Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Packer Plus
Packers handle Rams, earn well-deserved bye
Green Bay — The Green Bay Packers probably weren’t thrilled about having the bye in Week 13 when the NFL schedule came out last spring.
But now that it’s finally here, they have to be happy with how things have turned out. Their 36-28 win Sunday came over the Los Angeles Rams team that by the weekend was a 11⁄2- to 2point favorite to beat them, presumably because of how banged up the Packers are. So they hit their bye having just beaten one of their rivals for high seeding in the playoffs, tied with Tampa Bay (8-3) in the loss column for second place in the NFC standings and with the prospects of getting some key players back after the bye for the stretch run of the season.
At 9-3, the Packers are a half-game ahead of the Bucs for second place in the NFC despite ranking among teams that have lost the most key players to long-term injuries. Because of their earlier win over the Arizona Cardinals (9-2), the Packers hold the tiebreaker over the team ahead of them, so this win keeps them very much in the thick of the race for home-field advantage in the playoffs.
“This was an important one,” Aaron Rodgers said after the game.
The Packers are looking at decent odds that at least one and maybe all three from among David Bakhtiari (knee), Jaire Alexander (shoulder) and Za’Darius Smith (back) will return sometime in December or early January after missing most or all of the season. That’s a potentially big talent infusion at premium positions for when the money is on the line, assuming any and all can get into good form in a relatively short time.
Also, Aaron Rodgers will get a 11⁄2 weeks to get treatment and rest the broken toe that has plagued him since his return from the COVID-19 list two weeks ago. Only two weeks? Seems more like a month. Things change quickly in this league.
Rodgers has worked off the rust from his 10-day quarantine and lack of practice since returning to rest his pinky toe. In their last 15 possessions going back to the last time the had the ball in the first half against Minnesota, the Packers have put up six touchdowns and three field goals on offense. They had 399 yards in total offense against the Rams’ defense while playing without their two best linemen – Elgton Jenkins, who won’t be back this season,
and Bakhtiari – against a defense that came in No. 7 in the league in yards allowed.
Rodgers said he’s going to have a medical scan on his toe to determine if he needs surgery that, if necessary, isn’t expected to keep him out of a game. But he sounded like a guy who thinks surgery is unlikely because his toe felt better than last week, when he needed to go into halftime early to get another pain-killing injection. He’ll
have through the middle of next week to rest his toe and possibly return to practice after hardly practicing at all the last two weeks.
“I’ll get treatment every single day,” Rodgers said of what his bye week looks like.
He along with everyone else on the Packers’ football side should benefit from the break. They’ve earned it, though when they come back in a week things start getting really serious.