Somebody Call the Police!

Because there is a team up in Green Bay who is giving everyone they meet a beat-down! 

The Renaissance of Aaron Rodgers has been really fun this year. The offense is putting points on the board like crazy. I know the team took a lot of heat this off-season for not providing Rodgers with more weapons. I admit that I wasn't too enthralled with the Draft Day strategy, but I was actually more worried about picking up a decent linebacker after watching what the Niners did to the D in the playoffs. The team did neither of those things during the draft. Rumor has it that Rodgers himself was none too happy, but I'm hoping that he is starting to "trust the process" a little more after these earlier successes. I hope the team is treating Jordan Love as a long-term project, and they have convinced Aaron that there is no plan to play him at any time in the near future. My mother is a Utah State alum, so I've seen plenty of Jordan Love over his college career and I will attest that he needs a lot of work before he is ready to take the reins of an NFL offense.

Regardless of what the future of this team is, right now they are fun to watch. To commemorate my current excitement level with this team, I want to post about my latest Packers purchase. I recently found a seller on eBay who has a bunch of the Packers Police sets for sale. These are some of my favorite cards of the Pack, even though I didn't have many before. I don't know of many teams that do this type of set as consistently as the Packers do, so this seller had a few different ones to choose from. I would have liked to get some of the sets from the early '80s, but the seller seemed to have priced them at a little more of a premium. Instead, I opted for a four-year run that for me spanned my 8th-11th grade school years.

1996:

This team won the Super Bowl. After spending about three years getting my heart broken in the playoffs, I was finally able to see my team bring home a championship. I don't have many Mike Holmgren cards, and this is definitely the first time that Ron Wolf has been added to my collection. I think the same can be said for Earl Dotson and Craig Hentrich. I love that Earl Dotson photo.

1997:

And this team lost the Super Bowl. But since this set was printed the year following the victory, the Lombardi Trophy is featured prominently in the set. It even got its own card. If I am to judge the roster by the checklist of these sets, then George Koonce, Wayne Simmons, Keith Jackson, Chris Jacke, and Ken Ruettgers were the keys to the Super Bowl win. They were in the 1996 set but were replaced the following year by Frank Winters, William Henderson, Dorsey Levens, Santana Dotson, and a trophy. That roster then lost the Big Game. Coincidence? I think not. (Actually, I think I would rather have the latter four players on my team than the guys from the year before, but that's just my opinion.)

1998:

I think this is my favorite look of the police sets I picked up. There were several newcomers to this set: Bernardo Harris, Adam Timmerman, Ross Verba, Brian Williams, and Tyrone Williams.

1999:

When I first saw this set, I thought, They were sure leaning hard into the new Millennium, futuristic design. That was before I noticed the "Into the Millennium" stripe running up the left side of the card. The most notable newcomer in this year's rendition is Coach Ray Rhodes. This is my first Rhodes card. There were two new faces that I'm glad to see (Ryan Longwell and Marco Rivera, who I really loved when they were on the team), one I'm not so happy to see (serial rapist Darren Sharper), and one that I really don't have any feelings for (Vonnie Holliday).

These police sets are some of my favorite oddball cards, so picking them up for a little over $5 shipped apiece was a no-brainer for me. Now let's hope the 2020 Packers squad can keep speeding up the field and assaulting the end zone before the police show up and book 'em all.