5 NFL teams with most to prove this season
By Dani Bostick
Which five teams have the most to prove this National Football League season? We run through the list, ranging from Super Bowl contenders to bottom feeders.
Every NFL team has something to prove in 2017. Some teams need to prove they can maintain a long tradition of excellence. Other teams have much more at stake. Some teams need to prove they aren’t has-beens, aiming to regain former glory. Still others simply want to change their trajectory and not be fodder for continual jokes and ridicule.
Here are five teams that have the most to prove in 2017.
5. Green Bay Packers
The Green Bay Packers won the NFC North three of the last four years and have not had a losing season since they went 6-10 in 2008. Still, Green Bay Packers fans expect more from a team that won the Super Bowl in 2010 and has dominated their division for the better part of a decade.
Aaron Rodgers is an elite quarterback with an arsenal of offensive weapons. And, the Packers have one of the steadiest, most reliable cadre of coaches in the league. (Mike McCarthy, head coach since 2006, is one of the longest-tenured coaches in the NFL).
The Packers started off the 2016 season with a disappointing 4-6 record. Receiver Randall Cobb told Packers.com, ““It’s been a rough road for us, but everybody sacrificed a lot, everybody gave tremendous effort, everybody stuck together.”
Cobb describing his team as some sort of come-from-behind underdog does not reflect the Packers tradition of excellence. In 2017 they need to dominate their division from the beginning, particularly in the wake of the Detroit Lions’ Cinderella season that ended with a good-for-the-Lions 9-7 record.
The Packers are a good team, but they need to prove they are great. If 2017 is mediocre, they will soon be fighting to prove they are not a fading star.