Andy Herman | "Pack-A-Day" Podcast Host & Packers Insider

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Tell them big Snoop Dogg sent you. We are pleased to welcome Andy Herman, who is the owner and producer and host of the very popular Pack-a-Day podcast, Packers Insider from Green Bay. Alright, this is three straight wins for Green Bay.

Not that long ago, they appeared to be sunk. So Andy, how did the Packers turn their ship around? And it still seems so surreal that it's almost hard to answer. First of all, I give Matt LaFleur a ton of credit because there were definitely a lot of questions surrounding him earlier this season. He took over a team with Aaron Rodgers, Devante Adams, and a ton of talent. Brian Gudekins comes in and immediately gets Gary Smith, Preston Smith, Billy Turner, Adrian Amos.

And Matt started with a roster that was kind of ready to compete for day one. He inherited a team that had all of this amazing talent. Devante Adams, Aaron Rodgers, Aaron Jones, Kenny Clark, and all these really talented players. All of a sudden, Aaron's gone.

Zadarius is gone. You trade away Devante Adams and you're left with a roster that's the youngest roster in football. Then Aaron Jones goes down.

Then David Boccieri goes down. The big question for Matt was, was he going to be able to be the guy that could take a young team, the youngest team in football, and make them into a competitor and really grow with them and make them progress throughout the course of a season. And for a while there, they're sitting at 3 and 6.

And it looks like the answer is overwhelmingly no. There's mistakes all over the place. Ones that you can't explain. Jordan Love is trying to take a snap and they're not snapping them in the vault.

Just tons of stuff like that. And then all of a sudden, you get a win against the Chargers team. They had a lot of mistakes.

It got them going in the right direction. They beat the Detroit Lions. Not easily, but like, you know, impressively exactly on Thanksgiving in front of a national audience.

And then you beat the Chiefs on Sunday Night Football. Again, to follow it up against an even better defense. I think it starts with Matt and how he's been able to turn around this season. But you also have to give a ton of credit to Jordan Love who you could tell early in the season there were some of those jitters following into 30 years of Hall of Fame quarterback play with Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers and he now is the guy. But he has settled down in a really amazing way. And you can tell he just has a level of confidence to him that he did not have earlier in the season. How come? Where did that come from?

I think it's a variety of different things. I think the first thing is that Jordan took a lot of the things that he was doing well in training camp. And he really put them into action early in the season. And then the Detroit game, if you go back to week four, the Detroit game kind of sped him up a little bit.

Early in the season, the game against the Saints, the Falcons and the Bears in week one, the protection was pretty good. He was able to go through his progressions. And then week four came and everything got sped up.

And Aiden Hutchinson and actually John Kaminsky of all people eat the Packers offensive line alive. But Jordan was still kind of wanting to go through his progressions. And he just kept taking sacks and he couldn't get the ball down the field.

And it was just kind of a disjointed effort. And then you could tell after that he almost got sped up a little bit too much. He was taking check downs too many times.

And he never really got back in that rhythm too much. And then you go to that Rams game. It's a Brett Rippon led quarterback team. Like Green Bay just desperately needed a win in the win column to get them some confidence. Jordan started playing better in that game.

They go to Pittsburgh, play competitively in that game. And then like I said, the Chargers game, the Lions game, the Chiefs game, it all starts coming together. And you could just tell like all the things that were kind of going well in training camp got back together. He was going through his reads, going through his progressions.

And then the other huge thing is everyone sort of came up around him as well. The offensive line has been much better in pass protection over the course of the past month. Christian Watson, unfortunately until the injury this past week, is playing extremely well over the course of the past month. Dontavian Wicks, Jayden Reed, we can go on and on. But the supporting cast around him has raised their level of play. And one of the things that a lot of people were excited about with this team is, yeah, you've got a first time starting quarterback. And yeah, you've got all these rookie tight ends, rookie and second year wide receivers. But the hope was that they were all going to be able to develop together and sort of gain this chemistry. And then maybe in a year or two, things would start to click. Well, it's kind of happened already where you're starting to see Jordan Love get on the same page with these wide receivers, tight ends, and these really young playmakers on offense. And some of the results are already surprising and really fun to watch.

