Week 15 Picks - Do Injuries Matter Most

It’s self-evidently true that an NFL season is a war of attrition, but the longer I do this the more I wonder if health is all that really matters in most games.

Broadly speaking, it seems like the “any given Sunday” theory of football is true. Vegas seems to bear that idea out; you won’t find many games with lines suggesting that one team is significantly better than the other. Most games are expected to be decided by a touchdown or less. And if we’ve learned anything from the Packers this season, it’s how many single-touchdown margins can be affected by a handful of plays throughout a game.

What’s the biggest driver of how those plays shake out? The players, of course, however much we might like to talk about coaches being schematic geniuses. Sure, the coaches might position their players well or call advantageous plays in appropriate situations, but their strategies are limited to who’s available.

I say this as a roundabout way of wondering if all the Packers’ progress this year is going to seem to have gone to waste just because a bunch of injured players are going to limit what they can do this week.

Beyond their injured reserve list (which includes recent additions like Luke Musgrave and Emanuel Wilson), the Packers have an injury report that seemingly includes most of the rest of the roster. Wednesday’s list included five non-participants and eight limited participants, and the way those injuries are clustered makes the list even more weighty than it already is. Injuries to Christian Watson, Dontayvion Wicks, and Jayden Reed mean the Packers will be leaning heavily on their practice squad receivers this week. Get ready to say hello to 2023 seventh-round pick Grant DuBose!

The story is much the same at running back, where with Aaron Jones still hurting and AJ Dillon newly injured, it’ll be Patrick Taylor and newly acquired Kenyan Drake. Sprinkle in an assortment of injures in the secondary and it’s pretty clear that the Packers are going to be severely limited at some key spots.

If the Packers lose this week because they’ve got nobody they can play, does that mean all their progress was for naught? Probably not, but how do we evaluate their progress going forward? Do we ever get a real glimpse of the 2023 Packers? Is this my “no true Love evaluation” hypothesis again?

I don’t have good answers for these questions (though my best guesses would be, in order, no, not sure, probably yes, and kind of) but I’m becoming more convinced that most of what matters in the NFL from week to week is health. Your overall talent level will set your floor to start, and that will go up and down from a week to week basis based on who you have that’s available to play.

As always, the most boring things are probably the most true.

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