GREEN BAY — If it felt like there was a lot of hullabaloo during the first week and a half of training camp about the Green Bay Packers being particularly physical in practice, that’s because there was.
New cornerback Nate Hobbs, after a warning from head coach Matt LaFleur following a few overly-aggressive hits in the helmet-and-shorts portion of camp, came in low and hit running back MarShawn Lloyd in the legs during the first in-pads practice. While there was some debate as to whether the hit caused the groin injury that has sidelined Lloyd ever since, it was still a violation of LaFleur’s “rules of engagement.”
A day later, left tackle Rasheed Walker was told by LaFleur to “take a lap” after getting into a scuffle with defensive end Kinglsey Enagbare. While it delivered a moment of team bonding when a group of offensive players ran with him during his punishment, it still crossed the line.
Those incidents got a lot of attention, and while LaFleur admonished his players to make sure they were tiptoeing the line between being physical and looking out for one another, the powers that be weren’t especially upset about players’ actions.
And general manager Brian Gutekunst was … well, if not happy about it, unapologetic.
“Obviously, you’re trying to balance a lot of things as you’re going through camp,” Gutekunst explained last week. “We’re trying to become a certain kind of football team that can win and win deep into the playoffs. There’s a certain kind of physicality you have to have.
“And Nate Hobbs brings all that. That’s why we brought him here. It’s very important that all our guys have that kind of edge to them.
“We want them all to be good teammates and keep each other healthy, but the same time, I’d rather be pulling the reins and making sure we got enough guys in that room that have that kind of edge.”
Asked if he felt his previous teams had been insufficiently physical, Gutekunst replied, “Quite frankly, the last couple years I’ve felt really good about our physicality and our toughness and our ability to play that kind of game. But I think there probably were times in the past where I was kind of thinking [that] we maybe needed to be more of a physical of a football team. But not over the last couple years.”
While Gutekunst downplayed any role the team’s first-round playoff exit against the eventual Super Bowl LIX-champion Philadelphia Eagles, it’s hard to deny that the Packers were outphysicaled — if that’s even a word — by the Eagles in both their matchups and by the NFC North-champion Detroit Lions in their two losses to their division rivals.
“Anytime you get to those playoffs, you get to that position, however you are, where you’re at is going to get exposed,” said offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich, whose offensive line was manhandled by the Eagles’ front four after Pro Bowl left guard Elgton Jenkins left the game after sustaining a stinger on the Packers’ fourth offensive snap.
“That’s one thing we talked about, and one thing we’re going to focus on is making sure we’re the most physical football team on the field when we go out there and play. That’s going to be a big thing for us.”
It’s certainly been a big emphasis through nine practices, and LaFleur said Tuesday and Wednesday’s practices this week leading into Saturday’s preseason opener against the New York Jets would be more of the same, saying they’d be “two pretty heavy practices” before a lighter workload on Thursday.
“I don’t want to talk out of both sides of my mouth — because I want these guys playing with an edge,” LaFleur said. “But you want the edge between the whistles, and then all the extracurricular stuff, you can save that for another time. I don’t have any time for it. We don’t have any time for it.”
That said, Hobbs admitted it’s hard for him to turn that instinct off, since it’s been inside him since he was a kid.
“We play a tough game. You can go back to all my highlights, even high school. My senior year of high school, when you saw me tackling … I was trying to stick people.
“I remember I was in seventh grade and I was super small, and I was throwing my body around. And people were like, ‘If he gets some weight and height, he’s going to be a problem.’ And that’s what happened. That’s how I play. I put my heart out there.”
Special-teams coordinator and assistant head coach Rich Bisaccia, who spent 12 games as the Las Vegas Raiders’ interim head coach during Hobbs’ rookie season, said LaFleur set the tone for being more physical during offseason film study from last year.
He, Bisaccia and the rest of the coaches re-watched every game of last season following the loss to the Eagles, and the opinion was unanimous: The team needed to be more physical.
“We [went] through, ‘What are our plusses?’ ‘What are our minuses?’ And, ‘How we can improve?” Bisaccia said of those meetings. “And what Coach has done, what he’s instituted, is how we’re going to practice and the physicality in which we’re going to practice.
“Now, we’re going to do that within the realm of the rules and in the realm of taking care of each other. But we are in training camp, so I think we would rather have to pull back [rather] than have to push.”
And with the Sept. 7 regular-season opener against the Lions at Lambeau Field only 33 days away, the players have gotten the message — and have seen the difference so far.
“The physicality, I mean, you love that,” said quarterback Jordan Love, who — to be fair — wears a red non-contact jersey and is not to be touched in practice. “You love guys coming out here, wanting to compete, a defense that’s physical. That’s the stuff that wins you championships. So you love the mindset from the guys.
“I think those are the things that are going to really make us better and give us that edge this season going against other teams to have that mindset of, ‘We’re not going to let anybody come in here and do what they want with us.’ We’ve got to have that mindset where we’re going to be the tone-setters and it starts with the defense for sure.”
Added safety Xavier McKinney: “We are trying to, as a defense, just elevate everything at every level, whether that’s turnovers, whether that’s physicality, everything. It’s definitely been showing in practice. We’ve been a lot more physical in these practices that we’ve had, and when the games come, hopefully those things can come alive at game time.”
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