Aaron Rodgers, Davante Adams, Clay Matthews, Nick Perry, Damarious Randall, and Jahri Evans adds up to six. Now add Jason Spriggs (1 snap on Saturday), Richard Rodgers (2), Aaron Jones (4), Jordy Nelson (27), and Josh Jones (30). That’s 11 injured players, and I’m not counting Lucas Patrick, who played with a club on his left hand.
The Minnesota Vikings’ injury report coming into the game: defensive back Tramaine Brock, safety Andrew Sendejo, tackle Riley Reiff, and reserve cornerback Mackensie Alexander – all but third-stringer Brock played. Three Vikings also went out in this game, though none was a skills position player.
We can go further: Green Bay players who went on injured reserve earlier in the year include: Kentrell Brice, Bryan Bulaga, Kevin King, Ty Montgomery, Kyle Murphy, and Quinten Rollins.
I’ve previously pointed out that before you start predicting individual NFL game outcomes, you really need to review the injury statuses of the two teams. On the year, the Vikings have lost five players to injured reserve; Green Bay has lost 12.
The IR Factor in Making the Playoffs
The teams with the most players placed on IR this year are: the 49ers (20), the Redskins (19), the Texans and Giants (18 each), the Colts (17), and the Bears and Seahawks (16). How many playoff-bound teams do you see?
The teams with the fewest players going on IR are the Vikings, Cowboys, and Falcons (five each), the Steelers and Titans (six each), the Bills (seven), the Raiders (eight) and the Chiefs and Rams (nine each). How many teams do you see that are in the playoffs or still in the hunt?
Packers Injury Jinx Continues
Though it seems otherwise, the Green Bay Packers are in the middle most years when it comes to players lost to IR. However, one could get a better feel for the impact of injuries by refining the IR statistics to, say, count one point for each player on IR, add another point for starters, another point for skills position players, another point for star players, and add three more points for quarterbacks.
For the Packers in Saturday’s game, the team was without, or lost: its starting QB/biggest star, four defensive backs (all who’ve been starters this year), its two star pass rushers, two of its three key running backs, its two star wide receivers, and so on. That’s too much to overcome.
I understand that due to the team’s many injuries the Packers faced nearly impossible odds on Saturday. I can live with the loss, and even going scoreless. What’s alarming and disheartening, however, is the lack of urgency, spirit and desire that my team displayed.
I predicted that Packers pride would be at stake in this game – Packers pride lost.
Let’s not start to blame this on injuries. Every team deals with them. The packers roster is not good, plain and simple. The coaching isn’t effective.
Mathews and Perry didn’t play.
The defense gave up only 236 yards, and only 16 points. Without our two 25 million dollar studs?
How about our 10 million dollar man beast Mike “BAD ASS” Daniels? I couldn’t find him in the stat box.
How come he didn’t play?
Injuries are not the biggest problem. Depth is the problem and the Packers are in the kiddies wading pool. The draft strategy as selected by TT and the develop strategy as implemented by MM and their staff quite simply ain’t working. Too many TT and MM guys, like Datone Jones, didn’t have the needed talent, stayed too long, were never properly developed, and were quickly released when they went elsewhere. Others, like Casey Hayward, were wasted in Green Bay and another team / coach developed them to the ProBowl. Look at depth at QB. Hundley does not have NFL caliber talent. Ron Wolf and Mike Holmgren always had a good backup QB and several proved that elsewhere. TT’s QB legacy has guys like Matt Flynn, Brian Brohm, and Brett Hundley compared to RW legacy guys like Mark Brunell, Matt Hasselbeck, and Aaron Brooks. Yeah, TT drafted Aaron Rodgers, but none of the RW guys were drafted higher than the 4th round and all of them had better career numbers than the combined numbers for all the TT guys (excluding Rodgers of course). Also, I didn’t count Kurt Warner because he wasn’t drafted by RW. It is time for the Packers to leave TT and MM behind in the wading pool and hire a new GM and head coach that can lead them to the 10 meter diving platform and the deep end of the pool.
Packers Pride? What’s that? This team hasn’t played with fire for years.