And I think that has a ton to do with the chemistry that they're developing in real time. What else would the Packers say? But I have been impressed from the beginning with how steadfast the locker room has remained in supporting Jordan.

Again, what else would they say publicly? But it seems to me that they have been behind him the entire time as soon as it became apparent that the transition would be made. And so to me, that's been impressive and speaks to leadership as well and patient enough to wait until he had some reps and could settle in. Yeah, not only like that belief in him, but like they went out of their way. And you could tell this was not a fake bravado, like just like, yeah, we're supporting our guy.

And of course, like you said, we have to use our quarterback. But it was a real true belief. And you could tell it very early on. They have his back all the way. And that locker room is about Jordan Love. They believe in him as not only like their quarterback, but as like the guy in that for the team and just the way that like when he gets a game ball in the locker room, how they go crazy for him.

Like it is really special to watch. And it is really something to see how he has kind of come on as this first time starting quarterback. He's not a rah rah guy. He's not the guy that's going to do this impassionate speech to get everyone going.

That's not him. He's just steady and calm and collected. And every day is the exact same. And there's a lot of the stuff from his is starting report back in college. And you could see it then where he's just always the same guy day in and day out. And that's exactly what it's bad. And you can tell. And I think it's just a you know, there's always going to be the debate of Rogers and how Rogers led the team.

And somehow, you know, and sometimes it kind of took people the wrong way. And Jordan, it's not better or worse. It's just different. And I think when you had a quarterback that was a little bit older, like Aaron, and maybe didn't relate quite as well anymore to maybe some some of the younger players on the team, it feels like Jordan relates just a little bit better.

I think there's a comfort level in that locker room. Like I said, it's not necessarily better or worse. It's different. And you can just tell that they have, like I said, a wholehearted belief in him and it's not fake.

It's not anything but true. And it's really, really fun to see how that kind of has come together and how much faith and belief they do have in him. It's always more fun to talk about changes and growth and a team in transition when they're winning, too.

And they've got the three consecutive wins now. We're always excited to have Andy Herman with us from Wisconsin. He's got the Pack a Day podcast.

It's after hours here on CBS Sports Radio. All right. So we're going to dive into a little bit of your social media on Monday because producer Jay could not wait to bring to my attention a tweet that you put out there.

And I love how you started with a bit of a qualification. We're probably not ready for this yet. But then you go on to say that 2023 Jordan Love is better. And you don't just say better.

You say unequivocally better than Aaron Rodgers was last season to date. What makes you say that? Yes, it's actually funny to me. I've had this thought now for a couple of weeks, not even just kind of more recently. It's one of those things where, you know, as soon as you bring it up, it's just going to be a firestorm.

But I think there's a real legitimate truth to it. And I'm kind of surprised that nobody else has really been talking about it as much. And it's something that I talked about even in the off season where a lot of people are like, well, Green Bay, there's no way they could be even close to what they were a season ago. They're going from Aaron Rodgers to Jordan Love and on the paper and on the surface. Yeah, of course, you're going from a Hall of Famer, arguably Mount Rushmore quarterback, like one of the greatest of all times to a first time starter.

How can you possibly compare the two? But what you will notice is that Aaron in 2022 was not that guy. He was not the MVP.

He was not the Mount Rushmore guy. And Aaron so eloquently pointed out on Pat McAfee. And he's a million percent right that his down years are better than the vast majority of quarterbacks.

And he's right. But last year was still very easily, in my opinion, Aaron's worst season as a starting quarterback. And it wasn't terrible. Bad ribs, broken thumb. And you could tell that there was just something that was off within the team and with him.

