Editor's note: Our series on the greatest NFL teams of all time continues with its 10th installment and a look at the 1996 Packers. The greatest team ever will be revealed on Tuesday, May 15.

	Brett Favre celebrates during the Packers' 35-21 Super Bowl XXXI win over the Patriots.

The 1996 Packers are what I call an underrated great team. I don't think too many football "historians" consider them to be one of the greatest of all time, but their résumé is very impressive. They were the first team since the 1972 Dolphins to lead the league in points scored and fewest points allowed. Their Adjusted Power Index is the best of the 12 teams on our list and that is saying something.

We can easily play "connect the dots" with then-Packers head coach Mike Holmgren. (I like connect the dots better than six degrees of.) Holmgren, of course, coached under Bill Walsh in San Francisco. Walsh coached under Paul Brown in Cincinnati. That was almost too easy. By the way, the media thinks it's amazing when a baseball manager has a college degree of any kind. That's not such a big deal in football. Holmgren has a bachelor's degree in business finance. Walsh has a master's degree in history. Eight of the 31 NFL head coaches (about 26 percent) who started the 2000 season have graduate degrees. According to the Census Bureau, only about seven percent of all Americans aged 25 or older have graduate degrees.

The Packers' quarterback was (and still is), of course, NFL MVP Brett Favre. Some of you may know that Favre was not originally drafted by Green Bay. He was drafted by Atlanta in the second round of the 1991 draft. If you're wondering how a player like Favre could have slipped to the second round, drafted after 32 other players including two quarterbacks (would you believe Dan McGwire and Todd Marinovich?), remember that even with all of the combines and testing, scouting football players is an inexact science. There were also some health concerns about Favre. He had recently undergone shoulder surgery and he was involved in a serious car accident the summer before his senior year in college and had to have 30 inches of intestines surgically removed as a result of the accident.

	1996 Packers
	Record: 13-3 Points scored/allowed: 456/210 Adjusted power index: +7.49 Opponents' record: 126-114 (.525)* Record against teams with winning records: 4-3 Points scored/allowed against teams with winning records: 188/127 *For all of these opponents' records, games against this team are excluded.

Then there's the question of how the Falcons could have traded Favre in February of 1992. While Atlanta did receive a first-round draft choice for him (it wasn't even Green Bay's pick, it was Philadelphia's; the Packers had acquired that draft choice in a trade in April of 1991), that pick actually ended up in Dallas in another trade. When the dust had settled, Atlanta did have two first-round picks in 1992, which they used on Bob Whitfield and Tony Smith, a major bust who had been a college teammate of ... Brett Favre. (More connect the dots.)

While hindsight is at least 20-20, to be fair, the Falcons did have a good quarterback at the time in Chris Miller, himself a former first-round pick. Miller had led Atlanta into the playoffs in 1991 and was one of only five NFL quarterbacks with at least 20 touchdown passes that year. An ironic twist to all of this is that while Miller's career faded with a string of concussions, Favre has been the most durable quarterback in NFL history in addition to being a three-time league MVP and the cornerstone of one of the best teams in history.

Eddie Epstein works as a consultant to major league baseball teams. He is the co-author, along with ESPN.com's Rob Neyer, of "Baseball Dynasties: The Greatest Teams of All Time." He has been a regular contributor to ESPN.com's baseball coverage and is a huge football fan.