The Packers, apparently, are shielded from the lake effect by Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula, a bite of land that separates the city of Green Bay from Lake Michigan.
The teams that are either on or nearer one of the Great Lakes are getting clobbered.
The Lions, representing Lakes Michigan and Huron, had the NFL’s worst record of the 2000s.
The Bills, representing Lakes Erie and Ontario, join Detroit as the only teams not to appear in a postseason game since the 1990s.
The Browns, who could cliff dive from their stadium into Lake Erie, lost their team to the Chesapeake Bay in 1996 and have been losing since they came back from scratch.
Fans of all three teams need a little light. For the purposes of this column, Detroit and Buffalo will have to fend for themselves.
We offer, though, a glimmer of hope for Cleveland, via a voice from a past linked to five Super Bowl championships.
Bill McPherson was a defensive coach on all five San Francisco teams that won Super Bowls in an era associated with offensive mastermind Bill Walsh. By the time Mike Holmgren joined the team as quarterbacks coach in 1986, McPherson had been with the 49ers for seven years.
Holmgren spent his last three years in San Francisco, 1989-91, as offensive coordinator. McPherson was defensive coordinator. Both were magnificent in Super Bowl XXIV, a 55-10 demolition of Denver.
McPherson’s side fared roughly as well in the next year’s NFC title game, but Holmgren’s side came up short in a 15-13 loss to the Giants, a game that propelled Bill Belichick to the head coaching job in Cleveland.
One can only imagine what might have happened if Holmgren had won a second straight Super Bowl. Would HE have leapfrogged Belichick as the Browns’ top choice? Would Walsh have advised Holmgren to accept the job?
Holmgren was late to come to Cleveland, as president in 2010. It’s not nearly enough to say the Browns have been slow to recover from the Belichick era. It has been much more complicated and much worse than THAT.
From his retirement home in San Jose, Calif., though, McPherson sounded quite convinced things will get better in Cleveland. The reason, for him, is Holmgren.
“Mike is really bright, as you know,” McPherson said during a conversation the other day. “He has done some great things as a coach and he has so many good attributes, a lot of them coming from being associated with Bill Walsh.
“Beyond that, so much of it is what Mike has done with what he has learned.”
THREE SUPER BOWLS
Holmgren piloted Green Bay to two Super Bowls in the 1990s. The Packers had not been to one since the 1960s. He coached Seattle to a Super Bowl several years later. The Seahawks had not been to the big game in their 29 previous seasons.
“Mike is one of the best guys I know,” McPherson said. “We used to ride to work together when we were with the 49ers. We lived about a half mile apart in Santa Clara. He still has a place out here up on a hill.
“I’ve talked to him since he went to Cleveland. He said the first thing he had to do was buy a snow blower.
“As I got to know him, I thought he had more in his personality and mental makeup that was similar to Bill Walsh than anybody I knew.”
Walsh was a Paul Brown follower to a large extent — he had worked for Brown’s Bengals and flew in for Brown’s funeral in Massillon in 1991. Walsh turned the 49ers from the pits into a dynasty, working for just 10 years. He handed his headset to George Seifert in 1989 and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1993.
TWO SIDES OF WALSH
On game days, Holmgren and McPherson used to communicate with Walsh from the press box.
“Bill could fool you,” McPherson said. “He could be standing there on the sidelines looking very calm, but sometimes he would cup his hand over his mouthpiece, and he would yell so loudly at Mike that you could hear the sound spilling from Mike’s headphones.
“And Bill might be saying, ‘Mike! Will you give me a (bleepity-bleep) play? ARE WE GONNA GET A PLAY?’ ”
Holmgren was the star pupil then. Now he is the big boss in Cleveland. The guess is he was both fair and stern with the last head coach, Eric Mangini, and will be supportive and demanding with the new one, Pat Shurmur.
“Mike knows how to deal with people,” McPherson said. “He can be very nice. He can fire it up. He can be funnier than anything, or he can be ... look out.
“I think he’s really smart with offense, and really smart dealing with people.”
WHAT ABOUT DEFENSE?
Holmgren will be very hands on in terms of helping Shurmur replace Mangini’s offense with a West Coast system. He won’t get nearly as involved with defensive coordinator Dick Jauron, who has been a head coach with three NFL teams.
McPherson has a little background with Jauron. He had retired as defensive coordinator when Walsh, who had assumed an executive position in the early 1990s, talked him into coming back as director of pro personnel.
The team needed a defensive coordinator and interviewed Jauron. If the job hadn’t gone to Jeff Fisher, McPherson said, Jauron would have been hired.
McPherson predicts that Jauron will be an important part of what he expects to be a strong Browns team under Holmgren’s direction.
“One of the assistant coaches who will help a lot is Dwaine Board,” McPherson said.
Board played defensive end for McPherson for 10 years in San Francisco. He was hired in January as the Browns’ defensive line coach.
“(Board) is very serious and very bright,” McPherson said. “Guys will respect him. As a coach, he was one of those players you’d have been happy to have as one of your own kids.
“He’s smart as hell. He majored in computer science. When he was starting out as a coach with us in San Francisco, he set up a computer program for George Seifert.”
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