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On Tuesday evening, the Packers held their last practice before gearing up to fly to San Diego on Wednesday for their first preseason game of the year. With a number of players held out, the roster for Thursday's game is starting to take shape.
- Originally the practice was supposed to be in full pads, but possibly due to the rash of injuries, the team elected to practice in shells Tuesday (BC).
- A list of key players who did not practice Tuesday: Jermichael Finley, Alex Green, Brandon Saine, Marshall Newhouse, Sam Shields, Ryan Taylor, Greg Jennings, Mike Daniels, and Tori Gurley, in addition to the players on the PUP list and various backups (WH). D.J. Williams did return to practice and split the first-team reps with Tom Crabtree (WH).
- That would leave James Starks and Mart Tyler as the only healthy running backs, to go with fullbacks John Kuhn and Nic Cooper (WH). However, Green was reportedly jogging fine (TD), and was just put on a "rep count" and should be available on Thursday (Pack).
- Once again, Davon House got starter's reps in the base defense, as did C.J. Wilson at right end. The second-team OLBs were Dezman Moses and Erik Walden (TS). House also filled in for Shields on the kickoff coverage team (RD) and looked good in the red zone portion of 7 on 7 drills (TS)
- Here's some speculation for the lineup on Thursday: Woodson and Matthews are thought to be held out of the game or play very limited snaps; it's more or less the same for Bishop and Hawk, who took mostly scout team reps (TS). Woodson was held out of most of the reps during the second half of practice (JW, BC).
- The Ginger Wolverine (Tim Masthay) is awesome. He crushed several 60+ yard punts with the wind at his back (MV). Mason Crosby also made consecutive field goals from 43 and 45 yards with the wind (TS).
- James Jones dropped a deep ball in the end zone on a pass from Aaron Rodgers in team drills, letting it bounce off his chest (TS, WH). Shortly after that, B.J. Coleman made a nice lob throw to DeMarco Cosby for a score (WH).
- The tweet that best sums up Tuesday night: "This practice has been essentially a glorified walk through." (MV)
And with that, the Packers will travel to San Diego today before their game Thursday night at 7:00 PM Central Time. For those of us out of the state (including me and Kevin), we'll be happy that the game is being televised on ESPN. It will also be shown on Channel 12 WISN in Milwaukee and Channel 2 WBAY in Green Bay.
As usual, my thanks to the beat guys tweeting from practice:
RD: Rob Demovsky
MV: Mike Vandermause
JW: Jason Wilde
TS: Tom Silverstein
WH: Wes Hodkiewicz
TD: Tyler Dunne
PD: Pete Dougherty
BC: Brian Carriveau
Pack: Packers.com
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