Five More Thoughts on Packers’ Win Over Saints

Hey, it’s finally over and not soon enough. The Green Bay Packers said farewell to the preseason with a 38-10 win over the New Orleans Saints, in which they saw rookie quarterback Brett Hundley lead the offense to 38 unanswered points.

What did we learn? Not a hell of a lot, except the Packers’ young players are way better than the Saints’ young players. Maybe New Orleans should just hang around in town and take whoever the Packers cut back to the Easy with them.

Anyway, here are five more quick thoughts on what transpired.

Way to seize that opportunity.
We talked about it before the game. There was probably one roster spot open and that was for the No. 3 tight end, which would come down to Justin Perillo and Kennard Backman. Well, neither guy did much of anything. Each was targeted once and Backman had the only reception of the two, which went for 20 yards. It’s really not their fault they weren’t targeted and you could get into conspiracies if you wanted. Maybe the Packers didn’t involve these guys because they want one or both of them on the practice squad. An uneventful night lessons the possibility that another team would claim one of them if released.

Not much from Jared Abbrederis.
Who was that guy wearing No. 84 on the field for the Packers? Why, it was Jerry Abbaderry! Yup. The Packers got Abbrederis on the field for the first time since they drafted him last year. Unfortunately, he didn’t make the kind of impact that says, “Whoa! We need to keep this guy around!” Jerry had one catch for six yards and returned three punts for 35 yards. He actually looked pretty good doing the latter, but the Packers have plenty of return guys. That’s not going to get him a roster spot. Availability is important to Mike McCarthy and Abbrederis hasn’t been available. Hopefully he gets to the practice squad.

Myles White is coming on, but…
The guy that’s going to likely end up being the Packers’ No. 5 receiver had himself his second good game in a row. White caught four for 46 yards and two touchdowns. You can see the guy’s limitations, though. He’s small. He isn’t strong. He can catch the ball, but probably isn’t going to make plays against a No. 1 defense. If White makes the roster, and we think he will, he can thank the injuries to Jordy Nelson and Jared Abbrederis. White has made the most of his opportunities and we believe he deserves a shot. That said, we don’t expect anything out of him during the regular season and aren’t quite sure he’s even an NFL receiver.

The offensive line looks better than it has in years.
We’re not even talking about the starters, who didn’t play Thursday night. We’re talking about the backups. It appears the Packers have some tough decisions to make among the backup offensive linemen. We can’t recall a time when the Packers trotted out their second team (or third team) offensive line and it wasn’t a complete disaster. Essentially, you’d see football being played, but the kind where the quarterback is running for his life on every play or running backs are consistently getting stuffed for losses. Not with these guys. The Packers only gave up one sack on Thursday and that was by Josh Walker, who a lot of the yahoos that cover the team claim is the team’s best backup lineman. The Packers also ran the ball effectively. In a year’s time, this unit has gone from having no backups that could be trusted to possibly being, overall, the strongest position group on the team.

Special teams looked better.
As we expected, the Packers special teams looked much better from preseason week 3 to week 4. A lot of people wanted to panic, but as we suggested, the personnel would have something to do with performance. The Packers pretty much threw everyone on the roster out there on special teams in week 3. Some of those guys aren’t even on the team anymore, but they had to get a look. When you employ the guys who are going to be your core guys, things predictably get better. So, we’re not going to worry about special teams and neither should you.