NGT: Is the Green Bay organization overrated? (long)

We don’t talk a lot about the Packers here on BBI, but it seems to me they are often held up as a model organization, a team that “does it the right way.” They build through the draft, rarely spending big on free agents. Perennial playoff team and division winner. Hall of Fame QBs under center for 30 straight seasons. Great fans, great stadium, great history. The Lambeau Leap. Great uniforms. What’s not to like? They’re the envy of most of the NFL.

But what if we have that wrong?

Mind you, Packer fans have plenty of gripes about Packer management. They gripe because they don’t win the Super Bowl every year, despite all those advantages. And in fact, all fans gripe. BBI is Gripe Central for the Giants. These days, even Pats fans gripe.

But the tone of the griping and sniping among Green Bay fans is that the Packers should have won more championships. That assumes that they are run “the right way" and the team has underachieved. Maybe. But if you assume that's the case, there's some Conventional Wisdom that flows from that:

• Conventional Wisdom: Since Green Bay has a tremendous regular season record, this proves that the best way to build a team is to avoid spending on free agency and develop players internally.

• Conventional Wisdom: The Packers' tremendous regular season under Matt LaFleur proves that LaFleur is one of the league’s best coaches.

• Conventional Wisdom: The Packers' playoff failures show they've been an underachieving team; so inadequate coaching must be to blame. Therefore, Mike McCarthy was an oaf and the Packers are lucky to be rid of him. Matt LaFleur apparently gets a pass because of that tremendous regular season record.

• Conventional Wisdom: Since the Packers are doing it the right way, and LaFleur is a good coach, someone else must be to blame for the team’s most recent playoff failures. So Aaron Rodgers is a choker.

But all that assumes the Packers are run the right way. What if they're not? What if the Packer way isn't necessarily the right way. What if it works in some ways but has problems?

I’m not enough of an expert to pick apart the details of their drafting and personnel choices. But I have some thoughts:

• The Packers have gotten fat in the regular season beating up on a weak division. Detroit has been a doormat most of the last 30 years. Chicago has been up and down, more down than up. Minnesota is consistently mediocre and only occasionally pretty good. No one has had a sustained run of success. (Yes, I get that Green Bay’s sustained success is a big point in their favor.)

• They haven’t even had a run of conference championships with losing Super Bowl appearances, as Minnesota had in the 70s and Buffalo had in the 90s. Buffalo got to be a punchline for losing four straight times in the Super Bowl. Green Bay has been in just three Super Bowls since Vince Lombardi left. They rack up division titles and regular season wins and then get eliminated. Why aren’t the Packers a punchline? Aaron Rodgers is the butt of a lot of jokes right now but maybe his team is getting off easy. And I can’t stand Aaron Rodgers.

• Their regular season record is misleading and masks flaws in their approach.

• Emphasizing player development is great for rounds 1-3, as long as you draft well. But it’s arrogant to expect most of your Day 3 picks to develop. Nobody is that good at picking players in rounds 4-7. The draft is a crapshoot. Nobody wins on every roll of the dice.

• Day 3 picks often contribute most on special teams, especially at first. Green Bay has the worst special teams in the NFL, by at least one ranking. They lived down to that ranking against San Francisco. I don't know what happened in every playoff game ever, but that may have been the worst special teams performance in NFL playoff history.

• Aaron Rodgers has gotten plenty of bad press for his clashes with Packer management, but if he's unhappy about the quality of players around him, he may be more right than wrong.

• If the Packers aren’t doing it “the right way” and their roster isn’t as great as their record indicates, then the team’s playoff failures aren’t necessarily the fault of Mike McCarthy, or of Brett Favre, or of Aaron Rodgers. McCarthy may be an oaf, but wunderkind LaFleur doesn’t seem to be doing a lot better. Maybe those teams did about as well as could be expected, or even overachieved.

That last one is really key: What if instead of a loaded team that underachieved, the Packers are a thin roster that overachieved? What if their QBs carried them as far any QB could carry them? What if the coaches have been papering over serious weaknesses? Would we still think the organization is doing it the right way? We might be underrating McCarthy (Wow, did I really just type that? I think he still looked oafish in Dallas.) and giving Rodgers too much blame for an organizational failure.

None of this means the Packers are somehow bad. They really are the envy of most of the NFL — and should be. But I don’t think their regular season record means they’ve unlocked the secret of NFL success. On the contrary, their scant two titles during these 30 seasons of starting a HoF-level QB suggests they have missed something.

Two titles is better than none (Chargers with Rivers) or one (Colts with Peyton) but the Giants, whose organization has looked like a bunch of bumblers for years, have won two titles since 2007. And did it with Eli Manning, generally ranked behind Favre and Rodgers.

One more thing: I don’t think it’s random that the Packers’ vaunted home field advantage has declined. First, the NFL has shifted toward the passing game and that is harder to execute when players can’t feel their ice-cold feet and fingers. Second, NFL QBs have had longer careers, notably Favre and Rodgers. It’s one thing to be out playing in zero-degree weather at age 27. It’s a whole other thing at 37. These guys may be in vastly better condition than the beer-swillin’, cigarette-smokin’ players of the 60s and 70s, but that doesn’t necessarily make them more cold-tolerant. Tom Brady was smart to relocate to Florida for the last part of his career.

So while we’d all love our team to be 13-3 year after year, if we're going to look at the Packers as an example to learn from, maybe we should be talking as much about what the Packers doing wrong as what they’re doing right.

The Giants need to draft better, for sure, and they need better player development. But what part of the Green Bay model has been exposed over the last three decades? What part of the Packers’ approach should the Giants avoid?