GREEN BAY — For a team coming off its bye week, the Green Bay Packers sure had an astonishing number of players on their injury report on Wednesday.

A whopping 14 players were included on the list, and while the good news was that only two players were unable to practice at all, it was still an awfully big number.

The two players who did not practice were starting defensive tackle Devonte Wyatt (knee) and backup offensive tackle Anthony Belton (ankle).

On the plus side, starting right tackle Zach Tom (oblique) and left guard Aaron Banks (groin) were able to take part on a limited basis in Wednesday’s in-pads practice, although neither could say for certain that they will be good to go for Sunday’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals at Lambeau Field.

“It’s been frustrating personally, but I’ve just been trying to bring the right attitude and help the guys who are in when I’m not,” said Banks, who has missed two games and was unable to finish the two games he did start this season. “But I want to play, I want to be out there.”

Tom did not speak with reporters after practice but said on Monday that he was hoping to test his oblique by blocking some of his best pass-rushing teammates after having to depart the Cleveland game after playing just one snap when the pain of blocking Browns edge rusher Myles Garrett on the first offensive play was debilitating.

“He’s doing well right now, and we’ll see where he goes,” Packers head coach Matt LaFleur said. “[Being] in pads today, I think that’ll be a good test to see exactly where we’re at.”

There were a few noticeable and slightly surprising names on the injury report, too: Quarterback Jordan Love, who has played every offensive snap this season despite his training-camp left thumb injury, also has an ankle injury — but he was still a full participant.

Kicker Brandon McManus, meanwhile, was on the injury report with a quadriceps injury in his right (kicking) leg, perhaps the result of having to make a pair of tackles in the team’s 40-40 tie with the Dallas Cowboys on Sept. 28.

Another go with Joe? | While LaFleur and the Packers players were more than a little surprised that they’d be seeing quarterback Joe Flacco again as the Bengals starting quarterback, just three weeks after facing him as the Cleveland Browns starting quarterback, the novelty of the situation quickly gave way to a business-as-usual approach.

LaFleur, for one, downplayed any impact that facing the same quarterback for a second time in a month but with a totally different team and skill position players around him.

“It’ll be interesting,” LaFleur said. “Joe Flacco’s been playing this game for a really long time, and he’s been in a lot of different systems, so I would bet that he would have no problems picking it up, even in a short period of time.

“I think the hardest thing for them is going to be just the nuances, with your cadence, your snap count, with the rapport you have with the other players. Now, he’s pretty fortunate. He’s got some good guys to certainly throw to.”

That Flacco does, with top-flight wide receivers Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins in his arsenal. Which is why Packers safety Xavier McKinney was looking at the situation not as how having faced Flacco once already might help the Packers defense, but how facing the Packers defense might help Flacco with his new weapons at his disposal.

“I was kind of thinking the other way around — what he saw from us when he was with the Browns, what he’s already seen us do, ways he might try to come into this game having different players and a different scheme, already having seen what we’ve done this year,” McKinney said. “I’m just trying to see if there’s going to be different ways where we can mix it up and show different things and play different things. So I’m going to take a look at that.”

​COPYRIGHT 2025 BY CHANNEL 3000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.