There will definitely be a lot of questions for the Green Bay Packers running backs entering the 2017 season. There’s starter Ty Montgomery — not even a running back for a full year yet — and a bunch of rookies.
That lineup probably has a lot of people doubting the Packers’ rushing attack. One of those people is Doug Farrar, who rated all of the running back groups in the NFL. The Packers’ group is dead last.
The Packers are essentially rebuilding their running game on speculative talent, which is a lot easier to do when Aaron Rodgers is your quarterback.
The first thing I’ll say here is, who cares?
Even when the Packers have running backs performing well, they rarely hand them the ball. As long as Mike McCarthy is the Packers’ coach, that’s not going to change.
McCarthy will say “we need to run the football” and then have a 70/30 pass-to-run ratio the next game.
Second, maybe I’m a little biased, but is this group really worse than say the Giants (Paul Perkins) or Jets (Matt Forte)?
Lastly, as we’ve seen time and again, just because you’re not a high draft pick as a running back, doesn’t mean you can’t have success. Only one of the NFL’s top 10 rushers in 2016 was a first-round pick (Ezekiel Elliott).
We’re not suggesting any of the Packers’ backs are going to be in the top 10 in the NFL in rushing — they’d actually have to get carries for that to happen.
However, we fully expect whatever McCarthy wants to do with the running game with the guys at his disposal will work just fine.