JS--""CAUGHT SHORT HANDED""

[Bretsky]

Notes: Caught short-handed
Jennings, Morency might not be ready
By BOB McGINN
bmcginn@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Sept. 7, 2007
Green Bay - Two of the Green Bay Packers' projected starters on offense, wide receiver Greg Jennings and running back Vernand Morency, sat out practice Friday and their chances of playing Sunday against Philadelphia don't look good.

Jennings walked with a limp Friday morning after suffering a hamstring injury Thursday in practice. Rookie James Jones would replace Jennings and Ruvell Martin would move up to No. 3. Jones said the coaches were confident he could play split end as well as flanker.

"Greg feels good about Sunday but we'll work him again tomorrow," coach Mike McCarthy said. "It's just something that twinged on him yesterday. We're just being smart with him today.

Donald Driver, who was in a boot 10 days ago with a foot sprain, looks full-go, according to McCarthy.

Morency, who missed all of training camp with a knee injury, practiced on a limited basis Wednesday and Thursday before being withheld Friday. Rookie Brandon Jackson will start, rookie DeShawn Wynn appears set to play on third downs and newcomer Ryan Grant, who returned Friday after pulling a hamstring Monday, looks like the No. 3.

"I'm hopeful this is the last week, or the last two weeks, of what (Morency) is going through," McCarthy said. "He's just got to get over this last hurdle."

Both Jennings and Morency are listed as questionable.

Jackson, who suffered a concussion Aug. 26, is feeling fine and seemed confident of being able to carry 20 to 25 times, if necessary.
"Maybe we'll find out," McCarthy said. "He's definitely young enough and strong enough. . . . to go 20 to 25."

Injury list: Defensive end Aaron Kampman was listed as probable after suffering what McCarthy described as "a twinge in his side" Thursday. He was limited Friday.

Tackle Tony Moll (neck) and safety Aaron Rouse (hamstring) won't play.

Moll hasn't practiced since mid-August because of recurring stingers affecting his neck and arms. He has hit sleds and bags this week.

"Pat thinks that if you give it time to settle down that this is not going to reoccur," McCarthy said, referring to team doctor Patrick McKenzie. "I'm more worried about him being in football shape than coming back off the injury. We're going to wait until it completely goes (away)."
The five players listed by the Eagles as probable all practiced Friday.

No uniform: Defensive tackle Justin Harrell, the team's first-round draft choice, isn't expected to be part of the 45-man roster against the Eagles.

"There's a good chance he's going to be down," McCarthy said. "I know how it is for a No. 1 but this is a different situation. I'd be very comfortable if he played Sunday. It's not that. It's just what's in front of him. Those guys are playing well."

Johnny Jolly looks like the starter alongside Ryan Pickett in the base defense. On passing downs, Corey Williams figures to join Cullen Jenkins at tackle.

Colin Cole also is in the tackle rotation, and rookie Daniel Muir might be active ahead of Harrell if McCarthy goes with a ninth defensive lineman.

Costly deal: General manager Ted Thompson maintained that the New York Giants weren't going to cut Grant but a Giants source said the team was going to release him.

A source with one of the two teams said the Packers traded a sixth-round draft choice for Grant last week.

"That's not the information we got," Thompson replied when asked if he had heard the Giants would have cut Grant. "But you never know. He was on all their special teams and looked very much like a guy they were going to have on their team.

"We did what we had to do to get the young man. We liked what we saw on tape."

Grant, 6 feet 1 inch and 224 pounds, said he was told by the Giants that they were going to keep five backs, including him.

"They kind of gave me the heads-up I was going to make the team," he said.

A personnel director for an NFC team said Grant had an impressive summer.
"I was shocked they got the sixth for him," the scout said. "But if you base it just off preseason, which you hate to do, he was worth it. In college, he was just kind of a guy. But I'm telling you, he was impressive in preseason. He could be something, he really could."

New fullback:John Kuhn (6-0, 250), claimed off waivers Sunday to back up Korey Hall, rushed for 4,685 yards and 53 touchdowns at Division II Shippensburg. He played mostly fullback in Pittsburgh but his ball-carrying background made him attractive to Green Bay.

"Those kinds of guys that are used to running and finding holes, that's what we ask the fullback to do is kind of search it out," Thompson said. "He's a very capable blocker. Tough guy. He's a little bigger than Korey. I would think we'd probably develop little niches for them."

According to Thompson, the Packers tried to convince Kuhn to join their practice squad last year.

"That was kind of a strange one," one scout said, referring to the Packers' acquisition of Kuhn. "He does have run skills for a fullback but he's not the toughest guy in the world. Pittsburgh didn't know what to do with him, about whether to make him a big linebacker. But he's a decent special-teams guy."

