(Founders Note – The following is written by a life-long Green Bay Packers fan who is having to deal with feelings of bitterness in the immediate aftermath of the NFC Championship Game on Sunday.)

By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL/Designated Writers

How do you defend the indefensible? For a half in Sunday’s Green Bay-Tampa Bay conference championship game, it was Bucs quarterback Tom Brady who was indefensible. But when it was over, it was the decision of Packers’ coach Matt LaFleur that cannot be defended.

I’m usually the first guy to take up for a coach when he makes a decision that is not popular with the fan base. I always like to bring up another point of view that isn’t so knee-jerk or based on results.

But somebody is going to have to explain to me why kicking a field goal on fourth-and-goal from the 8-yard line in an eight-point game was even remotely a good idea. Green Bay’s Mason Crosby made it to cut the lead to five, but the Packers never got the ball back.

There were plenty of other decisions made on the Packers sideline that were also curious — you might want to guard against the end-of-the-half bomb, something every JV coach knows — but the Packers overcame that. With 2:05 to go, this was the one that mattered.

If someone brings up the word “analytics” to explain LaFleur’s decision, I’m going virtual postal. I don’t need a spreadsheet to tell what I always know:

(1) The risk was that they wouldn’t get the touchdown. OK, fine, they would still have to stop Tampa Bay.

(2) The reward was that they could have tied it with a touchdown and a 2-point conversion.

So by kicking the field goal, even with three time outs, you are saying that you think you can stop Tampa Bay from making ONE first down, then be able to drive the (probably) 80-plus yards after the punt to win the game. Just doesn’t making coaching sense.

Sometimes that obvious is just too obvious. You are EIGHT YARDS AWAY from possibly tying the game. That’s the best odds you can get.

By TEDDY ALLEN/Designated Writers

We feel like we’ve been hit in the gut with a sledgehammer or a baseball bat, one that Henry Aaron might have swung in his prime. That would have hurt.

Just found out this dreary gray-sky morning about The Hammer’s passing at 86. Had to stop immediately what I was doing and think a few minutes, just as I did when Merle Haggard and Dan Jenkins and Andy Griffith and Mary Tyler Moore died. Had to take a physical knee in honor of so many great memories these souls brought me. If you are a boy born in the 1950s or ’60s and liked ball even a little bit, there was never a time you did not know who Henry ‘Hank’ Aaron was.

The death of baseball’s all-time home run king (neg on Bonds so don’t even start) comes on a rainy morning here in north Louisiana, a day when you can’t even practice, much less play two as his buddy Ernie Banks always said, God rest both their souls. It’s as if Providence decreed that baseball would be at half-staff today, in honor of a player who defined the game’s most admirable trait: A-game consistency. Little things done right over a long period of time.

Never hit 50 homers in a season and ended up with 755. Hit 24 or more bombs in 18 straight seasons, 30 or more 15 times.

Look at his career numbers over 23 seasons, and in the heart of that career you can pretty much sit down in March if you’re his manager and write out exactly what he’s going to give you.

Plus look at him in his prime in that Milwaukee Braves uniform; that’s how you wear one, boys. He was also the blueprint for how to play outfield, how to throw, how to run the bases, even how to carry yourself as A Baseball Player.

He had the hands and wrists but look at his swing mechanics. He was Hammerin’ Hank, and STILL he might be one of the most underrated players of all-time.

In retirement he became a quiet force for civil rights and was on the Braves’ front office staff for a while, but when you’re Hank Aaron, that’s a full-time job. Just being Hank Aaron. He did it well. The Hammer hit the nail on the head; he was the best Hammer he could be. We love him for that.

-30-