New Teams for Old Packers

It took a while, but the career of former Packer Backer favorite (until he got beat for the winning TD in overtime of the 2014 “Great Collapse”) isn’t over after Tramon Williams signed a 1-year contract with the Arizona Cardinals.

Who Will Run The Ball Against The Texans And Other Stuff

Since Eddie Lacy went down with an ankle injury in Week 6 quarterback Aaron Rodgers has been the Packers leading rusher. He has consistently gained yardage averaging 6.2 yards a carry and saved drives by making 20 first downs most on third down.

 

However, last week in the win over the Eagles Rodgers tweaked his hamstring, so his mobility will be restricted leaving the ground game up to the halfback James Starks, tailback/slot back Ty Montgomery, fullback Aaron Ripkowski and halfback Christine “A Boy Named Sue” Michael.

 

Starks is beginning to show signs of life with 41 yards on 17 carries against the Eagles for 2.8 yards a carry after beginning the season with the worst statistics of his career averaging just 1.8 yards. Starks had some good runs, but he needs to do more this week.

 

Another One Bites The Dust

Every week another starter is lost to the Packers and this week it was starting center J.C. Tretter, who was put on the shelf with a knee injury.

 

Through the first seven games during which the Packers went 4-3 the Packers lost 16 players to injury for a total of  37 missed games. In fact, there hasn't been a week where the Packers didn't have a player out because of injury.

 

Week 1 Josh Hawkins (hamstring), Trevor Davis (shoulder), Chris Banjo (hamstring) and Jayrone Elliott (hamstring) sat out the game. Week 2 Hawkins, Elliott and Banjo were still out with Sam Shields added with a concussion.

 

Observations After The First Week of Camp

Bill Belichick Injury Report: On Day Three tight end Mitchell Henry needed some Midol because he had to leave practice with cramps. On Day Four left outside linebacker Manoa Pikula also dropped out with an undisclosed injury. It was reported he limped off, so it could be cramps, could be tweeked, could be stubbed toe, could be......

 

On Day Five Pikula is the only player not participating in the Saturday morning practice. Intrepid hospital reporter Michael Cohen reported and I'm guessing he didn't clear this with General Manager Ted Thompson and Head Coach Mike McCarthy that when he left the practice field Thursday he was grabbing his right hamstring. When practice resumes we'll see if Cohen still has his press pass or will be tweeting from outside the fence as a spectator for breaking Belichick Protocol.

Mojo is Back

The Smiles and Mojo Were Back

I didn't get a chance to see the Packers win over Washington until Monday because I was covering a women's college basketball game and didn't get over to the game until the score was 32-18 in the fourth quarter.

Aaron Rodgers addressed what had happened and who am I to say anything different, “This is huge for us, it really is. I talked a lot the last couple of weeks about being able to turn it on. A lot of you probably thought that this was lip service. But we just needed a game like this to get our mojo back. We got our confidence going. I said this week, it just takes one — one performance to get us going back in the right direction and believing we can make a run.”

Offensive mojo has been lacking since Week 3 of the season and team mojo has been lacking since coming back from the Bye Week. I finally watched the entire game and it seemed to me several things were going on.

I Was Wrong

I Was Wrong about #73 J.C. Tretter at Center

I'm seriously thinking about no longer making predictions because every time, except for when I'm off-blog I have been wrong lately. I started off wishy-washy and didn't pick the season opener with the Bears. I then predicted a 35-24 loss to the Seahawks before picking correctly, but not the right score wins over Chiefs, 49ers, Rams and Chargers. At that point I was 4-1-1.

 

Then the season went off the track both for the Packers and myself. I predicted a 27-21 win over the Broncos (wrong). I then gave up predicting the score and got it right by predicting a loss to the Panthers, but have been wrong the last two weeks predicting a win over the Lions and a loss to the Vikings to put my season record at 5-4-1. No as good as my day job, but I will press on with more predictions for the rest of the season.

 

In my day (or more exactly afternoon and evening) job I just finished my best season as a prep football picker for my daily newspaper where I finished tied for second out of eight with the reporter that always beats me year in and year out one game out of first place. My previous best was third place three games out. For the record over the course of 13 weeks I had an 82.6% success ratio picking 133 winners out of 161 games.