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Packers RB Alex Green

When the Packers traveled to Minnesota last season, running back Alex Green was in line for an expanded role with the team.

However, Green suffered a torn ACL early in the game, thus putting an abrupt end to his big day, and closing the book on his rookie season after just four games.

But by all accounts, Green’s offseason rehab has gone extremely well. The second-year running back has been on the field since the beginning of training camp after undergoing knee surgery in the middle of November.

Green sat out of practice on Tuesday, but he’s expected to play in Thursday night’s preseason opener in San Diego. And if Green does indeed play against the Chargers, it will be interesting to see how he–and his knee–responds to full speed game contact.

The Packers have shown no interest in bringing back unrestricted free agent Ryan Grant, so in all likelihood, they’ll enter 2012 with Green and Brandon Saine behind starter James Starks.

And although Starks is certainly a terrific athlete, he’s been largely inconsistent throughout training camp. Starks flashes limitless potential, then follows it up with a dropped pass or missed block. And throughout his first two seasons, Starks has missed a full season of work due to injury, appearing in just 16 of a possible 32 games.

In all likelihood, Green will have an opportunity to be the Packers’ primary ball carrier at some point this season given Starks’s struggles to stay healthy.  Read more... (480 words + 1 image, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

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Surprisingly, one of the biggest concerns from Packers fans is depth at running back (personally I would have put safety as my top concern).  Fans are worried that the combination of James Starks, Alex Green and Brandon Saine may not be enough to take pressure off Aaron Rodgers and the passing game.  One thing that I think fans have missed is that Alex Green isn’t exactly ready to play, after suffering a brutal ACL injury during week 7 of the 2011 season, whether or not he can be a significant contributor for the offense in 2012.  On the flip side, while Packers fans should not hold ill will against Adrian Peterson, who also injured his ACL (as he is a class act and a great football player), let’s just say Packers fans are hoping to see Peterson in sweat pants during week 13 and week 17.

I wanted to know a little more about ACL injuries in general and their effect in the NFL, so enter in “Outcomes of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injuries to Running Backs and Wide Receveirs in the National Football League” by Brian J Sennett MD et al. which was published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, volume 34, no. 12 1911-1917.  Sennnett et al. looked at 33 running backs and 31 wide receivers that had suffered an ACL injury while on a NFL roster between 1998 and 2002 and analyzed their performance compared to players in their respective positions who had not suffered an ACL injury.  The results are not good.  Read more... (1257 words + 2 images, estimated 5:02 mins reading time)

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D.J. Smith needs to show he's a better tackler than A.J. Hawk to win the starting job.

I had a 900-word post drafted about what D.J. Smith has to do to overtake A.J. Hawk as the Packers starting ILB alongside Desmond Bishop, but I scrapped most of it.

Why? Because what Smith has to do to win the job is simple.

He needs to tackle.

If I’m D.J. Smith, I wouldn’t even wait until tackling drills in training camp to start tackling people. If Smith is standing on the field waiting to stretch and an undrafted free agent RB is walking by with a ball, Smith should tackle him.

If the equipment manager is moving a bag of footballs from one part of the field to another, Smith should run him down, wrap him up and take him to the ground.

If Smith’s best friend is walking to the fridge to eat the leftovers from dinner, Smith should light him up.

Only starters and immediately family members should be off-limits. Otherwise, Smith needs to tackle anybody that comes into his line of vision between now and the start of the regular season. Player or non-player. Big or small. Male or female. If they have a football, Smith is tackling them.

It’s not going to be anything fancy that helps Smith overtake Hawk. All he has to do is prove that he’s a vastly superior tackler.  Read more... (533 words + 1 image, estimated 2:08 mins reading time)

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Packers LB Vic So'oto intercepts the ball against the Chiefs in the 2011 preseason

Every preseason, it seems like there is one previously unknown player on the Packers roster that stands out.   There is that one player whom fans love to watch and beg the coaches to play during the regular season.

In 2011, that player was linebacker Vic So’oto a rookie from BYU that went undrafted.   At BYU, So’oto was the true definition of a ‘football player’ by playing tight end and defensive end.  It’s not hard to see why So’oto would be so warmly embraced by Packer fans.

He did miss the majority of the 2006 and 2008 seasons due to injury, however, and given the Packers’ infamous luck with injury prone draft picks it is no surprise that So’oto went unselected on draft day last year.