Odds and ends: Junius Coston would step in at left guard, right guard and right tackle in case of injury. If left tackle Chad Clifton went down, left guard Daryn Colledge would move outside and Coston would replace him. If center Scott Wells went down, right guard Jason Spitz probably would replace him and Coston would play right guard. . . . Wide receiver Carlyle Holiday hasn't taken any snaps in team drills but McCarthy said he had worked at quarterback on the side and would be the No. 3. . . . The team's press-box contingent will include Joe Philbin, Ben McAdoo and Ty Knott on offense and Robert Nunn, Kurt Schottenheimer and Eric Lewis on defense.

[Maxie the Taxi]

Injury list: Defensive end Aaron Kampman was listed as probable after suffering what McCarthy described as "a twinge in his side" Thursday. He was limited Friday.

Oh how the game has changed...

[From: http://robin.faithsite.com/content.asp?CID=3095]

“Winners Never Quit”

Each of us to some degree, are blessed with talent. We have responsibility to develop those gifts not to absolve ourselves, but to make us a better person, society a better place, and to serve as examples of what can be accomplished.

Too many times when adversity strikes we quit, give up, or give in. We only see how great the obstacles are, how odds are stacked against us, and how impossible circumstances will spell failure. Fear strikes our hearts and paralyzes our will to try.

When he was just five years old Jerry Kramer could chop wood. He loved to help with the chores on his parents farm. One morning he grabbed his axe, followed his mother to the woodshed, lifted it above his head, and lost his grip. The axe fell across his chin and neck. His mother swept him up and hurried to the emergency room. Doctors would work for hours to save his life. He was very lucky. The axe missed his throat by less than an inch. He would carry a five-inch scar for the rest of his life.

At the age of sixteen while he and some friends were hunting, he would slip and fall and his double-barrel shotgun would explode nearly ripping his right arm completely off. For seven days he would be in critical care. One night he remembers doctors showing his parents where his arm would have to be amputated. By some miracle it began to improve and doctors graft skin that would leave the arm in tact, but scarred and withered. His hand would lock in a semi-clutch position and he would loose feeling in his fingers.

He was by that time a star tackle on his high school football team. The withered arm would not deter him. Nor would the hunk of flesh he cut out of his hip one day in shop class. He would suit up that night.

Jerry Kramer was seventeen when he would chase a calf across a pasture, and the calf would step on a rotten plank that would splinter and shoot a long jagged piece into his leg. He would pull the wood out of his hip,and the next day would feel a stabbing pain in his back, but x-rays would show nothing. Finally, on his third trip doctors would find a piece of wood three-quarters of inch wide and seven inches long lodged in his back, about to puncture his spine. Three weeks later he would be out of surgery and on the playing field.

He would earn all-state honors and play college ball for the university of Idaho. During his junior year he would complain of neck pain and x-rays showed a chipped vertebra. The surgery left a six inch scar on the back of his neck to match the one on the front.

Kramer would be selected in the fourth round of the NFL draft by The Green Bay Packers. By his third year in the pros Vince Lombardi would call him "the greatest blocker in the game."

During a game against the Rams he would begin to loose his vision. He would keep it a secret for six games and would in fact play in the championship game against Philadelphia with a detached retina. Surgery would save his sight and nine days later he was playing golf. He would earn all-pro honors playing half the season with virtually one eye.

The next year he fracture his tibia against Minnesota and doctors speculated his career was over. All he needed was a bolt to hold his ankle to his leg and Jerry Kramer would not be stopped. If an axe or a shotgun couldn't why should a broken leg?

The next season Paul Hornung would get hurt and Kramer would kick the field goal that would bring Green Bay its first championship!

At traing camp the next August he began to experience cold chills, high fever, and terrible stomach pains. He was loosing weight rapidly, and after the first game of the season would check into the hospital for exploratory surgery. Doctors found a tumor the size of a grapefruit in his stomach. He would then travel to the Mayo Clinic for a second operation, and then a third, and fifteen minutes after the third operation, a fourth.

Word spread through the league that Jerry Kramer had stomach cancer.

It was during the fifth operation they found the source of all of his trouble. Lodged in his intestine were three more slivers of wood from the time he had chased the calf twelve years before! His system was being poisioned by bacteria and fungus that were in his liver and his bloodstream. Rumors persisted, that he was dying.

He would return home to twenty phone calls surprised to hear his voice. When he felt well enough to go get a haircut his barber would tell him he was taking up a collection to buy flowers. "Ten minutes ago you were a great guy. Now you're still the same old bum," he would laugh, hugging Jerry with tears in his eyes.

By the time Jerry Kramer was 29 years old, he had been operated on 23 times and had recieved more than 500 stitches.

