#593 Packers Unscripted: OTAs underway

talked about on a previous show. Um, Tuesday's workout at Clarke hinkle Field. Fortunately the weather cooperated and as expected, Aaron Rodgers not in attendance, Blake Bortles in attendance but not yet suited up. Matt Lafleur said, Um, the new free agent quarterback would be worked into the mix here soon enough. So that really made Tuesday's practice kind of

the Jordan's Love show. Um, he got all the all the reps with the ones when it came to seven on sevens and some less than full speed eleven on eleven stuff, and this is gonna be some important time. Regardless of what happens with Aaron Rodgers, this is important time for Jordan's Love. So Mike, I am going to venture to guess, and as always as I do with our show, correct me if I'm wrong, but I would

venture to guess. You saw you personally saw Jordan's Love throw more yesterday at the time in which we're taking this. You saw the most you've seen him throw on Tuesday than you did through training camp last year. The reason I say that is because Jordan's Love did not get many reps during the team periods in camp last year. The reps he did get we're during that young guy period, which is when you had to go back to set

up for the mantelfloor press conference. And I actually kind of stuck around because I had a little bit more leeway to watch those. But for people in media people, am I right in that? Do you think? Yeah? Probably? I mean, I I do recall, I do recall I got to see one of those extra the ten minute like young guy periods during training camp last year when

he was doing all the eleven on eleven stuff. But yeah, other than that, one day, um, certainly, Tuesday of this week was was the most I've seen Jordan's Love in action since he came to and You're not alone. There were a lot of media folks that would leave during those practices because they had to get back to set up for zoom calls. So what the point I'm trying to illustrate with all that is? Last year it was the Aaron Rodgers Show. Obviously in whatever two reps were

there would fall to Tim Boyle, Jordan's Love. Whatever is going on outside of sixty Lombardi Avenue right now, this is a golden opportunity for this young man to actually get some work, to be able to take everything he did last season, all the book work, every all that side of things, and then the off season training and really get it going in some real simulations. So seeing him work seven on sevens and some of these other drills.

Again it's non contact, it's not highly competitive, but being able to navigate and appreciate and and sort of operate this offense um that was really Jordan's Love's first opportunity to do so. And with the fact that Bordles wasn't practicing yet Kirk ben Kirk Kirk ben Kurt was the other quarterback. It was as you said that Jordan's love show. Yeah,

and I mentioned in uh in Insider in box. I mean, I'm not going to make any grand evaluations of Jordan's love, certainly when the players are not necessarily going full speed and all that. I know there's going to be a lot of attention on him and all that, I get it. But I was reminded in seeing him in Tuesday's practice that he showed last year, even in the limited work we saw him in training camp. He's got an NFL arm.

You can see the ball come out of his hand, with the velocity, with the with the purpose, with the speed. That's what you want to see from an NFL quarterback. And he's got that. He he has it. It's a matter, it's a matter of putting all the other stuff together.

And that's what these next several weeks are going to before to lead him into his second NFL training camp with all this spring work that he did not get as a rookie because there was no rookie mining camp, there were no O T A s, there was no full squad mandatory, meaning all that was gone last year. Training camp was his first, you know, real opportunity to put on a helmet and go out there and practice

as a Green Bay Packer. He's getting the spring work now that that's going to be really important for him heading into late summer and with the ramp up period. Last year, training camp was pretty much two and a half weeks when you really boil it down in terms of being able to prepare for that week one game and and start getting your mentality going from a summertime competition and training to legitimately preparing for an opponent. So that that was a big shift there too. That's when

it's not so much on Jordan's love. And you know, we haven't had a chance to talk the offensive coaches yet. I'll be really interesting to see what Luke Um you know, Getsy has to say, the Packers quarterbacks coach. He's the one that would often stay behind with him after practice and work with them, you know. Aaron Jones, as he was talking with the media, mentioned that him and aj Dillon would you know, they'd stick around on Saturdays and go through some stuff with them just to make sure

that he was ready, you know. And and I give Jordan a lot of credit to much like Tim Boyle did during his first two years in the league. When he was inactive or he wasn't playing, he would come out and he would go through the drills and the warm ups and the walkthrough before the team came out. Just go and do you know he corral a practice squad receiver and go and do you know those type

