5 X-Factors for a Green Bay Packers Super Bowl Run
By Paul Bretl
Green Bay Packers Playoff X-Factor: Josh Myers
Despite a litany of injuries and quite a bit of movement along the offensive line this season, the unit has held up well. By ESPN’s pass-block win rate metric, the Packers rank fifth, while they rank fourth in run-block win rate.
But now the unit is getting healthy. Against Detroit, both David Bakhtiari and Josh Myers were on the field while Billy Turner is expected to practice this week. Although we still don’t know what the exact offensive line configuration will be, my guess is that it will include Myers.
Myers has certainly shown promise when on the field this season, allowing seven pressures, and he is yet to allow a sack, according to PFF ($$). However, what we all need to remember, is that it’s not as if Myers has had a ton of time on the field this season.
As we all know, he is a rookie, and he has only about 4.5 games of NFL experience under his belt–or just 293 total snaps. And with that inexperience, there are still likely to be some bumps in the road.
While Royce Newman and Jon Runyan — two other young offensive linemen — were able to experience their learning curve during the regular season, if Myers has any issues, they will occur in the playoffs where everything is magnified.
Given what we’ve seen from Myers as well as the offensive line unit as a whole, there shouldn’t be too many concerns about this group heading into the playoffs–in fact, we should all be thrilled with how healthy they are. But with that said, Myers and his 293 snaps are going to play an important role in what hopefully becomes a Super Bowl run.