Is this the end for the 2013 season?
A lot of Green Bay Packers fans are pondering this very question with the news that their MVP-quarterback Aaron Rodgers has a slight fracture in his collarbone and could miss at least three weeks.
The Packers’ front office has to have similar concerns in a very competitive NFC North division where each win and loss makes a difference.
Here’s how it breaks down for the Green Bay Packers without Aaron Rodgers in the coming weeks.
Rodgers is without a doubt the most important player to his team in the entire National Football League. With him on the field, the Packers have a chance to win in any game no matter the circumstances. Just look at what the team dealt with on their 2010 Super Bowl run, a 15-1 regular season record in 2011 and the 5-2 start to this year despite all the costly injuries on both sides of the ball. If you want to argue whether Rodgers is instrumental in all that success, you are wasting your time.
With that said, the Packers offense becomes entirely different with their superstar out. Journey-man and veteran back-up Seneca Wallace becomes the new leader of an offense that still has some lethal weapons; Jordy Nelson, James Jones and Eddie Lacy to name a few.
The job of Mike McCarthy and the coaching staff will be to work around this change and not ask Wallace to do more than he can do. Everyone knows Wallace is not Aaron Rodgers and no one should even make the comparison.
Luckily for the Packers, the running game is working at an astonishing rate. Lacy leads all running backs in rushing yards since week 5. Even with the Bears progressively using eight defenders in the box, Lacy rumbled for 150 yards on 22 carries and teammate James Starks dazzled with a 32 yard score in the first quarter. To not sound too much like an overbearing optimist, the Packers are going to struggle offensively for sure, but it may not be at a rate everyone thinks.
Wallace isn’t completely inept at throwing the ball like a lot of back-ups in the NFL. He’ll have all week to practice with the starters and try to develop a chemistry with the talented Packers receivers. The Packers don’t need Wallace to carry the offense like Rodgers did, but they do need him to threaten opposing defenses with some kind of working passing game. Whether that’s using short passes and the screen game or hitting the occasional deep shot, that’s something for the coaching staff to figure out. There’s a reason Wallace has been able to stick around the league for ten years.
Green Bay will need their defense to step up because they are the unit Rodgers has so famously picked up over the years. They cannot afford for the secondary to play as bad as they have over the past couple of weeks.
Another break the Packers catch is that three of their next five opponents are at home and only one of those teams is over .500. If the Packers can win just two or three against the Eagles (home), Giants (road), Vikings (home), Lions (road) or Falcons (home), the season may not be lost.
As I mentioned above, the key to the 2013 season will be the Packers’ coaching staff adjusting to the biggest injury to occur this season. Injuries inevitably happen in the NFL and the best teams learn how to persevere through them.
Let’s see if the Packers are one of the best teams in the NFL.
Do you think I’m being overly-optimistic or do I have a point about the Packers chances on the 2013 season? Let me know by commenting below.
Nick Grays is a senior writer at the Sports Bank where he covers the Wisconsin Badgers and Green Bay Packers. He also enjoys sharing Fantasy Advice and pretends to be a Golf expert from time-to-time. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here or visit his blog Nick Knows Best. If social media is not your thing, shoot him an email at grays@uwalumni.com.
*Pictures obtained from latimes.com and northjersey.com