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Packers rookie offensive lineman J.C. Tretter

If I put the over/under on the number of rookies the Packers will have starting on the offensive line for the regular season opener at 0.5, would you take the over or the under?

What if I changed the season opener to week 10, but kept the over/under at 0.5?

If you believe some of the scuttle out of the Packers rookie mini-camp, recent draftees David Bakhtiari and J.C. Tretter are in the mix to start at right tackle. There’s also an outside chance that Tretter or undrafted rookie free agent Patrick Lewis of Texas A&M could give presumed starter Evan Dietrich-Smith a challenge at center.

If I had $100 burning a hole in my pocket, I’d take the under for the season opener and the over for week 10.

I don’t think Mike McCarthy wants to start a rookie right away. Ideally, I think he’d like to see Marshall Newhouse, Derek Sherrod or Don Barclay win the job. That’s not to say the rookies won’t get their fair shot. I’m confident they will.

But unless one of the rookies blows the veterans out of the water, McCarthy probably wants the young guys to develop a bit before getting tossed on the field to protect the league’s highest-paid player.  Read more... (529 words + 1 image, estimated 2:07 mins reading time)

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The Packers will move Bryan Bulaga from right tackle to left tackle for the 2013 NFL season.

The Green Bay Packers aren’t waiting until training camp to shuffle their offensive line.

Details of the Packers new-look line can be found in this excellent Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story by Tom Silverstein. To summarize:

• Bryan Bulaga moves from right tackle to left tackle
• Josh Sitton moves from right guard to left guard
• T.J. Lang moves from left guard to right guard
• Marshall Newhouse (last season’s starting left tackle), Don Barclay (who got a few starts in 2012) and Derek Sherrod (coming off a major leg injury that forced him to sit out last season) will compete to start at right tackle.
• Evan Dietrich-Smith is the starting center

Essentially, Packers coach Mike McCarthy is moving his two most talented and experienced offensive lineman from the right side to the left, which is Aaron Rodgers’ blind side, the Packers franchise quarterback who just signed a five-year contract extension worth $110 million.

Having a shutdown left tackle isn’t as important as it used to be in the today’s NFL. If you have a quarterback like Rodgers — someone who is mobile, smart and reads the opposing defense like a coach — you can get away with having an average left tackle.

But why take that risk? Why not combine your all-world quarterback with a reliable left tackle? If I climbed inside McCarthy’s head, I’m guessing that’s what his thinking behind the move would be.  Read more... (552 words + 1 image, estimated 2:12 mins reading time)

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Evan Dietrich-Smith ended up back in Green Bay.

When the Packers only offered the original round tender to restricted free agent Evan Dietrich-Smith — as of now, the team’s leading candidate to start at center — I was a little puzzled.

In Dietrich-Smith’s case, “original round” meant any team that wanted to sign him would not have to surrender a draft pick as compensation since Dietrich-Smith was undrafted out of Idaho State.

I thought for sure some other team would take a run at Dietrich-Smith, but I was wrong. He signed his tender for $1.323 million last week and will be in Green Bay for the offseason conditioning program starting Monday.

Is it concerning that the guy slated to start at center for the Packers was unable to even draw a minimal offer from another team?

I know the free-agent market has been dry for both centers and restricted free agents this spring, but you’d think someone would be interested in signing the likely starting center for a Super Bowl contending team with the best quarterback in the league.

Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy have had nothing but praise for Dietrich-Smith since he became the starter last season. I know a teammate and coach will never come right out and say one of their teammates/players is no good, but you can usually read between the lines to get the true sense of how a player is viewed.  Read more... (428 words + 1 image, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)

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Surviving Sundays with no Packers Football

Instead of a long intro this week, I’m going to save my bloviating for the non-Packers links and other nonsense section and get right to the Packers news of the week.

I’ll be back next week with a strong opinion on something related to the Packers or the NFL. For now, we’ll just catch up on Packers news and talk about a baseball text simulation game that everybody should own.

Packers News, Notes and Links  Read more... (1137 words + 1 image, estimated 4:33 mins reading time)

• Center Evan Dietrich-Smith signed his one-year restricted free-agent contract tender this week. I’m surprised no other team offered him more money to lure him away from the Packers. I’m also happy that Dietrich-Smith will be back. Should we be worried that no other team bothered to offer him more than the $1.323 million he got from the Packers? 
• Jermichael Finley was on KFAN in Minneapolis this week with Vikings play-by-play broadcaster Paul Allen. The interview is painfully bad, but if you want to know what Finley had to say, read this summary from Jason Wilde’s ESPN Milwaukee blog. Finley says he wants to play like Tony Gonzalez. In other news, I want to write like Shakespeare.

