Trading Brett Favre allowed the Green Bay Packers to claim one title.
For the third consecutive season, the Packers rank as the NFL’s youngest team, the league announced on Wednesday.
Based on a league analysis of Week 1 rosters, the Packers and Kansas City Chiefs are tied with an average roster age of 25.57 years. The Packers, however, are grizzled veterans compared to the Chiefs with 3.62 years of experience per player (the Chiefs have 3.45), though Green Bay remains the NFC’s least-experienced team. The Packers are tied with Buffalo with just six players age 30 or older. The Chiefs have a whopping 17 rookie or first-year players on their roster, compared to 10 for Green Bay.
The New Orleans Saints have the league’s most-experienced roster by every measuring stick. The average Saint is 27.83 years old and has 5.83 years of experience. Plus, New Orleans has an NFL-high 17 players age 30 or older.
By jettisoning Favre and with 39-year-old Rob Davis retiring, the Packers actually got younger, even though many of the players are a year older than a year ago. Last year’s average age at the start of the season was 25.72 years, with the Colts second at 25.74. In 2006, the Packers’ average age was 25.57, just ahead of Tennessee’s 25.77 average.
The University of Miami has a league-high 44 players in the NFL, followed by Florida State (37), Georgia, Michigan and Ohio State (36 apiece), LSU (35), Tennessee and Texas (34 apiece), Southern California (32) and Florida (30).
And in case you were curious — and who wouldn’t be? — the Packers have eight players tipping the scales at less than 200 pounds and 12 weighing more than 300. That’s below the league average in both regards — Dallas has a league-high 17 300-pounders — and only four teams have fewer under 6-footers than the Packers’ seven.
In all, the average NFL player weighs 246.99 pounds; the average Packer weighs 245.38. Cleveland is the league’s heavyweight with an average of 254.56 pounds; Indianapolis is the lightweight at 239.79 pounds.