As the saying goes, one man’s trash is another’s treasure.  In July, the Packers signed So’oto as an undrafted free agent.  Hoping to land a roster spot, he put on a show in the preseason against the Chiefs starters with 1.5 sacks and an interception before a nagging back injury that hampered him for most of the 2011 regular season.

You know what they say with the NFL fans when it comes to rookie players.  The first impression is always the strongest.

As the Packers pass rush continued to be non-existent, fans began to clamor for So’oto.  The lofty expectations placed on him by fans made you think he was another Clay Matthews.  Read more... (698 words + 1 image, estimated 2:48 mins reading time)

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Photo: David Dermer, Getty Images

NFL teams rarely keep six receivers on their 53-man rosters. Seven is almost unheard of.

But if the young players comprising the Green Bay Packers depth chart at receiver continue to impress as they have to start this offseason, GM Ted Thompson may have no other choice than to select more than five for his final roster.

After the first day of the Packers mandatory three-day minicamp Tuesday, quarterback Aaron Rodgers singled out one of those young receivers to heap on more praise: Second-year receiver Diondre Borel.

“Diondre Borel is a guy that gives us a different look because he plays a similar position of that of Randall Cobb,” Rodgers said in an interview with Packers.com. “Diondre has made as big of jump as anybody from year 1 to year 2. He really made the most of his reps on the scout team last year.”

The Packers signed Borel as an undrafted free agent in July of 2011. Despite catching just two passes for 35 yards during the preseason, Borel impressed Thompson and the Packers staff enough in camp to earn a spot on the team’s eight-man practice squad to start 2011.

What made Borel’s inclusion on the practice squad all the more impressive was the fact that the former Utah State Aggie was making a transition back to receiver from quarterback, a position he played during his final three seasons in college. At Utah State, Borel threw for almost 7,000 career passing yards—ranking him second in school history—after playing in eight games as a receiver during his freshman season.  Read more... (882 words + 1 image, estimated 3:32 mins reading time)

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2012 NFL Draft

So here is part II of the reasons behind the draft picks (see part I here)  Again, I’m not assigning grades to the draft or to the players because I don’t believe you can tell whether or not a player will pan out within the first 30 something days.  What I am interested in is what the Packers were thinking of when they decided to draft a player; with that in mind, this is what I think the Packers want to accomplish with each draft pick and which player each rookie could be potentially be replacing.

Jeron McMillian – Projected Strong Safety – Round 4, Pick #38 (#133 overall) – Replaces Pat Lee

Rationale: First off let’s be honest here, I don’t think we have the next Nick Collins in McMillian; I was actually very surprised that McMillian was drafted at all by the Packers simply because he doesn’t fit into the mold of what the Packers look for in safeties.  The Packers are probably more interested in playing two free safeties (which there really wasn’t one this year in the draft), consider their preferred pairing of Collins and Morgan Burnett (who ironically never really played together): both have good ball skills and the ability to jump passing routes.  What McMillian does best is run support, which is almost the exact opposite of a ball hawk.   Then again even if McMillian is the next Collins I highly doubt that the Packers can afford to stick him out there in his first year, which is even more reason why I think Woodson will have to make the move to safety.  Read more... (1506 words + 1 image, estimated 6:01 mins reading time)

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1. 

   2012 NFL Draft

   Ted Thompson hasn’t gone crazy:  While many people were surprised by the fact that Thompson traded up several times, a good indication that Thompson is still following his MO is that he’s trolling the media about his “change” in personality.  If you’ve followed Thompson enough, you’d know that he’ll never tell anyone anything, so if he’s saying he’s doing things differently, chances are he really isn’t.  I now think Thompson wasn’t as averse to trading up in the past as we all thought; it simply didn’t make much sense in previous years to do so.  For instance right now Thompson probably has one of the best teams in the NFL in terms of depth so he can afford to trade picks to move up the draft but when Thompson took over in 2005 the team was in a salary cap nightmare and salary cap nightmares usually also mean that there were no quality backups on the team (or else why pay more for an aging veteran?).  Secondly, the rookie salary cap has altered the draft to a point where the picks at the top of the 1^st round are the most valuable (as they should be) and teams have adjusted accordingly by trading up in order to secure the best talent for them. In fact the majority of 1^st round draft picks ended up being selected by teams who were not the team originally award the pick.  I am a little surprised that Thompson was so quick to recognize the change and act upon it, which is why I now think that Thompson isn’t averse to trading up, he just could justify paying the price in the past.

 Read more... (825 words + 1 image, estimated 3:18 mins reading time)

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