Greg Bedard pointed out to me that, despite what I said in my recap, the Green Bay Packers did some game planning to prepare for the game at Arizona, while the Cardinals did none. I had read last week that QB Brian Brohm ran the scout team in practice, but I assumed he was playing as QB Jay Cutler to prepare for the season opener. But instead they used it as practice for the real game planning in two weeks.
The rosters have to be cut down to 75 players by Tuesday. By my count of the current roster, that means three players have to be released. They've already cut down from 80 when they released C Duke Preston and placed TE Devin Frischknecht on I.R. last week.
It looks like the three players will be P Durant Brooks, LB Stryker Sulak, and WR JaRon Harris. From Mike McCarthy:
Q:Brooks, Sulak, and Harris were not out there. Where were they?
A:They were excused from today's practice.
Brooks hasn't been able to play or practice over the last two weeks. He's handed the starting job to P Jeremy Kapinos by default, but the team can't afford to wait on him. Although Kapinos will still have to sweat out the final cuts; the Packers went out and signed P Derrick Frost after the final preseason game last season.
I thought Sulak had a chance at playing time, but he didn't make it on the field during any of the preseason games, as far as I noticed.
It's possible they were discussing CB Al Harris, but they were probably talking about players on the bubble. JaRon Harris hasn't been awful, but he did have a bad deflection against Cleveland. There are a bunch of good receivers in camp, so one mistake might be one too many.
It's probably the end of preseason play for CB Al Harris, CB Charles Woodson, and definitely over for WR Greg Jennings. But the game against Tennessee will be the first game for LB Clay Matthews and LB Nick Barnett. From Mike McCarthy:
Q:Will all of the healthy guys play on Thursday?
A:Yes. Well, starters? We may have some coach's decisions like I have done in the past. We'll look at Al and Charles Woodson and obviously Greg Jennings is not going to play. We'll see what happens tomorrow. Tomorrow's practice is our heavy lifting day, so we'll have that conversation after tomorrow's practice.
Q:Is Clay Matthews on track to play?
A:Yes, I anticipate Clay to definitely play. Him and Nick Barnett, I anticipate that both will play this week.
As far as the rest of the week goes, there will be a practice on Monday and Tuesday morning before a closed practice on Wednesday. And then the final preseason game at Tennessee on Thursday night.