Jordan Love is expected to start Thursday night’s preseason game in Pittsburgh, but it remains unclear if his predecessor as the Packers’ starting quarterback will be on the field for the Steelers.
Head coach Mike McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday that he has not determined which of the team’s players will take part in the preseason opener. Rodgers said earlier this summer that McCarthy told him that he wants the quarterback to play in the first two preseason games and that he responded by saying “if you want me to play, I’ll play” while adding “I’m not saying I want to do it.”
McCarthy previously said that Rodgers wants to play and reiterated that on Tuesday while adding that he is deciding if it’s the best course of action.
“I’ve never had a quarterback that didn’t want to play,” McCarthy said, via 93.7 The Fan. “It’s really how it all fits together.”
McCarthy said that players who start the game will play for a series or two and that a second group would play the rest of the first half.
Packers Clips
Packers quarterback Jordan Love played the preseason opener in each of the last three seasons and it looks like the team will take the same approach this summer.
Head coach Matt LaFleur said at a Tuesday press conference that he plans to play Love against the Steelers on Thursday. LaFleur noted that he reserves the right to change his mind, but he also noted why he likes “getting your process down” ahead of the regular season.
“It’s pretty fluid in regards to how many snaps,” LaFleur said. “But I do think there’s a lot of value for all our guys to just get mentally prepared to go play a game.”
The Packers will be in Pittsburgh on Thursday and they’ll be back on the road against the Broncos for their second preseason game. Their only home game of the summer will be on August 28 against the Cardinals.
Last year as a rookie, Steelers quarterback Will Howard suffered a fractured hand in early August that kept him out of the team’s preseason games.
That’s part of why it’s understandable that Howard — a sixth-round pick in the 2025 draft — is so excited to get his first pro exhibition opportunity this week when the Steelers host the Packers on Thursday night.
“I’m so fired up. I can’t wait for the game,” Howard said, via video from Mark Kaboly. “Obviously, I’m trying to take it day by day, and it’s still camp. But, sometimes you can’t help but look forward a little bit and start getting excited just to be out there and [get] live game reps — because I haven’t played in over a year in live game reps. I think the last time was the national championship. So, I’ve been champing at the bit for a while to get out there with the guys in a real game-like setting — uniform on, helmet on.
“I just can’t wait. I think tomorrow we’re going to start looking at Green Bay a little bit, do some planning a little bit. I’m just really, really excited.”
Howard added, via Chris Adamski of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, that he’s expecting to play “a good amount” on Thursday night. But to this point, head coach Mike McCarthy hasn’t set out definitive plans.
No matter how long he’s out there, Howard is going to find Thursday night’s experience meaningful.
“I know everyone says preseason isn’t real football,” Howard said, “but to me, it is.”
The Packers have added a wide receiver to the roster for the second time in as many days.
They announced that they have claimed Chris Hilton off of waivers. They signed Kisean Johnson as a free agent on Sunday.
Hilton signed with the Commanders after going undrafted this year and was waived over the weekend. He spent the last five years at LSU and had 41 catches for 780 yards during his time in Baton Rouge.
Hilton and Johnson join Christian Watson, Matthew Golden, Jayden Reed, Savion Williams, Skyy Moore, Bo Melton, Will Sheppard, Isaiah Neyor, Kaden Prather, and J. Michael Sturdivant on the receiver depth chart in Green Bay.
Matt LaFleur succeeded Mike McCarthy as Packers head coach in 2019.
The two have coached against one another before and on Thursday will do it again as McCarthy makes his preseason debut as head coach of the Steelers.
McCarthy, of course, won Super Bowl XLV with Green Bay to cap the 2010 season.
LaFleur said he’s gotten to know McCarthy through connecting at league meetings and the times McCarthy has come back to visit Green Bay.
“I’ll say this — I’ve got so much respect for him,” LaFleur said in his Monday press conference. “First of all, how he’s always treated me. Secondly, just by what he’s accomplished here. It’s pretty cool that, when he got the Pittsburgh job, I’m like, Green Bay Packers, Dallas Cowboys, Pittsburgh Steelers — I mean, that’s pretty special.
“So, Mike’s a guy I’ve got a ton of respect for.”
The Packers and Steelers will kick off in Pittsburgh at 7 p.m. ET on Thursday night.
We’ve known for some time that Packers defensive end Micah Parsons won’t return to action for the first four games of Green Bay’s season, but just how long he’ll be out remains up in the air.
Parsons recently said that it was less important when he’s back than what kind of player he is when he’s back on the field, but it remains a popular topic of conversation around the star pass rusher. During an appearance on NFL Network Monday, Parsons was asked if he thinks he can make it back for a Week 6 home game against the Cowboys.