of things that get the throws in. Jordan's love followed that template, and you know you heard Aaron Rodgers even talk about it. I mean, this kid has come in and he's done everything right. He's a twenty two year old, He's a guy with a first round pedigree. There's still a lot of kinks to be worked out, but but

certainly he's capable. He belongs in and for a guy that it soaks in as much information is from what we've heard from his coaches and at Utah State, I think that this is gonna be really beneficial for him in the long run. Yeah. I want to get to a couple of other key thoughts with regard to the offense here. But first, serious x M NFL Radio delivers hard hitting analysis and up to the minute NFL news

that true football fanatics need. Seven three al right, West, Well, if we were to say there was a legitimate piece of news that came out of this first O T A practice. It would have to do with, Yeah, I mentioned in our Three Things I Couldn't resist. It's like, yeah, well you want something from this practice. A J. Dillon Stys did not get into smaller in the off season, So yeah, I had to throw that into our three

Themes video. But um no, the we're getting a sense of what the Packers, I don't know if you want to call it the plan or the preference. At this point, you know you can parse the words there. But the way they seem to be proceeding right now with the offensive line in David Bakti's absence and not knowing exactly

what bok Tis timeline is going to be. What we saw with the number one unit on Tuesday is at Elton Jenkins is lining up at left tackle, Billy Turner is over at right tackle, the rookie Josh Myers is with the first unit at center, and then you have Lucas Patrick and John Runyon Jr. As the first up at guards. And we'll see as things go through O T S and then obviously it will matter even more with how we see them line up at the start

of training camp. But this is kind of our first taste of of what it looks like the Packers want to do, which is to have Elton Jenkins fill that stead at left tackle until box tr can come back. And then also that Josh Meyers, the second round draft pick from Ohio State, is no, he's not going to be handed the center job, but he is going to be given every opportunity to win that job and to and to potentially start in Week one as a rookie for Green Bay. It kind of reminds you of Darnell

Savage a little bit. Right came in two years and that's a good point. He was back there with the secondary. He was in the starting safety spot. You go back historically into the Mike mccarthur era, and a lot of coaches did it this way. Eddie Lacy gets drafted, Eddie Lacey is still the fourth guy taking reps back in that training or that offseason program in two thousand Packers last year or two years ago. They knew Savage was

the guy, they put him there. I'm not saying Myers is the guy, but they actually do have options at center depending on what they wanted to do. Lucas Patrick has played a lot of center at this point, so the fact that Jenks could play center to you can play, you know, they can put him fret receiver if they needed him to. But my main takeaway from that is you want to talk about a guy getting reps and

being able to just get comfortable in a spot. That's what they did last year with John Runny, and that's the way they started to train guys. So I think it speaks volumes that that's the starting point for Josh Myers. As far as Elton Jenkins is concerned. Adam Stanovich might disagree with me on this, the scouts may say, the

coaches might say I'm wrong on this. I honestly think he could take every snap at left tackle during the off season program, during training camp, and I still think he can be a Pro Bowl left guard whenever they want him to go back to that spot. I think we've learned enough about this young man in terms of his muscle memory, his intelligence, and honest to God, just how talented this dude is that he can he can make that Mike last year that that should have been

a disaster when they lost Corey Linsley. They didn't have a handpicked successor at at center when he was out for those three games, Elton Jenkins made that look as easy as it could have been. I covered the Packers when they had Jeff Saturday there for thirteen weeks. It's not supposed to be that seamless for a guy to step in, and that's what happened, And I just I have a lot of respect for him in that In that regard, but as far as left tackle is concerned,

that's a different spot. You need to get your reps in there, and he's the most qualified of anybody that to take him if that's the direction you want to go. And as I'll keep saying, I was really, really really impressed with Billy Turner last year at right tackle. I know he's versatile, I know he can play a number of different spots, but boy, when he just was at

right tackle, I thought he was pretty dang good. So at the end of the day, I don't think there was any massive surprises with how the offensive line looked. But but certainly when you factor in all these multitude of reserves they have, Mike, there are still a lot

of options there depending on how this plays out this summer. Yeah, absolutely, we're going to We're going to see competition throughout the summer, and not just with regard to you know, is the rookie Josh Meyer is gonna win that starting center job. But you look at you look at the guard spots. I mean Royce Newman, the fourth round pick from Ole Miss might be getting a look at guard Cole van

