Pass The TUMS: Packers Will Play On Turkey Day » Brats & Beer

March 27, 2007
posted under: Packers, Thanksgiving

It seems rather odd to be looking ahead to Thanksgiving when Memorial Day is still a couple months away, but that’s how it goes for the football fan in the off season. Heck, the college draft is still a month off, but have I already cleared that day on my calendar? You bet I have.

The NFL owners in their infinite wisdom have decided to clutter up our turkey day this year with an old school tilt between the Packers and the Lions. (Well, as old school as it can be with the teams playing inside that barn in downtown Detroit intended to compensate for the weak and impotent state of the Ford family.) I know I should be happy there will be at least one Packer game on national TV, but those Thanksgiving games never seem to be happy affairs.

The last time Green Bay played a holiday game in the Motor City in 2003, they got shredded 22-14 by a Lions team that ended up finishing with a 5-11 record. Our turkey dinner was enjoyed in relative silence that day. The time before that, in 2001, the Packers barely escaped Detroit with a 29-27 win over a then winless Lions team. I’m pretty sure the turkey got burnt that afternoon.

For some reason Thanksgiving has never been a good time for the Packers to play. The team is 11-18-2 overall playing in the holiday classic, with 11 of those losses coming against Detroit. Even during the Lombardi era, Green Bay went 2-2-1 on Thanksgiving. (If memory serves me right, I read once that coach Lombardi hated playing on Thanksgiving so much he lobbied to get the Packers out of that scheduling deal after 1963.)

Hopefully, though, by the end of this November the Packers will by vying for a playoff spot or a division title and not just going through the motions of yet another rebuilding season. That would at least give some meaning to the game. But in that case, we might be eating a little later than usual.