“That’s the most optimistic that I could be back,” Parsons said. “I could be later, there could be setbacks. Trying to integrate back into football is completely different than running on cones and ladders.”
The prospect of playing the team that dealt him to the Packers is surely an appealing one for Parsons, but the bigger picture will take precedence for the key member of the Packers defense. More clarity on the chance of Parsons, who said he’s “pretty happy” with where he is in the rehab process, returning for that game will come in the next few weeks.
The Packers announced three roster on Sunday.
They have signed wide receiver Kisean Johnson as a free agent. They waived safety Johnathan Baldwin and cornerback Marlon Jones in corresponding moves.
Johnson went undrafted out of Western Kentucky last year and signed with the Browns. He spent time on the Packers’ practice squad during the regular season, but did not appear in any games.
Johnson had 75 catches for 925 yards and seven touchdowns in his final college season.
Baldwin played in one game for Green Bay last season and Jones signed with the team after going undrafted this year. Both players will revert to injured reserve if they are unclaimed.
When Giants running back Cam Skattebo did a backflip while recovering from an injury, coach John Harbaugh joked that he should have stuck the landing. When a couple of oft-injured Packers players did backflips, coach Matt LaFleur took a harder line.
Packers running back MarShawn Lloyd and wide receiver Christian Watson, both of whom have been injury-prone, both did backflip celebrations, and LaFleur told them to knock it off.
Lloyd said after a training camp practice that LaFleur told him to stop.
“I’ve always been able to do it,” Lloyd told reporters. “Coach LaFleur doesn’t want me to do it no more. . . . He said it was cool, but he said, ‘Let’s not do that.’”
Lloyd said LaFleur told Watson to stop the backflips, too.
“He told him the same thing: Stop doing them,” Lloyd said.
Lloyd said he was trying to bring some energy to the running back group, which hadn’t been celebrating the way the receivers were.
“The running backs weren’t doing any celebrations when we were scoring,” Lloyd said. “The whole offense wasn’t liking that. The receivers came into the running back room, and said you guys need to start celebrating more. So that was the first thing that came to my mind. I can’t dance. I don’t know how to do the dance they’re doing. But I know how to do a backflip.”
In two years since the Packers selected him in the third round of the 2024 NFL draft, Lloyd has been plagued with injuries and played in only one game. Lloyd understands that LaFleur wants him to stay healthy, and accepts that the no backflips rule is a part of that.
“I’ve been doing them for a long time, but it’s fine,” Lloyd said. “If he said it’s over, it’s over.”
One of Green Bay’s top offensive players is not practicing on Thursday, but he should be back on the field soon.
According to multiple reporters on the scene, Packers running back Josh Jacobs is not participating due to a groin injury.
But this is not expected to be a long-term absence.
Jacobs, 28, dealt with multiple injury concerns in 2025. He finished the year with 929 yards rushing with 13 touchdowns, along with 36 receptions for 282 yards with a TD.
A first-round pick in the 2019 draft, Jacobs has taken 1,840 carries and tallied 2,109 total touches with 76 total touchdowns so far in his career.
Old-school coaches will often attribute missed practice time in training camp to serious in-season injuries, like torn ACLs.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Packers linebacker Micah Parsons gave some credence to that notion.
Asked why he thinks his ACL injury happened on what seemed to be a fairly routine play in Week 15 against the Broncos, Parsons said this: “You know, it’s hard to really think — I could just think of it was just accumulative things within my body, pushing through, the no camp, dealing with injuries throughout the season, and I just think my body just was overloaded and — which caused my knee to give out. But, you know, I don’t really think why the situation happened. I think, based off of, you know, how I feel at this point, I feel like a much better player in the sense of how I feel. I feel more stable. I feel stronger.”
Parsons skipped all of training camp last year while waiting for a contract from the Cowboys that never came. Eventually, he was traded to the Packers less than two weeks before the start of the regular season.
While the pro-laundry crowd will point to Parsons’s explanation as a reason for players to not hold in while negotiating a new deal, the better view is that both sides should treat the start of training camp as a firm deadline for getting something done, negotiating in good faith toward the agreed-to stroke of midnight, and get the deal done before camp opens.
Most of these deals are going to get done anyway. Why not get them done in a way that ensures the player will be available to properly prepare himself for the season?
The entire goal for the player is to obtain the security that comes from shifting the injury risk to the team. The player holds in to avoid that risk. If the team is inevitably going to be assuming the risk, why not do it at a time that allows the player to best prepare himself for an injury-free season?
