The Week in Quotes

There are an awful lot of people talking about our favorite team. Some are insightful and some are knuckle-dragging stupid. Let's have a look.

"It's all about opportunities. It's about creating opportunities for people that deserve to have opportunities, and it's about opportunities created that people haven't taken full advantage of their opportunities," McCarthy said Monday. "You have two things you're really looking at. So with that, whether it's a role, increase somebody's role, decrease."

I think I get the gist of the comment. I'm not totally sure because he said "opportunities" 19 more times after that and then laid down in a hallway and took a nap. We get it coach, keep on selling people on opportunities and not the fact that the current player is terrible, or in coaching parlance, "inconsistent".

Jason Hunter, one of the players who will be getting an opportunity now that other opportunities haven't been claimed by inopportune players had this to say...

"That's always great to hear," Hunter said. "So much of what I've had to do since I got here was get noticed, and it's great to hear that people are noticing the things I've been doing."

"With the performance we had (Sunday), if I was a fan, I probably would have booed too," Woodson said.

I've heard this from Mike III and various players. They all seem to understand that the booing is to be expected. Which is a good sign. Now if they would just do something about it on the field.

"I'm just playing my role. Everybody has their role on the team, and I have mine. That's all I'm trying to do," said Pickett, who could have returned to St. Louis or taken free-agent trips to Buffalo or Cincinnati but chose Green Bay almost right away. "This was definitely the right play for me. We've struggled lately, but I enjoy my job, I enjoy coming to work everyday, I enjoy my teammates, my coaches. It's been good."

I must say, the signing of Manuel and Chuck Woodson made more headlines but I liked the move with the Ryan Pickett signing. I realize the run D has taken a punch in the pants the last couple of weeks but he's been solid.

"Anyway, if you think Brett Favre looks bad on TV, wait until you see him missing wide-open receivers and throwing to completely covered guys in person -- it's almost as shocking as seeing Michael Richards do a set at the Comedy Store. He's completely washed up -- and not even in an "aging gunslinger" kind of way, like Elway in the late '90s or Bird in the early '90s. He's just washed up. They absolutely could have won that game and didn't because of him. But I'm glad he's on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week."

This is from Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy at ESPN, in his column last Friday. I generally enjoy reading his stuff. He's usually slightly wrong with his opinions, particularly on teams he doesn't follow religiously, but this one was borderline retarded. Also, it should be noted that Simmons stands out as kinda smart most of the time because the rest of the media does such a poor job of covering sports that his semi-understandable takes make some sense. It's not that he's brilliant, it's that in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. Anywho, he feels qualified to trash Favre because he's seen 1 game live with him playing. He doesn't mention the injury, the weather conditions (this was the Seattle game) or the fact that Bill couldn't name any receiver on the roster other than maybe Driver. But yeah, it's totally the QB's fault. He also blames Favre for being on a cover of a magazine. Last I checked it wasn't his decision. I'll never understand why the player is blamed for how he's covered.

And finally, just so we don't leave on a down note, here are some fun facts about the Minnesota Vikings.

Vikings coach Brad Childress said Monday he has not made a decision on his quarterback for Sunday's game at Detroit. But two starters Monday lobbied for rookie Tarvaris Jackson to supplant veteran Brad Johnson in the lineup.

Both players, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said starting Jackson would not be a concession that the team is giving up on the rest of the season.

"We can't get any worse," one of the players said.

Nothing better than anonymous comments saying the QB and the offense suck. We've got it bad in Green Bay, but at least we're not the Vikings.

For the full stories check out www.packernet.com and plow on through everything. They've got everything from the Post-Gazette to the WSJ and I should know, I just pulled these quotes from 'em.