After a promising start in Chicago and a thrilling comeback victory against the New Orleans Saints, the 2023 season has quickly turned into a nightmare for the Green Bay Packers. The Packers can overcome their 2-4 record, but after dropping back-to-back games in Vegas and Denver, it has become extremely difficult to find winnable games on the remaining schedule. If those teams are too much to handle, there isn’t really anywhere else to turn. That’s a new feeling for a team and a fanbase that has grown accustomed to perennial contention.
With the way Brian Gutekunst structured the offense, he and a section of the fanbase had to know what was coming. But whether or not they knew the extent is a whole other conversation. Still, there is plenty of blame to go around. Jordan Love deserves some of it, as does Matt LaFleur. And, of course, the injury bug. It’s a huge part of the game, and it affects every single team on an annual basis. However, the Packers have consistently seemed to deal with more injuries, more impactful injuries, and more unexpectedly long recovery times than the rest of the league.
Eric Stokes‘ return is a storyline that got lost amid a loss to a brutally subpar Denver Broncos team. The 2021 first-round pick took the field for the first time since suffering a gnarly lower leg injury in the middle of last season. After putting up a solid rookie campaign, there were high hopes that Stokes and his blazing speed could become the other half of an elite cornerback duo, with Jaire Alexander on the other side. An injury like the one Stokes suffered should’ve had him back by the start of the season. However, complications and a hamstring setback (both highly familiar phenomena in Green Bay) held him back.
But Stokes’ four snaps did not come at cornerback, or even safety for that matter. He played gunner on the punt team. We don’t know if that was LaFleur and Rich Bissacia’s way of providing him a stepping stone on his way back to the secondary, but just sprinting proved to be too much. The Packers placed him back on IR on Wednesday with a hamstring aggravation. LaFleur said he expects Stokes to return this season, but it’s hard to draw any real conclusions or find much optimism from that.
Unfortunately, Stokes’ injury is not Green Bay’s first time dealing with a lingering injury. The biggest example is David Bakhtiari, who tore his ACL in 2020 and has struggled for years to return to play. The Packers ruled him out for the rest of 2023 because of the same injury he suffered three years ago. I would imagine that the range of outcomes with regard to his future ranges from a return to form to retirement.
Aaron Jones and Christian Watson are yet more examples. They each suffered hamstring injuries early in the year and for weeks have not met expectations for standard recovery times. Hamstrings, and soft tissue injuries in general, are notorious for lingering and players re-aggravating them. However, the frequency with which we have seen in Green Bay feels like an outlier. Additionally, stars De’Vondre Campbell, Elgton Jenkins, and Alexander have had multi-week absences and continue to battle their respective ailments. Luke Musgrave, Devonte Wyatt, and Josh Myers are new to the injury report following Sunday’s contest.
Green Bay’s injury reports would be heinous even in the later third of the season. But not only have the Packers only played six games, they had a bye in Week 5. It feels like the Packers lose some of their biggest talent to injury on an annual basis. This season has reached a whole new level of exasperation when you consider how many players have soared past their initial timetables for return.
I’m not offering a direct opinion on the medical staff or rehab processes in the organization, just an observation of what we can see. For what it’s worth, Dr. Jesse Morse of The Fantasy Doctors characterized Green Bay’s staff as “very conservative.” Morse has a successful track record predicting the fantasy impact of injuries based on practice reports, coach-speak, and game tape. The context behind his Packers comment was the decision to continue holding out and limiting Jones.
As unfortunate as a lot of the injuries have been, they aren’t the reason that the Packers won’t be making the playoffs this year. They’re a young team, and they’re clearly in need of time to make more mistakes and room for experience and growth than they’ve been afforded thus far. It’s still hard to say if Jordan Love is capable of becoming The Guy, and the conversation is just now starting about how patient the organization will be if he continues this level of play. I would suspect that, the closer they inch towards that top of the 2024 draft, fans and analysts will start asking more pointed questions.
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