FanHouse TramonWilliams

Because the NFL season never ends, we present our 2009 Offseason Roadmaps for front offices to navigate through the summer.

On its surface, the 2008 season appears to have been an unmitigated disaster for the Green Bay Packers. After the Packers made the NFC Championship Game the season before, fans painfully watched the Brett Favre retirement/unretirement/stick-it-to-Ted saga play out, and then got to see new starting quarterback Aaron Rodgers play well before the team fell apart around him.

Wednesday, you had a chance to read a brilliant piece by our own Michael David Smith. In this week's Every Play Counts, MDS ripped apart the underachieving failure that is the Packers' defense.

Among the primary issues of late has been the move of cornerback Charles Woodson to safety. As MDS pointed out, Woodson has played okay. He didn't make any spectacular plays, but he did his job adequately. The problem with the move is that it simply transferred the hole in the Packers' defense from safety to cornerback. Because the Packers have stubbornly refused to adjust their scheme, third cornerback Tramon Williams has been constantly left alone in situations that he's not good enough to handle by himself.

From the sounds of it, however, the Packers and their coaching staff didn't read Every Play Counts.

This just hasn't been Green Bay's year.

Many fans are going to trace it directly back to the day the Packers decided to go with Aaron Rodgers as the starting quarterback, even though future Hall of Famer Brett Favre was contemplating a return from his short retirement.

Others will look -- more accurately -- at the day general manager Ted Thompson traded hulking defensive tackle Corey Williams to Cleveland to avoid giving him a huge contract. Or the day Thompson decided that second-year tackle Justin Harrell would be able to fill that void.

Coming from a Packer fan, there are too many people to point fingers at on this one.

While Rodgers is not at all immune, he's handled the spotlight very well. His teammates have praised his play on the field, and they've praised his off-field presence. This fan believes you couldn't have scripted a better transition from Favre to the next guy. Rodgers didn't ask for it to go down this way, and nearly all the criticism that's been thrown his way has been completely unfair.

He's played well. Others who carried high expectations into the season have not. The reality is that the Packers are 5-7, an extreme longshot for the playoffs, and Sunday's fourth quarter was a microcosm of the season to this point.

This season hasn't been full of good news for Green Bay Packer fans.

Not that any of them should be asking for sympathy. In an era of increasing "parity" among NFL teams, the Packers strung together an impressive string of seasons. Green Bay has just one sub-.500 finish since 1992, by far the least of any NFL franchise.

However, this year's team is in danger of making it two sub-.500 finishes since 1992, as the Packers are at 5-6 and staring at a third year out of four without a playoff berth. While blind, gullible, and stupid people are bound to blame this on Aaron Rodgers, the real reasons behind Green Bay's subpar record go much deeper than anything Rodgers could be fairly blamed for.

One of those reasons is extremely uneven play from the Packers defense. Part of this is injury-related, as Green Bay has lost starters on the defensive line (Cullen Jenkins is injured, and Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila was ineffective before being cut) and at linebacker (Nick Barnett is injured). In the secondary, safeties Atari Bigby and Aaron Rouse have been in and out of the lineup because of injury, and cornerback Al Harris had to battle back from a potentially season-ending spleen problem. These injuries have tested Green Bay's depth, which hasn't responded well.

When Harris was out, youngster Tramon Williams started and played okay. If Harris is right, Packer fans will be seeing more of Williams and some other young players next season.

If you've never heard of Packers cornerback Tramon Williams, that's understandable. Hardly anyone, outside Packers fans and Louisiana Tech fans, has heard of him.

But Williams has made plays in the last two weeks that make me think he might just be the fastest player in the NFL. Last week he picked up a Panthers pooch punt and ran it back 94 yards for a touchdown, blowing by everyone else on the field. And today in Detroit, Lions return man Aveion Cason took a kickoff back 74 yards and broke into the clear for what looked like a sure touchdown -- until Williams brought him down from behind.

The strange thing about Williams is that he wasn't particularly highly sought coming out of Louisiana Tech last year (the Texans signed him as an undrafted free agent but released him), and part of the reason for that is that his 40-yard dash time was a mediocre 4.59 seconds. That's surprising both because he's obviously fast when you see him on the field, and because he's the kind of natural athlete who can participate in only one year of high school track but finish second in the state in the long jump, second in the triple jump and third in the high jump.

So for all those NFL draftniks who think the 40-yard dash doesn't translate to speed on the field, Tramon Williams is Exhibit A.

Previously on FanHouse:
Matt Giordano: NFL's Fastest Man?
Stanford Routt: NFL's Fastest Man?