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I think I saw that Savage was on IR now too
Packers 2023-24 Season Thread
- Thread starter Mark87
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Yes, they put him there earlier in the day. I'll try to post all that in a bit.
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All this wishin' and hopin" and believing that some Doc is going to work a miracle and get these guys back on the field is backfiring. Guys who are "close" to recovering seem to be thrown back out there, injured worse, and end up staying on the sideline. It almost seems to smack of a nervous GM and HC, who fear for their jobs, if they don't win enough this year.
They should have put players on IR instead of pushing their rehab. It's just plain stupid. I'm afraid that's what it looks like as an observer.
They should have put players on IR instead of pushing their rehab. It's just plain stupid. I'm afraid that's what it looks like as an observer.
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That makes sense. This 3-headed monster that Murphy created by splitting tasks, has to create some bad ju-ju at times. I wonder if it hurts the working relationship between them?
I think so, the old order of things let the FB staff handle football and the other two kind of were there to make sure they had everything they needed. Murphy is meddling in things he shouldn't, I've been saying it for a long time and I'll stick with it. Gute was a TT clone, but frankly, he's in over his head.
There are two big differences between what Love and his two predecessors, Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers, went through their first seasons as starters. Favre and Rodgers had veteran left tackles, receivers, tight ends and running backs.
At left tackle, Love has a 2022 seventh-round pick (Rasheed Walker) starting for the first time. At receiver, he has two second-year players (Romeo Doubs and Christian Watson) who have started a combined 26 of a possible 46 games thus far. At tight end, he’s playing with three rookies (Luke Musgrave, Tucker Kraft and Ben Sims) and a veteran (Josiah Deguara) who is more fullback than tight end.
The only spot where Love has veteran support is at running back with Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon.
It was a gamble to go so young around Love, but the amount of talent coming out of the past two drafts blinded a lot of people to the reality of what it takes to win in the NFL. Young quarterbacks need veterans who can bail them out of tough spots and Love’s only sure source of support, when healthy, is Jones.
“It’s a young man's game and you need the legs, you need the speed,” Gutekunst said just before the start of the regular season. “Certainly, there's an experience factor these guys are going to have to go through, (but) the expectation is to go out and try to win every game that we play. You're not going to win them all. I mean, in my lifetime, nobody has.
“But at the same time, you’ve got to learn and grow from every situation, whether we win or we lose, the ups and downs, we have to learn and grow from that and continue to get better. The teams that have a chance to win a championship are the teams that are getting better each week and really kind of towards that end of the season are at their best. So that's what I expect.” It sure doesn’t look like the Packers are improving every week. Maybe the light will come on this week against Minnesota or the following week against the Los Angeles Rams, but if it hasn’t, by then you’re halfway through the season and still searching for something that will turn it around.
And so, what is to become of this season?
If you stand pat and injuries continue to decimate your team, the message you are sending to your veterans is that you’re on a five-year plan and you’ll see big gains from the young guys next year. Reaping the benefits of only two promising draft classes (’22 and ’23) takes time, and next year the ’23 and ’24 classes will still be in a developmental stage.
Good luck holding the locker room together doing that.
Gutekunst has some draft capital he can use to improve this team now. Acquiring some veteran wide receivers or tight ends, or even a safety, isn’t going to slow the development of some of the younger guys. Injuries already are doing that with receiver Christian Watson (knee), tight end Luke Musgrave (ankle), cornerback Eric Stokes (hamstring) and defensive end Devonte Wyatt (knee).
Love needs the predictability of some veterans in the huddle, some players who have played in big games before and aren’t going to bend their routes the wrong way or read a coverage incorrectly or forget to go in motion in a clutch moment.
When Mike Holmgren took over the Packers in 1992, he made sure quarterbacks Don Majkowski and Brett Favre had some players around them that knew his West Coast offense. He signed fullback Harry Sydney and receivers Sanjay Beach and Ron Lewis even though none were going to be anything more than placeholders.
General manager Ron Wolf took flyers on anybody he thought could help the team, including washed-up former starters like tackles Harvey Salem and Cecil Gray and running back Buford McGee. In future years, he continued to bring in veteran receivers like Mark Clayton (’93) Anthony Morgan (’93) and Mark Ingram (’95), veteran running backs like John Stephens (’93) and Reggie Cobb (’94), and veteran tight ends Reggie Johnson (’94), Jeff Thomason (’95) and Keith Jackson (’95).
When Favre did take over the starting job in Week 4 of the ’92 season, he could throw to one of the best receivers in the game, Sterling Sharpe, anytime he needed. He had Jackie Harris, a deep-threat tight end who was coming into his own in his third season. He had one of the best blocking tight ends in the game in Ed West.
And, maybe more importantly, he had a talented left tackle (Ken Ruettgers) and a veteran offensive line coach (Tom Lovat), who whipped a mediocre unit into shape in one season. As Favre grew, Wolf tried to include pieces who could help him grow more while continuing to add pieces who could grow with him.
When Rodgers took over in ’05, receiver Donald Driver was entering his eighth season and Greg Jennings his third. Tight end Donald Lee was entering his sixth season. Starting tackles Chad Clifton and Mark Tauscher were in their eighth seasons.
Both Favre and Rodgers started out poorly during their first seasons as starters; Favre was 2-4 and Rodgers was 3-3 after the same number of games as Love has started. But you could see a little of what the organization saw in them and the promise the future held.
Through six games, the Packers offense is regressing
At this point, Love will be lucky if he can match Rodgers’ first-year record of 6-10 (Favre finished 9-7) and he hasn’t shown anything other than the physical tools to tell you he’s the quarterback of the future. He’s thrown seven interceptions in his past four games and failed on three of his four late fourth-quarter opportunities to pull out a victory.
If Gutekunst stands pat with this roster, it’s only going to hurt Love. The Packers’ schedule was as easy as it’s going to get the first six games and yet the offense has regressed.
Heading into Week 8, the Packers rank 26th in total yards, 21st in yards per play, 24th in rushing yards per game, 24th in rushing yards per attempt, 23rd in passing yards per game, 29th in interception percentage and 17th in points per game.
Over the next six weeks, the 2-4 Packers face the Vikings (3-4), the Rams (3-4), the Pittsburgh Steelers (4-2), the Los Angeles Chargers (2-4), the Detroit Lions (5-2) and the Kansas City Chiefs (6-1). The Packers are 1-point underdogs to the Vikings and probably will be underdogs each of the five weeks after that.
Before the trade deadline next week, Gutekunst could do Love and coach Matt LaFleur a lot of favors by adding some low-cost veterans who have good track records of being team players and good influences in the locker room. Not everyone is a good fit both physically and from a salary cap standpoint.
