Cheese Curds, 6/21: Abbrederis earning praise, but will it be enough to make the Packers' roster?

It's incredibly difficult to make an NFL roster. There are only 1,700 spots to go around, and those are divided up among the nearly 3,000 players who are currently on 90-man rosters. Good players get cut - it's a fact of life, and one of the most highly-discussed areas where the Green Bay Packers are likely to cut a very good player is at wide receiver.

A fairly decent portion of the Packers' fan base sees Jared Abbrederis as the odd man out at this point, if the Packers do indeed elect to keep fewer than seven wide receivers. However, based on some recent comments from his head coach, his odds of making the team might not be bad after all.

While the roster battles will resume in earnest in late July, the NFL is mulling over some changes as well, in particular around the kickoff. In today's curds we find an article discussing this summit - while the trend has seemed to be that they want fewer and fewer kick returns, they recently engaged coaches from around the league to discuss what other possibilities there are to make the play safer while still keeping it a part of football.

NFL takes unusual step of involving position coaches in looking at more kickoff rule changes
This is a fairly unprecedented step, with the league calling all 32 special teams coaches around the league to get their input. I'm sure that whatever Ron Zook said was said in a raspy voice with a lot of energy.

Mike McCarthy can't help praising Jared Abbrederis' 'exemplary' play - ESPN
For those people convinced that Abbrederis was going to be the odd man out among the Packers' wide receivers, his work in the offseason is making it seem like he's on track to make the 53 after all.

Packers' 53-man roster projection does not include seven receivers - ESPN
And then there's the projection from ESPN. There are few surprises here, save for maybe one of the tight ends and an undrafted free agent or two. Stay tuned for APC's roster projection in the coming weeks.

Hundley hopes to follow Rodgers' path | Packersnews.com
And although the team certainly hopes he has great success, they hope he doesn't have to have it on the field in a meaningful game for some time.

Jayrone Elliott entering different world in third season | Packers.com
The Toledo product made a pair of huge plays against the Seahawks in week two (he's sure to appear on our Top Plays countdown) but then was relegated mainly to special teams duties after that.

San Diego is the new home of sports futility | ProFootballTalk
It depends on how you define this - whether it's by calendar years or number of combined seasons between all of a city's sports teams without a title - but Milwaukee is in the hunt when the Packers are excluded.

John Fox: Keeping Jay Cutler comfortable was key - NFL.com
Well, here's hoping Clay Matthews, Julius Peppers, and company continue to make life uncomfortable in the upcoming season.