Anyone who happens to swing by the Mistake by the Lake on Sunday can get some cheap thrills starting at $14.

 

That’s right. These are the starting prices for the clash between the Green Bay Packers and Cleveland Browns. These are the types of tickets that would be available in Green Bay if Aaron Rodgers was never born, along with 25 years of total ineptitude and the team moving away in the middle of it.

Notice that the few, the proud, (the Marines?) can purchase tickets in a designated family zone with no alcohol–a tall task for fans of a Cleveland team.

Cleveland, OH. This is how she looked in the 1970s before moderate environmental laws were enforced. Isn’t this fitting? The river feeding a steady stream of sludge/sewage/Lord knows what was the color of the local pigskin franchise. The team is going on decades of looking about as good as this scene as well. Cleveland: AT LEAST WE’RE NOT DETROIT!!!

 

I live within the Twin Cities media market, unfortunately. This week of sports talk radio has officially commemorated the flood of home Super Bowl talk:

Will the Vikings get their home locker room for the Super Bowl?

Will the Vikings still get to practice at their home practice facility in the week leading to the Super Bowl?

Where will Case Keenum finish in MVP voting?

 

These have been the primary talking points on Twin Cities sports radio this week. The other fully expected result is the Packers losing to the Browns. Why?

  1. It’s a trap game
  2. Brett Hundley
  3. Josh Gordon is back
  4. “We hate Green Bay! We are the worst metropolitan drivers in the United States. #SKOL!”
  5. Brett Hundley
  6. Home Super Bowl

 

Cleveland has to be thinking that they have a chance at their first victory. They’re at home against a team that’s without the LeBron James of football (minus the flopping). Josh Gordon is back, and possibly hungry (or still drunk, the jury is out, maybe literally at some point).

For the players, this is more or less another game. For the coaches and other members of the Green Bay organization, this game is huge. No game against an 0-12 squad has had bigger implications for the opponent than this one. If the Packers drop an ‘L’ against Cleveland, their season is dead. Dom Capers is dead. Mike McCarthy might be dead. If the Packers lose, they absolutely 100% have to do some serious offseason housecleaning. Even with their backup quarterback in Hundley, they came off their best defensive performance of the year, in December. If a team that needs to win out cannot keep that momentum going, then that’s a failure on the coaching and atmosphere of the squad.

Win, and the story is the polar opposite. Rodgers will be examined to see if his clavicle is healed enough to return against Carolina. If so, he’ll rejuvenate the team upon his return. If he can’t hack it, then it’s a least another week of forging ahead with Hundley. Either way, another win this week will keep the hope alive. A loss will undoubtedly end some tenures at 1265 Lombardi Avenue and have long-term implications, quite possibly for the better.

This week is anything but a trap game.

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John Piotrowski is a UW-Eau Claire alum, spending most of his life in western WI. He makes the trek east to Lambeau whenever possible. Follow him on twitter at @piosGBP.

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