Acme Packing Company
The Packers rolled out a mild surprise on the offensive line Sunday, starting 2024 first round pick Jordan Morgan at right guard, a position he’s played sparingly this season.
Morgan made his NFL debut working at right guard, but we haven’t seen him much there this season. Through the first five games of the year, Morgan has played primarily left guard and right tackle, although he did play 15 snaps at right guard in Week 1. In the preseason, Morgan played left tackle and left guard exclusively. But there he was on Sunday, holding down the fort at right guard as the Packers carved out their best rushing game of the year.
But the what (that Morgan played right guard) is less interesting here than the why. Why make the switch now? Why right guard? Why move Sean Rhyan, who’s been doing a decent enough job, out of the starting lineup?
Matt LaFleur answered a few questions about Morgan’s sudden installment at right guard after Sunday’s game, but his answers require quite a bit of parsing. When asked broadly why Morgan got the nod this week, LaFleur alluded to the idea that a competition between Morgan and Rhyan might just be starting.
“It’s going to be a competitive situation from here on out, and that’s true with every position,” he said. “I know there’s some positions where you know who’s going to be the guy that’s playing but those guys have played a lot of ball, Sean Rhyan’s played a lot of football for us, and he’s been available each and every week. So, we have confidence in all of those guys to go out and get the job done.”
The back half of that quote is total word salad, but the initial reaction is interesting. If right guard is going to be a competitive situation, you can’t help but wonder exactly how competitive it’s going to be. We’ve seen in-season competitions of a sort before. Rasheed Walker and Yosh Nijman rotated at left tackle during the 2023 season before Walker ultimately emerged victorious. Sean Rhyan and Jon Runyan did the same at right guard later in 2023, and Rhyan and Morgan rotated at right guard early last season before a shoulder injury ended Morgan’s rookie year. Is that what’s going to happen here?
It’s certainly possible, and if it’s going to happen, right guard is really the only place where it makes sense at this point in the year. Aaron Banks, Elgton Jenkins, and Zach Tom aren’t going anywhere, and Rasheed Walker seems to have pretty definitively staked his claim at left tackle. If the Packers want to get their 2024 first round pick on the field, right guard is the only place it seems like there’s any chance of that happening right now.
So why now? As a follow up to his previous quote, LaFleur said it had something to do with the fact that so much of the offensive line was banged up this week.
“J-Mo has...
