Packers prep for life sans Jennings

GREEN BAY – While the news on Greg Jennings – that the Green Bay Packers Pro Bowl wide receiver should be back in time for the team’s first playoff game – would only have been better if he hadn’t sustained a knee injury in the first place, his absence from the lineup for the final three regular-season games should provide an interesting study in how the offense operates without one of its biggest stars.

For despite a pass-catching cadre that is the envy of the NFL, the dynamic of the Packers’ vaunted passing game is bound to change with Jennings out of the lineup for the first time since the 2007 regular-season finale.

The Packers (13-0) have three regular-season games remaining – at Kansas City Sunday, at home against Chicago on Dec. 25 and at home against Detroit on Jan. 1 – and can clinch the No. 1 seed in the NFC and homefield advantage throughout the postseason with a victory or a San Francisco loss.

“Greg Jennings is a big weapon for us, no doubt about it, because of his ability to play all three positions,” Packers coach Mike McCarthy explained Monday, shortly after announcing that Jennings would miss “a couple weeks” and “it would be safe to say he'd be back for the playoffs” following the left knee injury he sustained in Sunday’s 46-16 victory over the Oakland Raiders.

“But with that, we’ll have a distinct plan for Kansas City and just try to utilize our personnel. We’re a multiple personnel, multiple formation, variation football team. We feel we have enough to move forward. Greg will be missed, but with that it’s more opportunity for the other perimeter players.”

Jennings was injured less than 2 minutes into the second half Sunday, after catching an 8-yard pass from Rodgers on the opening series of the third quarter. Jennings caught the ball and dove forward, with Raiders safety Tyvon Branch and cornerback Stanford Routt landing on his legs.

The challenge for the Packers’ offense is that, while Jennings’ fellow wideouts – Jordy Nelson, Donald Driver, James Jones and Randall Cobb – are all cross-trained to play all of the various receiver positions, only Jennings truly plays every spot. Nelson and Jones generally line up outside; the slot had been Driver’s eminent domain for years; and Cobb has been used primarily in the slot during his rookie season. Tight end Jermichael Finley can line up in the slot, out wide or on the line of scrimmage in a three-point stance.

"To tell you the truth I don't think the offense will change because we've got weapons,” Finley said after Sunday’s win, in which he did not have a catch. “Greg’s a playmaker, and it’s hard to fill in a guy like that. But we’ve got playmakers all through our offense. Young guys are going to have to step up, or the guys that already in will have to step up. Next man up.”

Those next men up figure to be Jones, who has been productive (26 receptions, 479 yards, five TDs) in limited playing time and Cobb, the rookie second-round pick whose playing time has fluctuated since bursting on to the scene with a 108-yard kickoff return for a touchdown and a touchdown catch in the regular-season opener Sept. 8.

According to ProFootballFocus.com, Jennings has played 675 snaps this season, most among receivers. Nelson is next at 470, followed by Driver at 411, Jones at 379 and Cobb at 223. The tight end snaps have been 688 for Finley, 237 for Tom Crabtree, 203 for now-injured Andrew Quarless, 72 for D.J. Williams and 14 for Ryan Taylor, who caught a 4-yard touchdown pass on his first offensive snap of the season Sunday against the Raiders.

According to STATS LLC, Jennings has been targeted for 101 passes, followed by Nelson (70), Finley (69), Driver (45), Jones (37) and Cobb (24).

Despite seeing more double coverage than any other pass-catcher, Jennings has caught a team-high 67 passes. His 949 receiving yards rank second to Nelson (957), and Nelson has one more touchdown catch (10) than he does. Jennings ranks 13th in the NFL in receiving yards, tied for 10th in receptions and tied for fourth in touchdown catches.

“Every week’s different. We really haven’t talked about our plan for this week and how we’re going to go about playing this game,” offensive coordinator Joe Philbin explained. “We don’t really know enough about (the Chiefs). This is a team we haven’t played since ’07 in a regular-season game. To speculate what our plan is and who’s going to step in, we kind of do what we do.”

Philbin used Finley as an example from last season. After a breakout 2009 in which he caught 55 regular-season passes and followed it up with a franchise postseason record 159 receiving yards in the team’s playoff loss at Arizona, Finley caught 21 passes for 301 yards in the first four games of 2010. Then, he suffered a knee injury at Washington in Week 5, and the offensive focus shifted toward Jennings, who’d caught just 14 passes for 183 yards in the first five games.

“Last year, Jermichael Finley played four-and-a-half games and was a guy who caught a bunch of passes the year before. Every week, you’ve got to figure out who’s healthy, who’s available, what’s the best way to attack the defense, and you formulate a game plan that puts the guys that you have in a position to succeed,” Philbin said. “It’s kind of early in the stages and we’re not quite there yet for Kansas City.”

How the Chiefs approach the Jennings-less passing game should be interesting. Jennings has played in 95 of a possible 100 games (including playoffs) during his career. He missed two games as a rookie in 2006 (one with an ankle injury, one for the birth of his daughter Amya) and three in 2007 (two for an ankle injury to start the season, plus the meaningless regular-season finale that year).

Although a few teams have inexplicably tried to cover Finley primarily with a linebacker (most recently the New York Giants), most teams have viewed Jennings and Finley as the two players they had to stop. The logical assumption would be that Nelson would now inherit much of that defensive attention,

“I think he's having a real fine year. It's a little too early to predict what teams will do to him,” Philbin said of Nelson. “We still have some other pretty good players. Randall Cobb stepped up, James Jones broke a real nice tackle (against the Raiders). I think some of that stuff is overrated, I really do. We'll have to maybe adjust throughout the course of the ball game to see if they give us some unique coverages or double coverages. We'll just see how it all unfolds.”

Listen to Jason Wilde every weekday from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. on “Green & Gold Today,” and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/jasonjwilde.