Two days before their Wild Card playoff game in Washington, the Packers’ weekly injury report listed 18 players, which are the most it’s had all season and almost twice as many as that of their Sunday opponent.
Green Bay’s official report is updated throughout the week, with the last and most current edition released two days prior to the game – barring unexpected changes. The 18 players listed on Friday’s report, which constitutes more than a third of the active roster, were a season-high for a team whose season has largely been defined and damaged by injuries.
Beginning with the knee injury Jordy Nelson suffered in preseason that cost the Packers’ top wide receiver his entire year, through a successful period of relative health early on and then attrition along the offensive and defensive lines late in the slipping campaign, the team constantly has been battling a multitude of bumps and bruises – or, as they're known in Green Bay, hamstring strains and ankle sprains.
In the regular-season finale against the Vikings, the Packers listed 16 players on their Friday injury report. Before the atrocity at Arizona, Green Bay had 13 players on the final report. The week before that, against Oakland, there were 12. Not since Week 2 have there been less than eight players listed.
By contrast, a comparatively healthy Washington team has only 10 injured players on its Friday report.
While 13 of the Packers were designated as probable for Sunday’s game against Washington, four were questionable and one, top cornerback Sam Shields, was doubtful. According to the NFL, a probable status indicates a "virtual certainty the player will be available for normal duty," while questionable represents a "50-50 chance" of playing and doubtful means there’s "at least a 75 percent chance" the player won’t be in the game.
Of foremost importance to Packers fans are the statuses of Shields, who’s still going through the league’s concussion protocol, and left tackle David Bakhtiari, who’s been out a couple weeks with an ankle injury. In two games without Bakhtiari at the most important position on the offensive line, the Packers have allowed 14 sacks. And against Washington quarterback Kirk Cousins, who has the NFL’s fifth-best passer rating at 101.6 (Aaron Rodgers is 15th at 92.7), Green Bay could struggle without the speedy, savvy Shields in the secondary.
On Wednesday, when head coach Mike McCarthy was asked about Shields he responded that every injury was different. On Thursday, regarding Datone Jones’ neck injury, McCarthy said he hadn’t yet gotten the medical report on the defensive end. And on Friday, McCarthy said Bakhtiari would do some work on Saturday, which would give the Packers a better understanding of his availability.
The cageyness is strategic, of course, as McCarthy’s team gains nothing by divulging injury information in advance of the biggest game of its season. But anyone who’s watched offensive linemen Bryan Bulaga and T.J. Lang struggle to get up from the ground, winced with running back Eddie Lacy as he clutched at his battered ribs after scoring a touchdown or seen limping defensive linemen and linebackers hobble off the field knows this team is badly hurting.
Still, it’s playoff football time and, as they like to say, players are gladiators, warriors who fight through pain.
And at least they’re not the Texans, whose 19-man injury report is lengthier even than the Packers’.
Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.
After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.
Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.