Believe it or not, he continued to play the game he loved. The following year he would report to training camp after eight major operations in less than a year and having lost 40 pounds. This was a man rumored to be dead, whose eighth operation was due to a hernia suffered because he was so weak from the other seven. He would literally beg Coach Lombardi to play him, until finally Kramer's spirit would win out.

He would play in every game that season and again The Packers would be crowned World Champions. The man his teammates called "Whale" said this one was the most special, because only he and God knew what it had taken to get here.

Paul would write about his trials like a champion in 2nd Corinthians chapter eleven beginning in verse twenty-three. "I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been floggged more severly, and been exposed to death again and again." "Five times i recieved forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a day and night in the open sea."

You see these two men were "fools." They believed in a cause greater than they were. They possessed a spirit that could not be quenched. Within them burned a fire, a desire to achieve beyond what was expected.

Neither man could control his circumstances, only their reaction to them. They would choose on every occasion to rise up!

Paul would tell a young man later in his life, "God did not give us the spirit of timidity but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline." 2nd Timothy 1:7

The day Paul recieved his reward in heaven, and the day Jerry Kramer took his place in The Professional Football Hall of Fame their lives served as proof that, "Quitters Never Win and Winners Never Quit." Out of the Box....I'm Robin Guidicy.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Green Bay - Two of the Green Bay Packers' projected starters on offense, wide receiver Greg Jennings and running back Vernand Morency, sat out practice Friday and their chances of playing Sunday against Philadelphia don't look good.

Damn, this could be ugly.

My God, Wynn may get some carries. What if Driver is not really recovered?

[Bretsky]

Should be interesting; on another note I don't think even TT thought Harrell would get outplayed by Colin Cole in the preseason

[BallHawk]

Should be interesting; on another note I don't think even TT thought Harrell would get outplayed by Colin Cole in the preseason

Or Daniel Muir. :shock:

[Bretsky]

Should be interesting; on another note I don't think even TT thought Harrell would get outplayed by Colin Cole in the preseason

Or Daniel Muir. :shock:


Very true

[mraynrand]

Should be interesting; on another note I don't think even TT thought Harrell would get outplayed by Colin Cole in the preseason

Or Daniel Muir. :shock:

No kidding. I thought Cole was history. If Harrel was just a guy and not a first round draft pick, he would have been cut.

[HarveyWallbangers]

A personnel director for an NFC team said Grant had an impressive summer. "I was shocked they got the sixth for him," the scout said. "But if you base it just off preseason, which you hate to do, he was worth it. In college, he was just kind of a guy. But I'm telling you, he was impressive in preseason. He could be something, he really could."

I think we should vote to kick you out of the optimistic realists club. You bold that. I see this:

But I'm telling you, he was impressive in preseason. He could be something, he really could.

[MJZiggy]

Who's in charge of that anyway?

[Bretsky]

A personnel director for an NFC team said Grant had an impressive summer. "I was shocked they got the sixth for him," the scout said. "But if you base it just off preseason, which you hate to do, he was worth it. In college, he was just kind of a guy. But I'm telling you, he was impressive in preseason. He could be something, he really could."

I think we should vote to kick you out of the optimistic realists club. You bold that. I see this:

But I'm telling you, he was impressive in preseason. He could be something, he really could.

LOL; I was wondering if anybody would catch that.

I'm on record as giving TT credit for this trade; you should remember that before my expulsion.

It was worth a try and I gave TT credit for that.

[RashanGary]

I saw that too, Harv. I think he has a chance to be Noah Herron like with 4.4 speed instead of 4.6 speed. We'll see how he pans out. Thompson giving up a 6th says that he thinks he's pretty good. TT has been desperate before and he's never given up a pick so that in itself is a good sign as far as Grant is concerned.

[Scott Campbell]

I still think these guys were picked up for their ST play.

[retailguy]

I still think these guys were picked up for their ST play.

We gave up a 6th round non-conditional pick for a special teams guy?

Gosh, I hope not.

I gave credit to ole' Ted for this too. With our bare cupboard, this was surely worth a shot. As to the fullback, we needed a body. If he's better than Miree (which isn't saying very much), it was a good waiver wire claim.

How about a TE or a LB? we're a bit thin there.

[HarveyWallbangers]

I would think a TE and LB will be picked up after week 1. If a player is on your roster in week 1, his contract is guaranteed. That's why you see a lot of veterans cut before the first game, and then they are signed or resigned after week 1. Tramon Williams is probably on the roster until Blackmon is healthy.

[RashanGary]

I would think a TE and LB will be picked up after week 1. If a player is on your roster in week 1, his contract is guaranteed. That's why you see a lot of veterans cut before the first game, and then they are signed or resigned after week 1. Tramon Williams is probably on the roster until Blackmon is healthy.

I think they really like Tramon Williams. Everything about keeping him and Muir made me think they really liked those guys. It just didn't make sense to keep them otherwise.