Packer Central

Packers Add Needed Depth to Interior Offensive Line

The Green Bay Packers signed guard Michael Jordan to the practice squad on Tuesday. He started 29 games during his first three NFL seasons.

Bill Huber

Packers Add Needed Depth to Interior Offensive Line
Packers Add Needed Depth to Interior Offensive Line /
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GREEN BAY, Wis. – With Yosh Nijman, Rasheed Walker and Caleb Jones, the Green Bay Packers have strong depth at offensive tackle. With Royce Newman and Sean Rhyan, the depth is lacking on the interior.

The Packers perhaps addressed that problem on Tuesday by signing guard Michael Jordan to the practice squad.

Jordan was a fourth-round pick by his hometown team, the Cincinnati Bengals, in 2019. He has a lot of experience, with nine starts as a rookie and 10 games in 2020 with the Bengals and 10 starts with the Carolina Panthers in 2021. Last year, he was a reserve for all 17 games. He was cut at the end of training camp this summer.

According to Pro Football Focus, he allowed six sacks in 2021, three in 2020 and six sacks in 2019. He was flagged for 12 penalties during that span. In just 19 pass-protecting snaps in 2022, he gave up two sacks.

Almost all of his career snaps have come at left guard.

While that’s not a great track record, he’s only 25.

To make room, they released tight end Austin Allen. Allen challenged for a spot on the 53-man roster. The waiver-wire claim of Ben Sims after final cuts made Allen expendable.

At the 2019 Scouting Combine, Jordan measured 6-foot-5 5/8 and 312 pounds and ran his 40 in 5.27 seconds.

Jordan started all 41 games in his three seasons at Ohio State. In 2016, he became the first true freshman to start along the Ohio State offensive line since Orlando Pace in 1994. He started at guard as a freshman and sophomore before shifting to center in 2018, where he earned some All-American honors.

No, he’s not related to that Michael Jordan.

“It’s definitely hard to live up to those expectations (that come with his name) because I’m terrible at basketball and my name is Michael Jordan, so the kids are going to make fun of me for that,” he said while at OSU. “Growing up with a name like Michael Jordan, everyone expects you to play basketball. And me being tall? Everybody wanted me to play basketball, but I love football.”

Jordan remade his body before the 2021 season.

“Every day I tell myself I’m eating for results and not taste,” Jordan told The Athletic. “Trust me, I hate eating healthy more than anyone. It would be clean carbs like rice, quinoa, pastas. Protein would be chicken or salmon or shrimp. That was it. And vegetables.”

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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.

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