GREEN BAY — The fact that Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur called kicker Brandon McManus’ right quadriceps injury a “major concern” on Thursday came as a surprise to at least one person inside 1265 Lombardi Avenue. 

Brandon McManus.

“He didn’t speak to me about that,” McManus said after practice. “He has his own thesaurus/encyclopedia to describe injuries.”

Although LaFleur, who in fairness was speaking before practice, said the Packers “will have a plan ready to go” if McManus isn’t able to kick in Sunday’s matchup between the Packers (2-1-1) and Cincinnati Bengals (2-3) at Lambeau Field, McManus doesn’t think such a backup plan will be necessary.

“I feel a lot better today. I do,” he said. “I plan on playing, yes.”

McManus said he felt the injury during Wednesday’s practice, having worked on kickoffs earlier in the practice before feeling a “tug” in his quadriceps while warming up for field-goal attempts.

“I gave it a couple minutes, tried again and I just shut it down for the day,” McManus said. “I didn’t want to make it worse.

He had essentially the same situation crop up in December 2022, when he was kicking for the Denver Broncos. He suffered a right quadriceps injury on the Wednesday before the team’s Week 13 game at Baltimore, but he simply didn’t kick the rest of the week and then went out and made 52-, 41- and 50-yard field goals in a 10-9 loss to the Ravens.

In fact, despite the quadriceps issue, McManus even attempted a 63-yarder that would have won that game on the final play, but it came up short.

“I just pretty much took the week off and then played on Sunday,” McManus said.

Nevertheless, the Packers are set to bring in a pair of free-agent kickers on Friday for tryouts in case McManus has a setback or can’t go against the Bengals: Greg Joseph, who was in camp with the Packers in 2024, when he competed with Anders Carlson before the team decided to keep neither one of them; and Lucas Havrisik, who kicked for the Los Angeles Rams in 2023 but hasn’t kicked in a regular-season game since.

The Packers do have a kicker on their practice squad, International Player Pathway program kicker Mark McNamee, but McNamee is a project and special-teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia politely described him as “a work in progress” on Thursday afternoon.

If the Packers don’t sign Joseph, Havrisik or another free-agent kicker before Sunday and McManus ends up kicking but aggravates the injury and cannot continue, punter Daniel Whelan would take over.

Of course, Whelan is the holder for McManus, so the Packers would need a fill-in holder. Bisaccia said the Packers have several backup holding options but wouldn’t divulge who they are; tight end Ben Sims confirmed that he has worked as both an emergency long-snapper and holder in practices.

“That’s the emergency situation,” Bisaccia said. “But they call it ‘emergency’ for a reason.”

Whelan has also could handle kickoff duties against the Bengals to reduce McManus’ workload during the game.

“I think we’re going to lean on [McManus],” Bisaccia replied when asked how the Packers will move forward. “He’s been through this before. We’ll kind of see how he feels, as to what he’s going to do in [Friday’s] practice, whether he gets some kicks in or not, and just kind of lean on how he feels, how the rehab part goes through the next few days.

“So we’ll lean in that direction until something changes.”

For his part, McManus doesn’t believe anything will change, although he had not decided as of Thursday afternoon whether he would try to kick or not during Friday’s practice.

“Last time when I [injured] it, I didn’t kick on Friday. Typically here I kick Wednesdays and Fridays,” McManus said. “Today, I was out there doing the individual drills, running around on it and just doing some air swings — but didn’t actually kick a ball.

“It doesn’t hurt when I’m walking around, running around. It was hurting when I kicked. I’m not going to test that right now to see, just because I don’t need to re-aggravate it. [But] like I said, I plan on playing.”

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