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Packers center Evan Dietrich-Smith

Evan Dietrich-Smith signed his restricted free agent tender worth $1.323 million, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. He’s expected to be the Packers’ starting center next season after Jeff Saturday retired.

Dietrich-Smith, 26, was handed the lowest possible restricted free agent tender with no compensation. If a team wanted to sign him, they simply would have had to make an offer that the Packers couldn’t match.

But that never happened, and Dietrich-Smith will remain in Green Bay next season.

The only restricted free agent to receive an offer sheet is Pittsburgh wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders from New England. The Steelers have a week to match the Patriots’ offer.

Dietrich-Smith is now slated to participate in the Packers’ offseason conditioning program. Green Bay’s other restricted free agent, Sam Shields, has yet to sign his tender worth $2.023 million for the upcoming season.

Now that Dietrich-Smith is in the fold for at least another season, the Packers figure they have their starting center in place. But that doesn’t mean the Packers won’t consider adding a young player at the position relatively early in this month’s draft.

California’s Brian Schwenke or Wisconsin’s Travis Frederick will likely be the first center off the board at some point on Day 2. Alabama center Barrett Jones will likely start 2013 on the PUP list due to medical concerns. He was on the same level as Schwenke and Frederick prior to the medical issues becoming public, but he’s now expected to come off the board on late Day 2 or early Day 3.  Read more... (286 words + 1 image, estimated 1:09 mins reading time)

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Surviving Sundays with no Packers Football

Forgive me, Packers fans, I’m about to stick up for the Chicago Bears.

(*The author pauses for a moment to put on his bullet-proof vest, change the locks on his home, and take a deep breath*)

I have no problem with the Bears one year, $2 million contract offer to Brian Urlacher. I’m actually insulted that Urlacher called the offer “insulting.”

Football is a business. Good teams make roster decisions not to reward once-great players or keep local heroes around to appease the fanbase. Football has been trying to teach us this lesson over and over again, but most people will never learn it, or simply refuse to even try to learn it.

Urlacher was a free agent for the first time in 13 seasons. He’ll be 35 years old in May and he missed the last month of the 2012 season with a hamstring injury.

In the 12 games that Urlacher did play, Pro Football Focus graded him out positively in only three of them. He finished with an overall season grade of -11.3. Pro Football Focus is not the be-all, end-all of player evaluation, but from what I saw of Urlacher in 2012, a -11.3 seemed generous. I thought he was slow and a shadow of his former self.

Does a $2 million contract offer for a once-great, but now aging player coming off an injury and likely on the downswing of his career really sound that insulting to you?  Read more... (1200 words + 1 image, estimated 4:48 mins reading time)

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Alabama OG Chance Warmack

Typically, offensive guards are not drafted very early in the first round. In last year’s draft, Stanford guard David DeCastro was thought to be one of the “safest” picks in the entire class, but he fell all the way to the Pittsburgh Steelers with the 24th overall pick.

This year, Alabama’s Chance Warmack has a chance to crack the top ten. Warmack (6-2 317) is a throwback who will help a team immediately as a rookie.

He could go as high as No. 7 to the Arizona Cardinals, so it’s unlikely that he’ll endure a DeCastro-type fall. But either way, Warmack is a surefire first-round pick.

Behind Warmack, the next-best interior offensive linemen in this year’s draft is Jonathan Cooper of North Carolina. Cooper is more athletic than Warmack but isn’t quite as physical. His versatility could help him on draft day, as he also has the ability to play center.

The center position lacks a true can’t-miss guy at the top.

Alabama’s Barrett Jones, Wisconsin’s Travis Frederick and California’s Brian Schwenke all figure to be drafted at some point on Day 2. Jones is the most versatile of the bunch, Frederick is the most physical, while Schwenke is the most athletic.

Warmack and Cooper will likely be first-round picks, but the depth at offensive guard doesn’t stop there. Larry Warford (6-3 332) of Kentucky is viewed as a starting-caliber guard, as is Syracuse’s Justin Pugh (6-4 307) who some prefer as a right tackle.  Read more... (1504 words + 1 image, estimated 6:01 mins reading time)

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