This is a huge blow to an offensive line trying to reinvent itself following sub-par performances over the last few years. I've long since held the opinion that the left tackle is the second most important player on your team, and ours is out for the entire season.
Mike McCarthy had planned to flip flop the left and right sides of the line this year in order to position his best linemen in the most important spots. The left tackle spot is now wide open, with Marshall Newhouse being the likely front runner to start the competition.
The one and only silver lining here is that the injury occurred with enough time left before the season to hold a legitimate competition to find a replacement. There's been rumblings about rookie lineman David Bakhtiari looking good in camp, but do you want a rookie protecting Aaron Rodgers blindside? That's what this is really about. You can pretty much pencil in at least two more free shots at Rodgers' back this year, which inevitably lead to fumbles, injuries, losses, angry bloggers, etc. I am not pleased.
Of course one injury won't derail the season at this point, but god damn this is one injury that you don't want to see. We've dealt with plenty of injury issues over the past three years, so nobody within the organization is going to panic. It's just disheartening to get bit by the injury bug again so early. The Packers have lost more starts due to injury over the past three season than any team in the the league, and we've already lost 16 starts this year before we played our first preseason game.
No comments:
Post a Comment