally long, just about the length of the Lions’ mistakes.
Little old Green Bay is way better than Detroit. There’s no excuse for it.
It’s an example of an exceptional organization compared to an abominable one.
