The Green Bay Packers are once again dealing with injuries that could hurt their offense moving forward. The team has struggled in recent games while seeming to put it all together against the Washington Redskins. However, that task will get harder in the upcoming matchup against the Arizona Cardinals as Davante Adams is expected to miss the game after suffering an injury in the Wild Card game.
According to Rob Demovsky of ESPN.com, Adams is expected to miss out of the NFC divisional playoff game after tests show the receiver suffered an MCL sprain in the win over the Washington Redskins. Originally, optimism was high that Adams would be fine for the upcoming game after it was reported he avoided a major knee injury like an ACL tear. However, the MCL sprain is severe and he will not be able to play.
That puts pressure on the Packers' offense that might not be able to handle it. Without Adams, Randall Cobb and James Jones will be critical along with Richard Rodgers at the tight end position. All three players stepped up against the Redskins and need to keep the momentum moving in the right direction as Aaron Rodgers has struggled to make something out of nothing all year. According to head coach Mike McCarthy, one of the reasons the offense looked better in the Wild Card game was because Rodgers got more active in coaching meetings so that everyone is on the same page.
"It's definitely helpful," McCarthy said, via ESPN.com. "But it's good. He's played a lot of football. He's got a great football mind and he asks good questions, and questions are important in those meetings because it can be dry. I mean he can dust off this and that, throw it in [and say] we've done this, we've done that. To me, that's the worst mistake coaches can make, when you just don't go through the process."
The receiving game will be important for the Packers, but the run game will be the x-factor. The Arizona Cardinals defense is stingy when it comes to giving up yards on the ground and Eddie Lacy and James Starks must find a way to get around that. The two running backs split carries against the Redskins and each found the endzone as a result. The improved run game was the reason the Packers beat Washington and it will likely be the reason Green Bay can beat Arizona. According to Rodgers, the win over Washington got the team's mojo back.
"It's huge for us, it really is," Rodgers said, via ESPN.com. "I talked a lot the last couple weeks about being able to turn it on, and a lot of you probably thought that was lip service, but we just needed a game like this to get our mojo back and get our confidence going. I said this week that it just takes one. It just takes one performance to get us going back in the right direction and believing that we can make a run."
