Green Bay Packers: Jermichael Finley Is a Star Aligned for NFL Comeback Player of the Year

When you are young and you hear an NFL quarterback and Super Bowl MVP gushing about your talent, then you may be Packers tight end Jermichael Finley. 

The buzz about Finley started early in 2009, but stopped in 2010 when a Week 5 knee injury in a loss to the Redskins shattered Finley's Pro Bowl hopes.  The Packers overcame a glut of injuries and went on to win the Super Bowl while Finley and others spent the remainder of the season on injured reserve. 

Just recently, Finley returned to the practice field to realize his Pro Bowl and Super Bowl aspirations. 

He is likely be fully recovered and ready to play this season.  But in this case, the road to recovery isn't just about rehabbing a knee; it is also about learning from his mistakes and getting better as a teammate.

Finley carved out two distinct personae since being drafted in the third round by the Packers in 2008.  There is this incredible Texas talent that enters the NFL at a very young 21 with skills that were originally described as "intriguing" and more recently as "unguardable."  He has learned to block, is playbook proficient cover-to-cover and has recently strung together Pro Bowl-caliber games in both 2009 and 2010. 

This is the Finley that the Packers hope will show up in 2011.

But there is also another side to Jermichael Finley, the one that may not have been ready for the NFL in 2008 and makes headlines for the wrong reasons. 

He had a poor combine performance, indicating he was unprepared.  Since entering the league, he has repeatedly aired dirty laundry about his quarterback and team publicly.  He has been habitually late for team meetings, missed curfew during the playoffs, had instances of drama with agents and has been publicly ridiculed for his immaturity. 

It is clear that the Packers took a calculated risk with young Finley, so they believed he would be worth waiting for. 

But that wait increased by another season last year when the knee injury was followed by two season-ending surgeries that included an infection from the first surgery. 

Now it seems obvious that the only Longhorn sophomore to ever enter the NFL flew the coop too early and paid the price.  Regardless, the talent that made Finley worth the development is still there, and the Packers will give him the chance to display it this year.

The Packers' continued outward and obvious embrace of Finley shows that the team expects to see more of the good and less of the bad as a still young Finley enters his fourth season full of potential and in the final season of his rookie contract.  

As good as the Packers offense was in 2010, they struggled at moments in the red zone and in short yardage.

The return of Jermichael Finley to the active roster should dramatically affect the 2011 statistics compared to 2010.  The Packers are now a real threat to have two 1,000-yard receivers in Greg Jennings and Finley, and the dropped passes that the Packers were remarkably able to overcome in 2010 will decrease, resulting in better red-zone performance from Aaron Rodgers and an offense that is even more explosive than last year. 

And that is saying something.