The Packers Won't Do Anything in Free Agency, B.J. Raji Is Never Coming Back, and Both are Fine

"Defensive tackle B.J. Raji left a contract offer from the Packers on the table around this time last year and announced that he’d be taking a “hiatus” from the NFL so that he could help take care of his ill mother and aunt. That hiatus remains in effect and there’s no sign that Raji will be reversing course to resume his career during the 2017 season. His agent Brian Murphy said that members of the Packers organization have kept in touch with Raji and he believes they’d like him back in the fold, but Raji’s focus remains elsewhere. “When he made the decision it was to go home and take care of his family and be with them, and he’s still doing that,” Murphy said, via ESPN.com. “His family is his first priority. He hasn’t really thought about football.” Murphy said he doesn’t know if that will ever change and the chances of a return to the gridiron would seem to keep dropping the longer Raji is away from the game." Pro Football Talk

The draft is coming up and the combine is underway, which means it's that point in every offseason after the Packers made a surprisingly deep yet also disappointing playoff run where Packers fans say this is the year the Packers will make some moves in free agency and that Ted Thompson is going to do different things and yada yada yada next year Aaron will get his second Super Bowl title. It's a beautiful, sunny Saturday, so I'm not going to get too into it. As much as I'd like to and as much as I'd like to say I think TT will go in on free agency this year, let's just be honest. It's going to be the same offseason as every other year for the Packers. Dom Capers is coming back for his 9th season in Green Bay. Yes, after last year's defensive horrors--ranked 31st in pass defense and 22nd in overall defense. Nothing is going to change in Green Bay. And for as much as I love B.J. Raji, which I really, really do, he's never coming back to the Packers. We don't have anything else to talk about because that's not how the Packers works, so it's a nice thought, Raji coming back. But he's not. Dom Capers is. We're not going to get Leonard Fournette. Not Christian McCaffrey. We're going to draft the best available players and they're not going to be household college star names. And this team will look like they suck. And they'll get off to a rough start. And then they'll win a bunch of games again because they do have the best quarterback in the game. And, finally, they'll make a playoff run and no one will know if it's Super Bowl worthy or not until it is or isn't. That'll be the 2017-18 Green Bay Packers offseason, regular season, and postseason. Some might get frustrated there aren't more electric offseason stories, but it's actually nice. It gives Wisconsin people time to ice fish, work on tractors, and be profoundly disappointed in a crumbling University of Wisconsin men's basketball team. That's just Packers life.

In the meantime and as a silver lining to those who don't think the lack of storylines is in fact a silver lining, which it really is, here's some fun videos of B.J. Raji, who again, isn't ever coming back, even though we all love him a ton: