The Green Bay Packers, the first team to repeat as Super Bowl winners back in the 1960s, are showing signs they have the talent and the depth to go all the way again this season.
The reigning Super Bowl champions are 4-0 after week four of the season with Mike McCarthy’s team showcasing its impressive offense in a 49-23 crushing of the Denver Broncos on Sunday.
Quarterback Aaron Rodgers threw for a career-high 408 yards, tossing four touchdown passes, and as if that was not enough, rushed for two more scores.
Photo: Reuters
Rodgers, last season’s Super Bowl most valuable player, has already amassed 1,325 passing yards this season, the most any Packers quarterback has managed in the opening four games of a season.
His display on Sunday left Denver’s experienced coach John Fox applauding his class and that of a Green Bay team that show no signs of easing off after last year’s success.
“He is playing as well as any quarterback that I have seen and this is my 23rd season,” Fox told reporters.
Photo: Reuters
What makes the Packers offense so deadly is the expansive range of weapons available to Rodgers.
On Sunday, Greg Jennings had 103 yards receiving and a touchdown, Jordy Nelson added 91 yards on five receptions, Randall Cobb caught two passes for 75 yards. James Jones, James Starks, Jermichael Finley, Donald Driver and John Kuhn also had receptions.
Few things please Packers fans more than being reminded of their success in the 1960s under Hall-of-Fame coach Vince Lombardi and indeed you have to go back to the start of that decade to find the last time Green Bay had a run that betters the current one.
Including playoffs, the Packers have now won 10 consecutive games, which is the longest streak since a 12-game run in 1961-1962.
This season’s 148 points is the most-ever by the franchise for an opening four games.
While it is a cliche in the NFL that it is almost impossible to go back-to-back in such a closely competitive league, the record shows it is not that rare. In fact, there has been at least one repeat winner in each decade since the Super Bowl began with consecutive wins for the Packers in the 1966 and 1967 seasons.
“I’m sure people will notice,” nose tackle B.J. Raji said. “It is hard to overlook an undefeated returning Super Bowl champion.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier