Packers are running on empty

The Green Bay Packers might have the NFL’s worst running game, and with little relief in sight, are desperate to get something out of their makeshift running-back corps.

Ahman Green and Najeh Davenport are out for the year, and Tony Fisher appears likely to miss more time because of a broken rib. That leaves the Packers with three halfbacks who were signed off the street after the season started.

Add the struggles of new guards Adrian Klemm and Will Whitticker, and the Packers rank 30th in the NFL in rushing yards per game and last (32nd) in average yards per carry. Those are major factors in their 1-7 record at the halfway point of the season.

Arizona is the only other team in the bottom three in both categories, at 31st and 30th, respectively.

“We’re not good at it right now,” offensive coordinator Tom Rossley said, “But we’re working to get good.”

The injury news at halfback got worse over the weekend, when the Packers discovered Fisher has a broken rib just beneath his collarbone. Though he didn’t complain of the injury until a few days after last week’s game at Cincinnati, the team’s medical staff thinks he sustained it two or more weeks ago, judging by the amount of scar tissue. Players sometimes can play through broken ribs, but Fisher’s is at the top of his rib cage, and there’s a small chance of it puncturing a lung.

Perhaps of more concern is an accompanying fluid buildup in his upper back that’s caused pain beneath his shoulder blade and restricted his breathing. He can return to the field only when the fluid level decreases, and will undergo a CT scan and MRI on Wednesday to determine whether it’s subsided enough.

“I don’t imagine his availability will be any time soon,” coach Mike Sherman said.

With or without Fisher, the Packers haven’t shown any kind of a running game in the past three weeks — when Davenport when down — that opponents have to honor. Since they’re not consistently outblocking opponents and lack a halfback who can make substantial yardage on his own, they might have to try running-game alternatives.

One possibility is a return to more screen passes. Former Packers coach Mike Holmgren often substituted screen and dump-off passes for a run game in his first couple of seasons with the Packers, and at least until this year, the Packers had been one of the top screen-passing teams in the NFL.

However, when they let guards Mike Wahle and Marco Rivera leave in free agency this past offseason, they let the keys to their screen game leave with them. Rivera and, especially, Wahle were mobile guards who, after several years of working together, were adept at the timing and speed it takes to lead block on screen passes.

This season, though, screen passes have been a rarity.

“Screens are directly related to your guards and your center,” Rossley said. “Our center position, with (Mike) Flanagan up and down (because of a hernia), and the new guards, we’ve struggled with screens. We haven’t been real good. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with new people at positions, and it’s a timing thing. We tried to do it in training camp, and what usually happens as time rolls on, you try to do things you do best.”

Making timing more difficult in the screen and run games is the constant change at halfback, where undrafted rookie Samkon Gado is the Packers’ starter if Fisher can’t play. Gado became the No. 1 halfback Sunday after ReShard Lee fumbled on his second carry of the Packers’ loss against Pittsburgh, and he finished with 26 carries, 62 yards and a 2.4-yard average.

Those hardly are numbers to get excited about, but against a defense that was ranked fifth in rushing yards allowed, Gado (5-foot-10, 226 pounds) at least showed some quickness and speed. He also didn’t fumble.

“I wouldn’t say he made a splash,” Sherman said, “but he made some ripples.”

Sherman said Lee will work back into the running rotation this week at Atlanta after Sunday’s fumble left him on the bench the rest of the day. Walter Williams is the running back on passing downs, in essence taking Fisher’s role when Green and Davenport were healthy.

But for now, and perhaps when Fisher returns, Gado might be the Packers’ best pure runner despite taking a most unusual route to a possible starting job in the NFL.

The 22-year-old Gado — his name is pronounced SAM-konn GAH-do —moved from his native Nigeria to South Carolina in 1991, just shy of his ninth birthday, so his father could pursue his doctorate of divinity. He dropped soccer to play football and, after high school, turned down his only Division I offer, from Troy State, to attend Division I-AA Liberty.

He averaged 6.5 yards a carry as a senior at Liberty but never was a full-time player. He’d planned on applying to medical schools this year but wanted to pursue a career in the NFL.

Kansas City released him in training camp but signed him to its practice squad, where he spent the first month of this season. He was on the street until the Packers signed him to their practice squad three weeks ago, after he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.43 seconds at the Don Hutson Center.

“I ran a 40 and, within the hour, I was sitting in a meeting room behind Brett Favre,” Gado said Monday. “It happened so fast.”

In college, Gado never had more than 21 carries in a game, so his 26 carries against Pittsburgh was the most he’d run the ball since high school. He said he felt so good after Sunday’s game he could have worked out, but Monday morning was different.

“When I woke up this morning I felt like I got in a train wreck,” he said.
source : www.packersnews.com