PFF Believes Packers Lack Top-10 Roster

Davante Adams was named the biggest strength; Allen Lazard the biggest X-factor.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers, who went 13-3 and reached the NFC Championship Game last season, have the 12th-best roster in the NFL entering the 2020 season. So says Pro Football Focus, which used a combination of its 2019 player grades and career player grades and statistics to rank the rosters of all 32 teams.

Receiver Davante Adams was listed as the team’s biggest strength. “Adams' 23 receiving touchdowns from inside the red zone since 2017 are more than any other player,” PFF’s Ben Linsey wrote in part of his summation.

Linebacker was listed as the Packers’ biggest weakness. While fans might have packed Blake Martinez’s bags and defensive coordinator Mike Pettine seemed giddy to plug veteran Christian Kirksey into the lineup, Linsey was more dubious. Looking beyond the injuries, Linsey wrote Kirksey, “has been a liability in coverage stretching back even further. Kirksey hasn't recorded a PFF coverage grade above 60.0 since he did so all the way back in 2015 with the Browns.”

With Devin Funchess being the only notable addition to the receiver corps, the X-factor was receiver Allen Lazard. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers is a big believer in Lazard, which is a good starting point. But it will be up to Lazard to show the Packers didn’t make a gigantic blunder in not using a premium draft pick on a receiver.

“You look at the development of a guy like Allen Lazard, what he did last year, and his versatility,” Rodgers said in a conference call last month. “He was cut at the end of training camp and then quickly put back on the roster Week 1. By the end of the season, he was called upon many, many times in important situations to make big plays and he did. He’s just a great teammate, and ascending player, loved his approach every week and he made some big-time plays for us.”

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.