I can’t talk about the Packers’ offensive line renovations without using hyperbolic language.
You generally want to avoid descriptors like “desperate” and “panicked” and “last-ditch attempt to save their season and their jobs,” when trying to write anything resembling sober, reasoned analysis of a team. For one thing, it’s rarely that serious. For another, it paints you as the kind of person who can’t be trusted to react appropriately to things.
But seriously, how else would you describe what the Packers
have done over the past few days? After a truly apocalyptic start to the year, the Packers have signed three different replacement offensive linemen, raiding the Cowboys’ practice squad for Laken Tomlinson and picking up Mekhi Becton and Kevin Zeitler off the street.
That’s a flurry of activity virtually unprecedented in the corners of Packers history I’m aware of. I’ve been writing about this team in some format for about 20 years now and was a fan for long before that, and I can’t recall any kind of in-season renovation at a position group like we’re seeing now.
The Packers have added notable in-season free agents before, but it’s usually one at a time. They’ve tried late-career mercenary signings with guys like Snacks Harrison and Whitney Mercilus. They added Cedric Benson just before the start of the 2012 season to fix a moribund running back room. The most famous example of all is probably Andre Rison, claimed off of waivers late in the 1996 season.
But those are all one-off moves. This is entirely different.
Tomlinson, Becton, and Zeitler could all start for the Packers. Two of the three, in some combination, will probably be starting sooner than later. Given how the injury bug has infected the Packers’ offensive line, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see all of them in the starting lineup at some point.
That’s not normal! You don’t just sign three new starting offensive linemen during the season! It’d be noteworthy enough to be remarkable had they done it in the offseason, but we’re sitting here in late September discussing three new linemen joining the team. That’s bananas!
We can only speculate as to what caused the sudden flurry of activity. The need for help was obvious to anyone with eyes, but neither Brian Gutekunst or Matt LaFleur seemed overly inclined to do anything about it for the first three weeks. We watched Donovan Jennings get shoved up and down the field for most of two weeks before Lafleur even tried Jager Burton at left guard, for goodness sake, and prior to the spending spree of the last few days, Brian Gutekunst’s big move was signing Cordell Volson to the practice squad.
Did Ed Policy throw a fit? Did he give the recently extended pair of Gutekunst and LaFleur a “fix it or you’re fired” ultimatum? It’s hard not to conclude something happened behind closed doors, because we’ve all lived through a very un-Packers-like few days since they farted out an embarrassing home loss to the Falcons on Thursday Night Football.
Whether or not these moves end up helping is anybody’s guess, but we’re certainly going to find out. But whether it works or not, the Packers are making unprecedented moves. Who knows what caused it, but we can’t avoid the words that accurately describe what it is. It’s desperate, it’s more than a little panicky, and it could still all be for naught.
