Draft musings: Packers GM Brian Gutekunst is pulling his weight... will Matt LaFleur?
Also, inside: Why the New York Giants are the most fascinating team this draft and thoughts on the Vrabel-Russini fallout. The Patriots head coach can't pretend nothing happened.
Inside today’s piece…
Why the pressure is on Matt LaFleur. You heard from Javon Bullard. The Packers are finding the right attitudes. Will the Packers HC allow these personalities to flourish?
The Giants have a chance to vault themselves into playoff contention with John Harbaugh. One prospect makes a lot of sense.
My thoughts on the bungalow pictures seen ‘round the football world.
A draft take for all legitimate Super Bowl contenders.
ICYMI, our series on Joe Brady is also live…
Part I: ‘I’ll set my jaw’
Part II: ‘They’ve got to play us’
Bless Mike Daniels. The man tried. The man was ahead of his time during a Green Bay Packers career that lasted 2012 to 2018.
He sat in his locker — a football Buddha — imploring his teammates to play with more violence. More bad intentions. Publicly, the defensive tackle was a lone wolf on defense. He was the only player speaking in such blunt terms. Privately, his message was even louder. After seeing running backs Eddie Lacy and James Starks get hit by Brandon Meriweather, then seeing Jermichael Finley’s career end during the 2013 season, he asked a simple question: “When are we going to punch somebody else in the face?”
“I’m tired of watching my teammates, my brothers who I love get carried out of the game because they got hurt,” Daniels reflected in a 2023 chat with Go Long. “I took that personal and that’s where some of the flags came in. That was hard, man. I hated watching my brothers on offense go through that, and I wanted us to be able to implement that type of punishment.
“But it seemed like that wasn’t on the forefront of everybody’s mind.”
A decade later, the same problem persists.
With one very notable difference.