Land and you know he could be playing guard or tackle. Um, I know, I'm forgetting some other guys who are Ben Braden's another guy who's going to be in that mix at guard too. So yesh Nidge Man, I mean you talk about Cole van Land and not to jump over you, but I said this Mike and inbox, and I'll reiterated on this show. We'll see what happens with Simon Stepanek coming back from coming back from the knee injury, take Hanson's back after finishing last year on practice squad injured.

So a lot of different things that can happen. And it's not a proven offensive line like they were so many times in the mid two thousand tents where you just knew who the starting five was or at least what most of those components are. Gonna be a lot more questions, But They have so many different ways that they can go, depending on, you know, how certain dominoes fall. Oh and by the way, at some point, you're getting

back a five time All proloft tackle. Yeah, absolutely, that's gonna be uh and and we will see, you know, we don't know exactly when we're going to get the update or if anything definitive is going to be said

on when David Baktari will be back. Um. Obviously the Packers want to get him back as soon as possible, but but they're they're going to plan obviously, they have to plan for for his absence at the start of the season, and if he does miraculously, I think it would be an incredible feat for him to make it back for the start of the regular season. Mattel Fleur

has said. Brian Gudukuins has said, they're not ruling it out, but you have to be prepared two start the season without We'll think about what happened, you know what, Brian Bulaga, you know, in the Packers, they had a plan. Blaga didn't participate in the off season program obvious sleep coming off an injury of that scale. He was out for all but one week of the training camp. He did end up coming back and playing in that preseason finale.

I think he took maybe two series a right time, took a handful of snaps there, but otherwise it was different players at right tack. I'm trying to remember if it was Jason Spriggs. It might have even been Kyle Murphy. I can't exactly remember, but they had the backup plan, the plan be ready. That's the same thing here. You know you're not going to have David Boxer during the offseason program. Okay, who can we give those reps too? That it could be beneficial for once you get into

the fall. Yeah, well, switching gears to the defensive side of the ball, and again, we're not going to be able to tell a whole lot during O T A S and I know everything now, honestly. Well, we'll see what happens in the preseason games in August in terms of what we see from new defensive coordinator Joe Barry's unit.

But we got a sense from the media zoom calls that we did after practice on Tuesday that there are a couple of things is going on here with regard to Joe Berry and having all of these position coaches who are back from the previous regime and now he's the he's the new guy at the head of the defense. It's kind of using from what we can understand, he's kind of using these assistant coaches both as evaluators in terms of, Okay, tell me what your guys that your positions,

tell me what they do best. You know, here, here's the scheme, this is the stuff I want to do, Like who are the guys that you know that can do this? And Joe berry Is, I'm sure has looked at film and has developed some of his own opinions, but he's going to rely on those views of the position coaches who have been around these guys for at least a year or two or in some cases longer. But then also we kind of got a sense from Kenny Clark that there's a little bit of translating going on.

Anytime you have a new system, a new playbook, there's different terminology, the language is different. And Kenny Clark was talking about how he's kind of using Jerry Montgomer, his position coach, to explain to him, Okay, when when we say this, like last year, that's what like here was

the word for it. You know, like there's this translation that the players are using their position coaches to help, you know, complete that circle, to make the transition to to the new scheme, and to learn the new language, so that by the time you get to the regular season, it's it's become ingrained and it gets to be second nature. It's an interesting dynamic, I think, because you don't often see a new defensive coordinator come in, but all of the position coaches on his staff are the same guys

you know who are here previously. That doesn't happen all the time, and I think it could be something that works out really well for Green Bay here. Yeah, honestly they might. It might be someone on precedented to have a defensive where other than a few quality control coaches, everybody's back u other than who the defensive coordinator is now,

certainly a lot played into those decisions. But I think what the ding thing is, and I structured this question of both Kenny and Adrian Amoss on Tuesday, is that you have you have a new system, you have a new philosophy, but you have the same coaches being able to relay that information, and also you have a bulk of the same defense that's still together, um and if nothing else, they've only added to it. Certainly, you know,

Raven Green moved on, he's in Tampa Bay. But otherwise it pretty much looks like the same personnel that they're gonna have to pull from, which was a young group to begin with. So you're looking for your you know, who's gonna be the next Gi or Alexander. You're looking for who could potentially be a guy that steps up and surprises you like Chris Barnes did last year. All of those cards are on the table for them right now.

