Acme Packing Company
As someone who has hand-charted the Green Bay Packers’ rotations on offense and defense this year, I want to go position-by-position through the Packers’ roster, detail how the depth chart stands (at least as of Week 18) and try to tell the story of the team that will be facing off against the Chicago Bears on Saturday night. I’m going to try to stack this depth chart as true as I can, but there are times when the true answer is that two (or more) players really share a role. We’ll get into that and all the nitty-gritty, including how injuries have impacted the depth chart, in this piece.
Obviously, Jordan Love is going to be the starting quarterback when healthy. Despite going down with a concussion the last time the Packers and Bears faced off, Love passed concussion protocol last week and served as Clayton Tune’s backup in the team’s less-than-competitive game against the Minnesota Vikings.
If Malik Willis (shoulder/hamstring), who was inactive against the Vikings, is healthy, don’t be surprised if Tune is released this week to make up some room on the Packers’ roster. Remember, Green Bay ended up making 23 total roster moves last week, so there’s been a lot of change to the team recently.
On the flip side, general manager Brian Gutekunst, who typically doesn’t keep three quarterbacks on the 53-man roster (the big exception was when the team was redshirting Jordan Love and didn’t allow him even to be the team’s backup in his rookie season), has said in the past that he might keep three in the playoffs, where the league’s third-quarterback rule becomes more impactful.
On paper, teams can only go into games with 48 active players (from their 53-man roster and two possible practice squad call-ups per week). The third quarterback rule, though, states that if the team has two active quarterbacks on the 48-man gameday roster, and both of them get hurt, then a healthy-scratched third quarterback (if he’s on the 53-man roster or one of the two practice squad quarterbacks) would be eligible to enter the game, if and only if the team accepts that the previous two quarterbacks will no longer be able to return to action.
In short, the third quarterback rule is a way for teams to steal an extra gameday player in a disaster scenario.
Josh Jacobs has been dealing with a knee contusion ever since he had an unpleasant meeting with MetLife Stadium’s turf on November 18th. Last week, the Packers made Jacobs one of their four healthy scratches for the game in their meaningless matchup against the Vikings, when Green Bay actively tried to put the lowest players on their depth chart on the field for as many snaps as they could physically handle.
Jacobs will be the bell-cow running...
