Some Advice Over the State of the Packers: R-E-L-A-X

Matt LaFleur is willing to be careful with his injured tackles and live through the mistakes of his young receivers. Plus, the Bengals’ offensive line is getting better.

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Fifteen games down, one to go, and we’ll have three weeks in the books with 15 more weeks of the regular season to go …

• There’s been a lot of hand-wringing over the state of the Packers through three weeks. And, really, it can be instructive to look at last year for guidance on where all this is going. In 2021, Green Bay opened with a weird blowout loss to the Saints in Jacksonville (New Orleans had been displaced by Hurricane Ida), then rolled over the Lions before squeaking past the 49ers in Week 3. This year, the Packers opened with a convincing loss to the Vikings, rolled over the Bears in Week 2 and squeaked past the Buccaneers on Sunday.

So what gives? I think it’s at the point now where the Packers can, quietly, use the early parts of the season to work out the kinks, and build depth. I wrote in The MMQB this morning how the 14–12 win in Tampa, in many ways, should be good for the team, in that it had to find a way to get that win a different way. And so it was that De’Vondre Campbell made the big play on the two-pointer to close out the Buccaneers.

Rodgers has been under pressure with starting tackles David Bakhtiari and Elgton Jenkins out due to  injuries :: Kim Klement/USA TODAY Sports

Meanwhile, the Packers gave tackles David Bakhtiari, who returned this week, and Elgton Jenkins, who returned last week, time to come all the way back from serious knee injuries, and have gotten rookie receivers Romeo Doubs and Christian Watson (before Watson got hurt in Week 2, anyway) a ton of reps. And maybe being careful with the linemen or living through the mistakes of the receivers won’t help the team now.

The idea, though, is that it will eventually.

“Yeah, I don't disagree with that,” coach Matt LaFleur said, when I asked him about it Sunday night. “First of all, obviously, those two tackles are … they’re pretty damn good players, man. Just to get them back is a big shot in the arm. But, also, the young guys, the more we can get them snaps the better, because ultimately, you learn from repetition. There’s not a greater teacher than that.

“And so to get those guys in there? I hate that Sammy [Watkins] is out. Certainly, he’s a big part of our team and our offense. In short order, he’s come in and done a great job. But losing him for at least the short-term is gonna give Romeo, for sure, and Christian, once he comes back, even more opportunity to learn and grow at a faster rate.”

And, ultimately, it should make the Packers a better team when it really counts.

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• The Bengals’ offensive line has been a topic of conversation for most of September, and the overriding question—whether the signings of Ted Karras, Alex Cappa and La’el Collins will ultimately fix what cost the team last year—remains unanswered. I’ve used the example of the Chiefs from last year as a good one to illustrate that it can take time to work out communication issues and get guys at those positions on the same page (there’s no position group that requires more cohesion than that one).

So I figured the time was right to check in on it with Bengals coach Zac Taylor, having heard from others that getting those guys on the same page is still a work in progress. And in Sunday’s win over the Jets, the Bengals did take more positive steps in getting there.

“At the end of the day, everybody puts every sack on the o-line. And we just had to be collectively better as a unit in protection,” Taylor told me. “It doesn’t matter if the running back gives up a sack; the o-line gets blamed. Tight end gives up a sack, o-line gets blamed, you know what I mean? So it’s been a lot of all that, and I’ve seen some really great things from the offensive line the last few weeks.

“We’ve got a lot of confidence that they’ve come together really well. We signed these guys for the right reasons, we’ve developed these guys for the right reasons and I feel really good about the direction of our offensive line.”

So … stay tuned. If the Bengals get that area squared away, the team could be even better than it was a year ago—and they were pretty close to winning the whole thing.

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• The Chargers lost LT Rashawn Slater and WR Jalen Guyton for the year this weekend, and that’s in addition to less serious injuries sustained already by QB Justin Herbert and WR Keenan Allen. If you combine that with the team’s history with injuries, it’s very fair to ask whether there’s something there with the franchise.

