Hello APC’ers!

As some of you may know, MTD recently hosted a live draft, for which I volunteered to be the Green Bay Packers GM. With the help of some community discussion a week ago, and OBrienSchofieldismyHero offering advice on draft day, the 2012 NFL Draft was mocked to 7 rounds

After the jump are the results of draft, as well as some analysis, and a poll!

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I don't have anything more to add other than this terrific article Doug Farrar about a fanatical Packer fan who happened to also be an award winning journalist.. I love the part when he is listening to Packer games over the ultra expensive phone lines when he is stationed in the Middle East, and he makes sure the bean counters can't trace the cost back to him. Please read this article, you will be glad you did. http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/anthony-shadid-followed-green-bay-packers-love-distance-055931677.html

Anthony Shadid, longtime Middle East correspondent for the New York Times, Washington Post, AP, and Boston Globe, died yesterday from an asthma attack while covering the unrest in Syria. He was one of the finest journalists in the world over the past two decades, providing bold, clear, and insightful reporting from many of the globe's most important events. He won two Pulitzer Prizes for his coverage of the Iraq War, and he covered the Arab-Israeli conflicts from Lebanon, Israel, and the West Bank. Over the past year, he wrote riveting, heartbreaking stories on the Arab Spring from Egypt, Libya, and Syria.

Shadid risked his life to uncover the truth about injustice and suffering and to bear witness to it to the world. He was shot while walking down the street in the West Bank, hounded by Egyptian police, and kidnapped by Muammar Gaddafi's forces in Libya.

And Shadid was something else, too - he was a diehard Packer fan. As he wrote in the Journal Sentinel last year, he would go to ridiculous lengths overseas to follow the Pack, no matter where he was - racking up giant phone bills by listening to the radio broadcast, plopping down an extra few hundred dollars for hotels with satellite TV broadcasts of games, spending countless hours reading about the team online.

Shadid was a UW-Madison grad and became a fan in the early '90s as an AP reporter in Milwaukee. He got hooked at the beginning of the Brett Favre era, and finally made his Lambeau Field pilgrimage last December, when he saw the Packers beat the 49ers 34-16. Shadid said that throughout his 15 years as a foreign correspondent, "I feel like the Packers were there on every assignment, from Cairo to Islamabad."

I know the Packers connection is a trivial one, especially in light of the incredibly weighty matters to which Shadid dedicated his life. But it's humbling and heartening to know that one of the most honorable, courageous, passionate, and talented journalists of our generation was living and dying each week with the same team we were. The Packer Family - and, more importantly, the world - has lost a remarkable man. Godspeed, Anthony.

What would you change? I bring this up because of the news that Green Bay's own Mark Murphy is now on said committee. What needs to be changed? I know of a few rules that need tweaking and a few more that need to go away completely. Tuck Rule? The Megatron Catch Rule? Kickoffs at the 40 Yard line? Going to the ground during celebrations? Maybe bring back the 2 minute maximum on challenges?

What are your ideas?

I know this has probably been covered in here before, but after listening to AM 1000 in Chicago tonight and the debates I heard called in, I'd like to hear how you all would rate the Top 5 ever with maybe a few honorable mentions thrown in if your so inclined. You would think sports radio in Chitown would be overwhelmingly for Payton, but it was only 50% at best.

Give me your Top 5 all time and a little back story on why, if your so inclined.....

There's been quite a few articles on here recently regarding free agency and how the Packers should approach it. The other day I ran across this site showing the current 2012 cap hits for all the players. The current cap hit is roughly 110 million, which doesn't include draft picks for obvious reasons. I can't give an exact number for this years draft but I think a safe estimate would be around 5 million, which puts us at 115 million. I've seen estimates of the 2012 cap being 121 - 125 million, so I'll just split the difference and call 123 million. This means the Packers have potentially 8 million to play with in free agency, but should they do anything?

Of course I'm not figuring in the savings that could be made by releasing players or restructuring anyone's current contract, but as things stand now, I don't think they should go after anyone in free agency. I think instead the money should go towards locking up some of the younger players that are due to hit free agency soon. The following is a list of players coming off their rookie deals that are due to hit free agency after the season:

Crabtree, Detrich-Smith, Francois, B. Jones, Lang, Masthay, Shields, Wynn, and Zombo. Other free agents to note include Peprah, Jennings, and Goode.

That is a lot of talent that could potentially walk after the season. Lang, Masthay, Shields, and Jennings are ones that I would say must be resigned. Zombo, Jones, Peprah, and Crabtree all provide decent depth but may be replaceable with younger cheaper parts. Goode is one I'm not sure of. You never hear his name, but that's probably a good thing for a long snapper and I'm not sure how easy it is to replace them.

What are your thoughts? Should the Packers focus on resigning some of these guys, or even work on new deals for Raji, Matthews, or Rodgers, or should they look to replace some of these guys in free agency?

With the offseason picking up, time to generate our own discussions.

I live in Utah. Closes teams are the Arizona Cardinals and Denver Broncos. Most of my community is Broncos fans with some Raiders mixed in. A couple Bears, a Rams fan, Jets fan and two Bucs fans. Oh and those Steeler fans. That is my knowledge.

Yet in my family: Dad is Steelers, Mom is Cowboys, other brother is Cowboys, another brother is Saints and last is a Browns fan (go figure). Then there is me, the Packers fan. I am one of the few Packers fan in my community. I have met one other, so I am not alone. The question gets asked to me all the time. When and why are you a Packers fan?

