Without Stokes, Alexander, Who Will Stop Jefferson, Addison?

GREEN BAY Wis. – Eric Stokes’ third in year in the NFL has gone from bad worse, at the worst possible time, for the Green Bay Packers.

Stokes on Saturday was ruled out of Sunday’s game at the Minnesota Vikings due to a hamstring injury. Stokes, who had missed seven games earlier this season with a hamstring injury, wasn’t even on this week’s injury report.

Stokes started the last two games and almost certainly would have started against Vikings stars Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison in a must-win game on Sunday night.

Without him, the Packers are perilously thin at cornerback. Carrington Valentine, a rookie who has started 10 games this season, and veteran Corey Ballentine, who started five games this season after not playing a single snap on defense in two years, will start at corner, with Keisean Nixon manning his usual spot in the slot.

Jefferson has demolished much more accomplished cornerbacks in his career than Valentine and Ballentine, and Addison caught seven passes for 82 yards and a touchdown against a Packers defense with Alexander on the field on Oct. 29.

However, Ballentine and Valentine were the starting corners for the three-game sweep of Justin Herbert and the Chargers, Jared Goff and the Lions and Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.

The only players on the bench are David Long and Robert Rochell, a couple midseason additions; Rochell is questionable for the game with a neck injury.

Zyon Gilbert is on the practice squad.

“We got dogs in the room,” Stokes said this week. “That's what I keep saying. We got CV, we got me, we got Key, we got other guys that have been playing before. I wasn't here. I wasn't playing for the past 13 months, whatever. So, we got dogs that have been here, been in the moment. It's just they trying to step up.”

Stokes struggled through his first two starts, which isn’t a surprise considering he missed all of training camp and the preseason coming back from last year’s season-ending foot injury. In fact, his first snaps on defense since the injury sustained at Detroit on Nov. 6, 2022, came during his starts the last two weeks.

So, to expect Stokes to rekindle his rookie-year success, when he allowed a completion rate of less than 50 percent, was unrealistic while matching up on receivers who had been in their midseason groove for weeks.

According to Pro Football Focus, he allowed three touchdown catches in this two games; no other Packers corner had allowed more than two.

“I don’t want it to be an excuse at all, but I’m a firm believer in progression,” defensive coordinator Joe Barry said. “You have a nine-week offseason to kind of get your body back into it. Then you have a three- or four-week training camp to get your body into it. You have preseason games. You practice against other teams to get your body hardened and calloused to play this game.

“Eric Stokes didn’t play football for 13 months and he’s just played the last two weeks. It’s so great to have him back out there, just his energy and what he brings to us, but there are some, he’s working through some things right now because he’s missed a lot of time.”

And now, he’s going to miss even more time – perhaps all the way to the start of OTAs on May.