I’ll give you my institutional knowledge on the subject. The team had the same issues under Mike McCoy, and so when Anthony Lynn arrived in 2017, he wanted to address it—and he did by employing some older-school conditioning and training methods in order to try and callous the players for the season. When Brandon Staley arrived in ’21, with the injury pattern having persisted, he went the other way, taking from what he learned from Sean McVay in the COVID year of ’20 in being more deliberate about everything.

“What we learned that hopefully can be a positive is you don’t need to go 11-on-11, full speed, competitive, to get something out of something,” Staley told me then. “What we learned in the acclimation period and ramp up—you can get a lot accomplished without risking injury. It did take some time when we first got together, not very much, but I think had we been able to do some of that in the spring time—I’m talking about a ramp-up, acclimation-type atmosphere, if we can do that—I think it’ll help the overall product.

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“Because you’re not going live, you’re just walking through, that’s something that could help.”

So long story short, it’s not like the Chargers haven’t tried to address their injury epidemic over the years. I’m sure they will again now. But it’s important to remember that in a sport such as football, with these sorts of things, sometimes you can just wind up being unlucky.

• Storm Norton is the next man up for the Chargers at left tackle, and that’s not a settling thought given that they play in a division with Frank Clark, Maxx Crosby, Chandler Jones and Bradley Chubb. I’d say GM Tom Telesco would be looking at the trade market for options at the position. But teams who have good depth at tackle usually aren’t lining up to give it away. So this is a tough spot for the Chargers.

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• It’s still uncertain how long the Patriots will be without Mac Jones, with his high-ankle sprain still being evaluated, but I know this—we’ll learn some things about the team in the interim, with Brian Hoyer getting the first crack at replacing him.

For one, we’ll get to see what the Patriots’ crew of skill players, largely imported from other teams (Devante Parker, Kendrick Bourne, Nelson Agholor, Hunter Henry, Jonnu Smith), is worth what New England paid for them. And in turn, we’ll also get to see a bit of a side-by-side comparison, in how different the offense looks with Jones out of it.

If there’s a silver lining for the team, I think it’s the information they’ll pull from all that, with the critical third year for any first-round quarterback looming next fall for Jones.

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• I’m not saying the Tua Tagovailoa situation didn’t look shady on Sunday, but at this point, if the guy’s not in the concussion protocol (and the Dolphins said he wasn’t), then there’d have to be a number of team and league people blatantly breaking the rules, and Tagovailoa would almost certainly have to be in on it, too. Either way, it’s good the union’s looking into it. These things should be taken seriously.

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• It’ll be interesting watching Jason Peters, a likely future Hall of Fame left tackle, dig in at left guard tonight, and at 40 years old no less. Also, don’t overlook the benefit that rookie left tackle Tyler Smith will have in Peters playing next to him. I’ve heard plenty of stories over the years on the good it can do a young lineman to play next to an accomplished veteran, so this should help Smith in the present and the future.

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• It’s a good move by the NFL to take the Pro Bowl and turn it into more of a festival for star players—and it’s sort of what Peyton Manning intended when he advocated for keeping the game years ago. Manning had become known as the sort of mayor of the league’s All-Star Game. When it was in Hawai‘i, he’d hold court all week at the pool and really valued making the event almost like a convention for football’s elite.

I’m sure the NFL saw the value in having him involved in the event in that way, in getting Manning’s production house, Omaha, in the fold for the revamped event.

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• With the Raiders off to an 0-3 start, rookie right tackle Thayer Munford will likely become a relatively pivotal figure. The Las Vegas brass loves his potential, and the hope was—in time—he’d win the job opposite Kolton Miller. That time came Sunday, and if he can solidify that spot, it’d go a long way toward solving what's afflicted the Raiders through an 0-3 start.

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• All the best to Myles Garrett—any accident where a car flips is terrifying. Here’s hoping he and everyone else involved is OK.