Truth be told, Dec 8, 1996 was the first time I saw the Green and Gold play. They were playing the Broncos. I rooted for them, since all my friends were Broncos fans. Green Bay beat them down 41-6. I remember watching Brett Favre and being drawn to his style of play. Needless to say, they won the Super Bowl that year. I told everybody I was a Packers fan, when really I was a Brett Favre fan.

The following year, we lose to the Broncos in the Super Bowl. I took it rough. I remember taking hell and feeling like crap about it. But I stay true to the team that had #4. As the years went on, I cared less and less about Favre and more about the team. Sadly as they were in some low spots, I started to lose interest in the Packers and football in general. Then one day I got invited to a boss's house to watch Cowboys vs. Packers.

Of course I wear my Brett Favre jersey. Talk a bunch of crap. Yadda, yadda, yadda, Favre gets hurt. Aaron Rodger steps on the field and it was like I was 7 again. Rodgers looked like that young Brett Favre I remember from my youth and I was once again suck back into the Packers. Since then, I have followed the Packers every offseason, preseason, season and post season.

So when and why are you a Packers fan?

OK, the football season is done and Green Bay is left with a huge gaping hole of "what could have been". My question, (and this was meant for fun, so don't freak out) even though the Packers played very well this year, and we sat back and watched them add W after W. It is natural for someone to see (or hear) something that starts that little ticking in the back of your mind, the one that says, "I kind of don't like the way things are going". Now with the type of season the Packers just had, it was easy to let that little tick, drift away, once the ball got rolling at the next game. I know many people will talk about the defense had them questioning all year. I for one was not in that crowd, believe it or not, I was stupid enough to spend the entire season thinking Capers was holding them back, wasn't deploying all those magnificent plays he had unleashed last year, until the time was right. I mean we had basically the same defense (minus one player) so how could we not be as good as last year. I swore to people right and left that we were just playing possum, and trying to make other teams think we were having defensive problems. But anyway back to my question, what were some of those times during the season that made you stop and think for a minute, and was there a time when you said, now I have some real worries?

I will track mine. My first glitch came in the beginning of the season with the Hawk "finger expression". Not that he did it (I honestly believed that he didn't think about which finger he was showing, or that TV would capture it) but more about his explanation. "It’s a team joke, and we are showing each other the next finger for our rings". That was my first little twinge of "are we putting the cart before the horse". My next moment of reflection was the Rams game. Not that I thought they played terrible, I truly enjoyed the first half and watching what seemed like scoring at will. No it crept in during the 2nd half as I sat and thought, how are the RAMS keeping us scoreless in the 2nd half? That was my first thought that we might be getting a little full of ourselves to be able to take our foot off the gas like that. Now this brings me to the one I think many will put down as their first time of wonder, the KC game. Now the KC game in and of itself did not bother me (I mean only 2 other teams have ever won all of their regular season games, your actually more likely to lose one somewhere than not). No what bothered me was that was the first time that instead of listening to Packer interviews and hearing "we are not worried about undefeated, we are just concentrating on the next opponent", I actually heard some Packers saying "yeah, going undefeated would be nice". I know I'm going to get tore apart for that one, I can't remember actually what I heard in that interview, although I remember who said it, but I got the feeling that some players were actually starting to look ahead and think about "UNDEFEATED". So those were my cringes, the only time I really got an "I feel some trouble" was leading up to the game against the Giants. It just seemed all that week, listening to sports radio and everything, all I heard was "Giants, Giants, Giants". In the end, when it came to picking winners at the end the week every one of them said Green Bay, but all week all I heard was "if I had to pick one team for the upset this week, it would be New York".. So much so that I spent a lot of time yelling back at my radio, were we not 15 - 1.

So those were mine, just curious if anybody else had any of those feelings during the season, and if you did when were they!

Hello, football fans, and welcome to the 24-hour APC Open Thread! Many thanks to Brandon for allowing this silliness.

There are other Open Threads around SBN. Feel free to drop by any of them.

Battle Red Blog, home of the AFC South Eternal Threads. Very welcoming group of people, with quite the mix of Colts, Texans, and the occasional Jags fan. Disgust for the Titans is extremely welcome.

Niners Nation, home of the San Francisco 49ers...

Pride of Detroit Community Open Threads. Division Rivals the Detroit Lions may be, BUT their fanbase is a good group of people. Respect them, and they should respect you. (of course, arodgb may heavily disagree in this regard)

Bleeding Green Nation's OTs.

A bit new to the game, but still there: Revenge of the Birds OTs

Canal Street Chronicles, getting in on the OT action as well

Rules of the thread:

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Since we've had a little...issue...with people posting NSFW pictures, please keep in mind that some people might well read this thread at work. If you're going to post a picture that might be considered Not Safe For Work in any way, shape, or form, post a link to it instead of embedding it in the comment. That way, nobody gets in trouble.

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If you were one of the people who rec'd the previous open thread to move it to the Recommended FanPosts section, please go back to that previous thread now and un-rec it. That way, the previous thread will move out of that section, and these won't be cluttering APC as much.

With those rules in mind, have fun.

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With the 2011 NFL season frustratingly behind us, I thought it would be fun to have a little bracket tournament to pass the time while we wait for the 2012 draft (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD please get some defensive lineman who can get more than 4 centimeters off the line of scrimmage while rushing the quarterback). The competitors for this tournament will be the NFL team helmet logos.

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