For the week or so leading up to the 2025 NFL Draft, I kept having this really, really bad dream.
I would see NFL commissioner Roger Goodell walk out onto the stage in Green Bay, Wisconsin with a card in his hand. Then he would say, “The Green Bay Packers select Tommy Mellott …”
The crowd would start to go crazy, and I would wake up in a cold sweat. It was like the time when, as a young boy, I dreamed my little brother was kidnapped. Or when I dreamed my parents disappeared.
It scared me half to death.
Yes, this seems like something I should be telling to a psychiatrist. But writing columns has been my long-standing form of therapy, so I am dropping this burden on you, the readers.
Ever since the 1989 Replay Game, the Packers have been my No. 1 tormentor. They have ruined more days of my life than illness, politics and women — combined.
Yes, I have been a Chicago Bears fan for as long as I can remember. I went out on multiple Halloweens dress up as Walter Payton, who trailed only my dad and grandpas as my role model.
Being a Bears fan has been more of a curse than a blessing. I blame my curse on my dad, who started cheering for the Bears because he liked Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus in the 1960s. I’m not exactly proud of the fact that I passed the curse on to my son.
When I was 11 years old, the Bears shuffled their way to the Super Bowl XX title with an 18-1 record. To this day, I can tell you the score and date of most of their wins.
Every Nov. 17, I text my lifelong friend Sam Bowling to wish him a happy anniversary of the day the 1985 Bears beat his Cowboys 44-0 in Texas Stadium.
It was a dream season that hooked me for life.
When I was in college, I drove around in a car with “85 BEARS” on the license plates. Both of those plates were later autographed by 1985 Bears folk hero William “The Refrigerator” Perry.
Through the 1980s, I would watch every Bears game that was on television. When they weren’t on, which was often, I would watch whatever boring game was on TV for the score updates that would occasionally pop up on the bottom of the screen.
They were not on the screen constantly like they are today.
Occasionally, when we were lucky, we would get a game break with an in-game highlight of a Bears touchdown.
In the early 1990s, my dad and I started to go to a sports bar in the Copper King Inn to watch the games. The bar, which is where the Rib & Chop House is now located, had a satellite and it would get all the games.
Thanks to the NFL Sunday Ticket, I have only missed a couple of games — thanks to my children — since 1994.
When I went to school at the University of Montana, I would watch games at the Press Box Sports Bar in Missoula. That place was like heaven on Sundays.
That is until the Bears turned that slice of heaven into hell.
On Nov. 5, 1989, Don Majkowski started it all by running past the line of scrimmage to throw a touchdown pass to give the Packers a 14-13 win over the Bears in Green Bay.
The officials rightly called the Packers quarterback for an illegal forward pass. But after a lengthy review and a criminal move that should be investigated by the FBI, the NFL overturned the call and gave the Packers the win.
That loss broke Mike Ditka and the Bears. It has been one disappointment after another ever since. That goes double when they play the Packers.
Majkowski eventually passed the torch to Brett Favre, who passed it to Aaron Rodgers, and the torture continued through the first Bears-Packers game of the 2024 season.
Hopefully, the Bears broke that curse when Caleb Williams led the Bears to a Week 17 win over the Packers in Green Bay in January. But I know better than to believe that just yet.
Even the sight of a Packers shirt, hoodie or hat makes me cringe. It doesn’t help that the person wearing the Packers apparel is usually running his or her mouth to try to ruin my day, but most of that is on me.
That is why I would not have been able to stomach Butte boy Tommy Mellott getting drafted by the Packers. Lifelong Packers fan Bernie Boyle told me that he would cheer for Tommy if he was picked by the Bears, but I am not wired that way.
Also, Bernie has not been subject to the nearly 40 years of torture that we Bears fans have had to endure. So, he cannot relate.
It was hard to take when Butte boy Colt Anderson signed with the Minnesota Vikings as an undrafted free agent in April of 2009. It was not, however, on the same level as if Colt would have signed with the Packers.
Not even close.
Like with Colt, Tommy is an All-American person. In addition to being a star for the Butte High Bulldogs and Montana State Bobcats, the 2024 Walter Payton Award winner has character falling out of his pockets.
In high school, he was a Big Brothers Big Sisters mentor, and he befriended a kindergarten superfan of the Bulldogs. By the time Butte High’s football season ended in 2019, three grade schools in Butte requested that he speak at their sixth-grade graduations in 2020.
Then when the Montana East-West Shrine Game was canceled because of COVID in 2020, he started a cornhole tournament that raised more than $50,000 for the Shriners Hospital for Children in Spokane.
Yes, if a screenwriter were to write a sports movie with Tommy as a character, people would walk out of the theater. They would not believe it because Tommy seems too good to be true.
Not only is he the pride and joy of the Mining City, he is a hero to the entire state of Montana.
To see him put on that ugly yellow and green would have killed me. Watching such a beloved character playing for the evil Packers would have crippled me with mixed emotions.
It would have broken me like the Replay Game broke Da Coach.
So, you can imagine the joy I had when I checked my phone on Saturday to see that Tommy was selected in the sixth round of the draft by the Las Vegas Raiders.
Bobcat fans did not realize what they got when Tommy committed to Montana State in the summer of 2019. The team listed him as an “athlete” rather than a quarterback.
In Butte, we knew he would play quarterback and do it an extremely high level.
Tommy won Bobcat Nation over in a big way when he led MSU to the FCS national championship game as a freshman in 2021. He immediately earned the nickname “Touchdown Tommy,” and he proved on a weekly basis that he was deserving of that moniker.
Today, Raiders Nation also has no idea what just landed on the laps of the Silver and Black, whose famous butt-chined co-owner was also drafted in the sixth round in 2000. They listed Tommy and his 4.39 seconds in the 40-yard dash as a “receiver.”
Maybe Tommy will play receiver for the Raiders. Maybe he will never play quarterback.
But everyone in Montana will tell you that he will do great things in the NFL. They will tell you to never bet against Tommy. Wherever he lines up, he will score some touchdowns. Lots and lots of touchdowns.
And it will be opposing defensive coordinators who wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
— Bill Foley, who will still have Packers nightmares, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
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