And it just didn't go great. But that was not, again, the same goat level Hall of Fame level Aaron Rodgers in 2022. And he was fine. He was good in his year last year, even though it was a down year, still better than the vast majority of quarterbacks. Best year.

He's totally right. But Jordan love so far this season. I would put ahead of him pretty easily from where Aaron was out a season ago. We can again talk about the injuries that he had and those sort of things. But statistically, the level of play on the field, the way that Jordan's attacking the middle of the field, the way that this team has kind of been able to get this hot streak going against some really good teams, including a really great into city defense this past week. We just didn't see this. In fact, Jordan had a 300 yard passing game.

I think it was a couple of weeks. I might have been against Detroit. Are you the better is the week before that Aaron didn't have a single one of those last year. Like just some things like that, where it was such an uncharacteristic season for Aaron. And the true point here is that every other Aaron season might end up being better than every other Jordan season.

I could easily end up being the case. But those two season specifically, the 2022. Rogers and the 2023 love right now.

Give me 2023 love. And I'm not sure it's particularly close at this point. Despite the fact that it seems fairly logical to you and to me now that you laid out there, what was the reaction on social? Amazingly, not too bad. I was breaking for the worst.

I was breaking for impact. I know maybe now that we're talking about it, maybe it'll be totally different. But yeah, it was actually there's a course going to be always disagreement.

That's it. That comes with the territory. But usually anything like that is going to be caught, you know, with some sort of like 50 50. And you're just going to get burned down on your timeline. But no, I would say the vast majority of people were in agreement. I even got a couple like Captain Obvious chips like like that. This is like, of course, team is better, which.

And then, of course, there's a few in the opposite direction. But I was pleasantly surprised that at least thus far, my timeline has not been completely on fire. All right. Couple of quick injury questions so I can understand what's happening. What's the latest with Christian Watson?

Yeah, Matt didn't give an update today. Christians battled hamstring injuries all throughout the season and really even going into last season. It's been something that we don't know for sure if it is a hamstring, if it isn't. I know a lot of people kind of saw it as as he was going down to the ground, he kind of crashed his hands. You know, hamstring maybe as he was trying to stay in bounds. But if you look at it closer, he went. He grabbed at it even before that and had to go down not to avoid going out of bounds, but because he couldn't run anymore. So it's one of those freak injuries.

It's non-contact, which you, of course, never want to see. And like I said, Christians are having basically his best football over the course of the past three, four weeks. So hopefully it's not anything long term, but that has been a constant issue with Christian. He's kind of soft tissue injuries and hopefully this is one he can bounce back from quickly. And what about Aaron Jones? Are we still kind of going week to week with him?

Yes, the week to week. And same thing with Jair Alexander. Like there hasn't been a ton of updates. It does seem like both of those guys are getting closer. It looks kind of last week like Jair was going to be able to go. But then he doesn't go. He said he was going to speak with reporters on Friday, but then didn't speak to reporters on Friday.

And then was kind of a semi-surprise and active during the game. And with Aaron Jones, like I think they want to get him back, but they also don't want to bring him back and have him get hurt again. So they're being cautious. But these games now, especially after a three-game winning streak, they got five games left against five winnable opponents. They're the number seven seed in the playoffs right now. So they're going to want some of these guys back for this stretch run as soon as they can get them back. Andy Herman is with us from Green Bay because I was going schedule next. Looking at it, they're on the road at the Giants coming up next Monday night, correct? And then Bucks at the Panthers who have exactly one win against the Vikings, which is huge, in Minneapolis, followed up by home game versus the Bears. So yeah, you're talking about mostly teams that are either below.500 or right at that Mendoza line. Yeah, the easiest scheduler remaining for any NFL team. The combined record for their five opponents is 20 and 40. So they have double the amount of losses that they have as wins. As I mentioned, Green Bay's already sitting in the number seven spot right now.

