There are many suspicious ways to be an NFL fan. Some people support a team because their father did, which is at least respectable, even if it often leads to generational suffering. Some choose a franchise because of the colours, the quarterback, the city, or because they once bought a cap at an airport and then decided to build a personality around it. And then there are those who simply follow success with the moral stability of a plastic bag in the wind.
They were never really New England Patriots fans, of course. That would have required a degree of emotional commitment. They were Tom Brady fans, which is a far more portable arrangement. When Brady won in New England, they celebrated New England. When he moved to Tampa Bay, they suddenly discovered a lifelong affection for pirate flags and Florida humidity. And when the Brady era finally became history, they quietly began scanning the league for the next available dynasty, preferably one with a generational quarterback and minimal emotional risk.
This is where I must admit that my own path is not exactly rational either. My team is the Green Bay Packers, or simply “The Packers“, which in the modern NFL is almost an act of quiet rebellion. Green Bay is not a global metropolis, not a billionaire’s vanity project, not a franchise polished into a luxury entertainment asset by consultants in expensive shoes. It is a small-town team, community-owned, rooted in a place that feels almost impossible in today’s professional sports economy. The Packers are not exotic because they are obscure. They are exotic because they are still standing.
And what a strange, glorious thing they are. A team from a small city in Wisconsin, frozen into NFL mythology, still playing in a league otherwise dominated by ownership groups, corporate kingdoms, and men who buy franchises with the same emotional intensity with which normal people buy garden furniture. The Packers belong, at least symbolically, to the community. No billionaire sits above it all like a medieval lord with better tax lawyers. There is something wonderfully old-fashioned about that, something stubbornly unmodern, and therefore naturally something I find irresistible.
It also helps that the Packers are not merely a charming museum piece with shoulder pads. This is one of the great historic franchises in American football, more than a century old, loaded with championships, legends, frozen Sundays, and enough inherited expectation to make every promising season feel like destiny warming up on the sideline. The Super Bowl trophy itself is named after Vince Lombardi, the legendary Packers coach, which means that every Green Bay Super Bowl prediction carries at least a faint trace of historical legitimacy. We are not being delusional. We are simply asking for the family silver to be returned. Apart from a darker stretch in the 1970s and 1980s, Green Bay has usually remained close enough to relevance to keep hope alive and close enough to heartbreak to keep therapy interesting.
That, unfortunately, is where the problem begins.
The Packers are rarely bad enough to release you from hope. They do not usually collapse in a clean, merciful, administrative way. They tease. They develop. They draft well enough. They find quarterbacks with almost offensive regularity. They win just enough games, beat just enough good teams, and produce just enough late-season momentum to make a grown man look at the roster in December and think, with completely unjustified calm: this could be the year. And then, every offseason, the ritual begins again.
The draft arrives, and suddenly every scouting report becomes sacred literature. Green Bay selects a lineman with excellent bend, a receiver with elite separation metrics, a defensive player with “violent hands,” or some frightening athlete who apparently only needs coaching, discipline, maturity, technique, better instincts, and possibly a new understanding of time and space. Within minutes, someone online declares it a steal. A podcast host says the Packers have done it again. A beat writer mentions upside. And I, a man old enough to know better, enter the WhatsApp group with the serenity of a prophet.
Super Bowl.
Not “good pick.” Not “interesting roster.” Not “let’s see how the young players develop.”
Super Bowl.
My friends know it is coming. At this stage, it has become less a prediction than a seasonal illness. Somewhere between free agency and training camp, I appear with fresh evidence, usually microscopic, always decisive. A new pass rusher? Super Bowl. A promising second-round pick? Super Bowl. A clip of Jordan Love throwing a beautiful ball in shorts against air? Destiny has entered the building. Super Bowl!!!