But at this point in time, I think being able to understand what the vision is for Barry is going to be the best thing that's going to happen throughout this offseason program for this defense because it's a top tend defense. Now they were category categorically, that's where they fit less season. The question is now, can you go from being a really good defense that had moments of greatness to being dominant because there is a shift there. We saw it last year with Tampa Bay, We've seen

it in past years with the San Francisco's. Once if you can be a suffocating unit, that's when you dictate the terms of the game and how it's played. And I think there's a lot of confidence inside that locker room that they were close last year and they hope that this might be the thing that helps them reach that next level. Yeah. Absolutely, Well, the other new coordinator the Packers have obviously a special teams coordinator, Maury Straiton.

And I kind of got a kick out of watching, uh, the special teams period in Tuesday's practice, because you remember, I know you remember when Sean Slocum was here as special teams coordinator, and he he would wear a headset, you know, to be over the p A to sort of bark constructions in this and and in Shawn's defense, it started as something where he was having a little bit of laryngitis and so he couldn't yell on the practice field, so they gave him a headset so that

he could just talk at like a normal tone, but it would be projected throughout the whole practice field. Well, morey straightened and Tuesday's practice during the special teams period, he doesn't need a headset, he doesn't need a p A, he doesn't need a speaker. You could hear that guy. And everything we heard from Matt Lafleur, about the energy, about the voice, about the teacher that is in him. It was all on display during that whatever it was

roughly fift twenty minute Special Teams period. In Tuesday's practice, Morey Straiton is uh is taking charge and he's he's clearly trying to create a new sort of culture with regard to how these drills and practices go on Special teams on his watch, it was fun. I think that was my main take. It was a lot of fun. Even when the Special Teams period was over. Mo was having fun with some of the media members too, who

were trying to do like the establishing shot. You ever watch your your evening news for like he have the shot of the football with the player's feet in the background, and then they use that as their first shot. It's just all rudimentary type stuff. That's what they do. Moe comes up and he's like, hey, do you need to you know, kind of repositions the ball so you get like the NFL logo drunk and something really nice because

the media can't do that. It just he was having fun with it and you could hear the energy in his voice. And I'll be honest with you, this is not a dig on on Sean Meninger, Ron Zook or Seawan anybody. Um. And maybe it's only because I was paying more attention to special teams in this practice than maybe I've paid attention to in the past. But boy, there was there seemed those guys knew what they were doing out there. I mean that there was as much as it was more of a pace tempo walk through tempo.

The special teams. They made some changes the way they're structuring drills and how doughnuts are using things of that nature, and there didn't appear to be a big hold up there. And that's an impressive thing when you're dealing with fifty to sixty guys and those special teams units, a lot of whom are competing for roster spots are not back from last season. Uh that that caught eye a little bit.

And the thing, I'm excited to learn more about him and his philosophies and seeing, you know, you had a guy like a Mari Rodgers into the conversation. You get some exciting players that could potentially spark that unit. It's it's an open canvas right now. They're just trying to put their best foot forward. After what was a pretty

down season a year ago. And and I just I think that with an infectious energy like that, with what Drayton has, and especially in acknowledging some of those past coordinators who had success in Green Bay, I really do believe that that that could be something that helps that special Teams unit turn a corner. Here. Well, we will get another look at an O T A practice next week. We get to sort of see like one per week

here as we go along. Exciting and we'll yeah, we'll see what We'll see what next week brings and uh and perhaps another show to talk about our observations. But with that, we're going to call it a wrap on this edition of Packers Unscripted. Be sure to follow all of our coverage of the team through the rest of the offseason program. It's all there for you on Packers dot com. For Wes, I'm Mike. Thank you for tuning in, everybody. We'll see you next time. Yeah,