A couple of those teams that they're fighting with. Seattle has an incredibly tough schedule coming up. The Vikings have two games against the Lions on their schedule. And the Packers have the tiebreaker with the Rams from beating them earlier this year and with the Saints from beating them earlier this year.

You look at the, I know a lot of people start using the New York Times simulator. Basically if they go 5-0 or 4-1, they're 100% chance of getting in the playoffs. If they go 3-2, they're at 80-90% depending on who they lose to.

And they've got an easy schedule to be able to complete that. So the thinking was maybe a few weeks ago that if they could steal one of the three games, that if they could go 5-0 in this last stretch against some winnable teams that maybe they could sneak in. They go 3-0 in the last three games and now if they can just finish 4-1, maybe even 3-2, there's going to be a really good chance that they're actually playing playoff football in January.

As crazy as that would have seemed three weeks ago. Yeah, it blows me away too because the NFC is so completely the opposite from the AFC where it's very top-heavy, right? So you've got the Eagles, Cowboys, Lions, and Niners. And then the next best records are all these teams that are 6-6.

So I have to ask you, Andy, and I honestly don't know this so I'm interested in your answer. Before the season started, did you expect that playoffs would be part of the equation? I didn't expect that they would be in the playoffs, no. But I did expect them to have a very similar type of experience that they had last season when they went 8-9. And I thought maybe there would be a similar opportunity where they'd be 8-8 and maybe that last game could be a type of play-in game or something like that.

I kind of figured 7-10, 8-9, maybe 9-8 if things went correctly and not completely out of the equation. No way did I expect them to be 6-6 like I said a few weeks ago. No way did I expect them to be able to put three straight wins together. I know the Chargers aren't as good and they've had some struggles as well. But even that, Justin Herbert and the Chargers coming in and the Lions and the Chiefs, I would not have expected that. So they've definitely exceeded my expectations. I still have the five games in front of them where if they go 3-2, 4-1 and they get in the playoffs or maybe even 5-0, it's going to look amazing. If somehow things do not go according to plan and after this amazing stretch they go 2-3 or 1-4 or something like that and miss out on the playoffs, that's still going to be a level of disappointing at this point.

But I think there's a really good chance that they get in and like I said, they've far exceeded my expectations so far. You mentioned young players and there certainly are a bunch of either first or second year guys who are making a major impact. I can think of a few, but who's your favorite rookie in terms of performance so far?

Like you said, there's a lot of different choices here. I'm going to go with a tie for two at wide receivers so far. Dontavion Wicks and Jayden Reed.

These two guys are really, really fun. Dontavion Wicks has a release game off the line of scrimmage and the ability to get open and separate like few rookies that have come through here. There's already been some small, slight comparisons to some of the stuff that Devontae Adams did early on. I'm not saying he's going to become Devontae Adams obviously, but just some of the things that he does as a route runner are really, really fun. And then Jayden Reed just brings a level of explosive playmaking ability.

They can use him in the slot as a gadget guy. He's made multiple plays of 20 plus yards over the course of the season already. At one point he was tied per second only behind Tyree Kill.

I'm not sure if the last couple weeks if he's still up there or not, but even still, that's the type of numbers that he's putting out there. They're two really fun players. They keep getting better and they're developing that rapport with Aaron Rodgers. They're both real fun and should pair extremely well with Romeo Dobbs and Christian Watson moving forward. I love that you just said the rapport with Aaron Rodgers.

Oh my goodness. This is what we do late night, Amy, and of course when you're talking Aaron Rodgers for however many years that we've done it. It's Jordan Love. It's Aaron Rodgers. We talk about all of it tonight, but it's always fun. Always good stuff with Andy. So on Twitter, Andy Herman, NFL from Green Bay. He's got the Packaday podcast and Packer Report.

Just the sense of humor and the ability to see things a little bit differently. I like it, Andy, which is why you're one of our favorites. Thank you so much for a couple of minutes. We appreciate it. Appreciate it, Amy. Thanks so much. We'll be right back.

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