Of course, the group is not always kind. There are Chiefs sympathizers in there, people spiritually raised by Patrick Mahomes and therefore unfamiliar with certain basic human experiences, such as doubt, scarcity, and watching a quarterback throw into triple coverage without bending physics in his favour. There are also former Brady people, now in permanent search of the next winning platform, fans who treat loyalty less like a bond and more like a streaming subscription. Whoever wins gets this month’s enthusiasm.
That is the difference. If your loyalty is rented, defeat does not really hurt. You simply move house. If one dynasty expires, you follow the next. If the jersey becomes inconvenient, you fold it quietly into a drawer and speak vaguely about always having liked another team too. It is emotionally efficient, perhaps even sensible, but then again, so is eating plain rice for every meal and never falling in love.
Real fandom is much stupider than that, and therefore much better. When you truly belong to a team, the losses do not remain on the scoreboard. They enter the bloodstream. A playoff defeat can ruin the next morning with the quiet professionalism of Swiss bureaucracy. You wake up, remember the dropped interception, the blocked kick, the third-and-long disaster, the coaching decision that should be preserved in a criminal archive, and suddenly breakfast tastes like regret.
The Packers have specialized in this art form for far too long. Since the last Super Bowl win after the 2010 season, there has been no shortage of talent, no shortage of promise, and certainly no shortage of brutally unnecessary exits. Green Bay has not merely lost playoff games. It has designed heartbreak with the precision of a luxury watchmaker and the empathy of an airport baggage system.
And still, every year, I return.
This is where optimism becomes less a mental state and more a constitutional duty. I know the arguments against it. I know that other teams exist. I know that injuries happen, rookies need time, defenses disappoint, kickers miss, coaches overthink, and the football gods have a deeply unpleasant sense of humour. I know that one impressive draft class does not automatically produce a parade, and that the phrase “the defense might finally be elite” has caused more emotional damage in Wisconsin than many minor natural disasters.
But what is the alternative? Cautious realism? Measured expectation? A balanced assessment of roster development? Absolutely not. That is not fandom. The whole pleasure of sport lies in the irrational escalation. You take a promising offseason, add one good signing, multiply it by a historic franchise, ignore three structural concerns, sprinkle in a little YouTube analysis (love you, Tom Grossi), and suddenly you have convinced yourself that this time, finally, the road to the Super Bowl runs through Green Bay. It may be nonsense, but it is beautiful nonsense, and life without beautiful nonsense is just calendar administration. So yes, I will continue.
When the Packers draft well, I will announce the Super Bowl. When they sign a player with terrifying highlights and mild injury concerns, I will announce the Super Bowl. When a defensive coordinator says the unit will play fast and physical, I will briefly forget every defensive coordinator who has ever said exactly the same thing and announce the Super Bowl. When training camp reports mention chemistry, leadership, explosiveness, or a second-year leap, I will enter the WhatsApp group like a man carrying sacred news from the mountain.
Super Bowl. 😅
My friends may roll their eyes. They may mock me. They may send screenshots from previous years, which is both childish and legally persuasive. They may remind me of special teams disasters, late-game collapses, frozen Lambeau misery, and the long list of seasons that promised glory and delivered only character development. Fine. Let them.
Because beneath the joke, there is something sincere. Supporting the Packers is not about choosing the safest emotional investment. It is about loving one of the last genuinely odd institutions in American professional sport. A small-town giant. A community-owned anomaly. A historic team that somehow still feels human in a league increasingly built like a television product with helmets.
And if this season ends, as it too often has, in some elaborately cruel playoff exit involving a missed tackle, a blocked kick, or a fourth-quarter sequence that makes rational adults stare silently at a wall, I will suffer. Properly. Not like a tourist. Not like a man who can simply transfer his enthusiasm to the next shiny empire.
I will suffer as a Packers fan.
Then, after a respectful period of mourning, probably no more than 48 hours, I will read the first offseason article explaining why Green Bay is closer than people think.
And I will know what must be done.
I will open WhatsApp.
Super Bowl.
alexreusch 