Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley has a wide range of tools at his disposal that he can use to generate pressure on opposing quarterbacks. One way he can generate pressure is through the use of a concept called “hot quarters coverage.” It’s seldom used, and according to Sports Info Solutions, it has only been a tagged play call four times over one and a half seasons.

Nonetheless, it is a unique and interesting way to generate pressure because of how it forces offenses to add an extra layer of communication to their process before the snap. The goal...

The Green Bay Packers announced on Saturday that they have promoted two practice squad players to the team’s gameday roster against the Minnesota Vikings. These players are running back Pierre Strong Jr. and linebacker Jamon Johnson. This does not mean that these players will be active against Minnesota, but that they are among the eligible players who can make up Green Bay’s 48-man gameday roster tomorrow.

Both of these moves correlate to some concerning injuries for the Packers’ starters. First, Strong would need to be active against the Vikings if and only if starting running back Josh Jacobs isn’t active....

Jayden Reed is back! Well, sort of. On Friday, the Packers opened Reed’s 21 day practice window, designating the third year receiver to return from IR. While Reed has not practiced since week 2 after foot and collarbone surgeries, the juice he brings after the catch could be a massive boon to a Packers offense searching for YAC help since Tucker Kraft’s injury.

According to offensive coordinator Jason Vrable on Thursday, he believes Reed is “ready to roll” once he’s cleared. Reed unsurprisingly concurs, expressing enthusiasm for getting back on the field while speaking with reporters on Friday. And as...

Thank you to Christopher Gates of our sister site the Daily Norseman, which covers the Minnesota Vikings, for stopping by and answering a few questions about his team as they get ready to play the Green Bay Packers on Sunday. If you want to find the pairing piece to this article, where Gates asks me questions about the game, you can find it HERE.

We gotta talk about J.J. McCarthy. What is the temperature like in Minnesota right now?

The answer to the McCarthy question depends almost entirely on who you talk to. There are people in the camp...

On Sunday in week 11 against the Giants, safety Evan Williams caught the game-ending interception to send the Packers to 6-3-1. It was a welcome relief after a game spent dropping what felt like a half dozen interceptions in their hands (it was only four by my count).

The game is funny that way. Less than a week after their week 10 game where the Packers defense looked like a championship level defense against the Eagles, they looked less like one in an extremely tight game versus the Giants.

After the game, Williams detailed a little bit of what he...

The Packers’ oldest rivals may be the Bears, but their most heated rivalry, at least in the 21st century, has to be with the Minnesota Vikings. That’s probably because of the simple fact that the Vikings have been much better over the last 20 to 30 years than the Bears, which leads to a lot of high stakes matchups.

You can see evidence of those stakes in how many of the Packers’ best performances against the Vikings are relatively recent. There’s plenty of old gold here, too, but as we look at the brightest moments by Packers players, take note...

Saturday is going to have a sleepy slate of games before things really ramp up in rivalry week, where we’ll get #4 Georgia @ #16 Georgia Tech and #3 Texas A&M @ #17 Texas on Black Friday and #1 Ohio State @ #18 Michigan and #14 Vanderbilt @ #20 Tennessee on Saturday. This week, though, we will only get two top-25 matchups on the entire slate, in part because the SEC has (mostly) scheduled cupcakes leading up to their rivalry games.

Let’s break down these top-25 matchups and the top NFL prospects in these games, [according to the consensus draft...

The Green Bay Packers dropped their final injury report of the week on Friday, which included that receiver Jayden Reed (shoulder/foot) was a limited participant in practice after having his 21-day practice window open up today. Reed is officially listed as out for Sunday’s game against the Minnesota Vikings, but he at least got this extra practice in before the short week of preparation against the Detroit Lions.

Packers Players Ruled Out vs. Vikings

• WR Jayden Reed (shoulder/foot)
• CB Nate Hobbs (knee)

Beyond Reed, the only other player who was ruled out on Friday was Packers cornerback...

Every year for about five years I’ve been predicting a decline for Minnesota Vikings safety Harrison Smith, because, well, most 31-year-old safeties decline pretty quickly. However, Harrison Smith is not most safeties, and to his immense credit, he has bucked the odds year after year after year.

In retrospect, this was actually a dumb thing to project because Smith is in my opinion a Hall-of-Fame caliber player, and those guys tend to age gracefully. The Packers didn’t even acquire Charles Woodson until his age 30 season, and he had many great years thereafter. Smith is not Woodson’s caliber (almost no...

The Green Bay Packers are poised to get some reinforcements for their banged-up wide receiver room. Currently, the team has six wideouts on the 53-man roster, and five of those were listed as limited in Thursday’s practice ahead of the team’s Week 12 matchup with the Minnesota Vikings. The only receiver practicing in full was Malik Heath, one of the last men on the depth chart at the position, and even Bo Melton — who is formally listed as a cornerback — was limited as well.

When Friday arrived, however, the Packers got a welcome face back at practice. Jayden...

One thing I like about the Green Bay Packer front office is that I know they have a big database of players and college prospects somewhere inside 1265 Lombardi Avenue, and that it is at least somewhat knowable if you know what to look for. For instance, last year I wrote a piece about how almost every Packer cornerback shares a RAS comp with Marshon Lattimore.

Kent Lee Platte’s Relative Athletic Score (RAS) database is very much the type of database I described above. It catalogues almost every prospect who joins the NFL based on their Combine and Pro Day...

If the Green Bay Packers want to win on Sunday, then they need to make sure Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy continues to look like one of the worst quarterbacks in football.

That’s not hyperbole or even an unfair shot at a divisional rival’s QB. When on the field, McCarthy has been one of the worst quarterbacks in football, and the Packers can’t afford to let second-year QB get any kind of momentum, either in the short and long term.

Through five games, McCarthy is completing just 52.9 percent of his passes, averaging 6.0 yards per attempt with six touchdowns...