Within the span of a week, the Green Bay Packers have been barred from the playoffs by the Detroit Lions, and a dairy-plant conflagration melted enough butter to clog drainage systems. Reportedly, cardiologists are feeling vindicated by this midwestern variant of Boston’s “Great Molasses Flood.”
Emily Czachor writes for CBS:
A dairy plant caught fire in central Wisconsin on Monday night, sending the melted contents of a storage room full of butter flowing through the building as it went up in flames, local authorities said. The runoff seeped into surrounding storm drains as well as a large canal adjacent to the business, which ultimately clogged the waterway despite crews’ efforts to contain the spread, CBS Chicago reported.
As for the woeful Pack, we may have witnessed the end of the Aaron Rodgers era — a significant blow to the local lava-lamp and herbal-supplement industry.
The best sports journalist in Wisconsin, Tom Silverstein, observes:
Rodgers has indicated before tonight he believes the Packers might be ready to give backup Jordan Love a chance. Gutekunst and coach Matt LaFleur have said they want Rodgers to return, though the GM gave only a tepid endorsement when he addressed the quarterback situation last month, saying it would be an offseason decision. Love, a former first-round pick, would be entering his fourth season as Rodgers’ understudy next fall, one season more than Rodgers waited behind Favre. Rodgers said the Packers are “a couple players away” from contending for a Super Bowl, suggesting they need to rebuild.
The four-time MVP’s contract doesn’t help a roster reconstruction. Rodgers is guaranteed $59 million if he plays next season, an albatross on the Packers’ salary cap. He said the guaranteed money does not tether him to another season, referencing the “generational wealth” already accumulated in his career.
As we know, politicians are responsible for all happenings (gas prices, cattle disease, GPU shortages) in their jurisdictions, be they for good or ill. If so, the second term of Wisconsin’s Democratic governor Tony Evers is naught but tragic thus far.
Maybe Jim Geraghty’s and Phil Klein’s New York Jets will trade a couple of first-round picks for Rodgers and a seventh for Evers. It would be fitting that an aging Packer quarterback throws an interception to end his career in Green Bay to reappear months later on a field in East Rutherford, N.J.