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.”
Packers Clips
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?
The Packers signed tight ends McCallan Castles and Drew Biber on Tuesday, the team announced.
In corresponding moves, the Packers waived tight end RJ Maryland and waived tight end Luke Lachey with an injury designation.
Castles, a first-year player out of the University of Tennessee, spent the second half of last season on the Packers’ practice squad. He signed a futures contract and was in Green Bay this offseason until the Packers waived him April 17.
He entered the league with the Eagles as an undrafted free agent in 2024. Castles spent time on the Chargers’ practice squad in 2024 before they waived him early in the 2025 training camp. He spent the rest of 2025 training camp with the Rams before they cut him.
Biber is a rookie who played four seasons for Purdue (2021-24) and one season at the University of Minnesota (2025). Overall, he saw action in 50 games, recording 33 receptions for 271 yards and a touchdown.
Last season, Biber set career highs in games played (13), receptions (18) and receiving yards (136).
The Steelers signed wide receiver Jakobie Kenney-James, the team announced Tuesday.
In a corresponding move, the Steelers waived wide receiver Cole Burgess with an injury designation. Burgess went down with a lower-body injury earlier this week.
Keeney-James was among the players who worked out for the team last week.
He originally signed with the Lions as a college free agent following the 2025 draft.
Kenney-James spent time with the Packers as a rookie, initially signing to the practice squad on Sept. 23 before being elevated to the active roster for the Week 18 game against Minnesota. He started one game and recorded two receptions for 15 yards. He also returned two kicks for 47 yards.
Kenney-James played his final season of college football at the University of Massachusetts, where he appeared in nine games. He had 40 receptions for 603 yards and five touchdowns. He transferred to UMass from Eastern Washington and appeared in 49 collegiate games, with 111 receptions for 1,664 yards and 10 touchdowns.
It remains unclear when Packers defensive end Micah Parsons will be back on the field, but he doesn’t think anyone should be focused on the calendar when thinking about his return from last year’s torn ACL.
Parsons is not expected to be ready to go at the start of the regular season and he called it “very realistic” that he’ll be back for a Week 6 home game against the Cowboys while speaking to reporters on Tuesday. He also said that the actual date of his return is of less importance than the player he is when he does make his next appearance in the Green Bay lineup.
Parsons made it clear that he’s expecting to be just as disruptive to offenses as he was before the injury.
“When you come out of these situations, you’re either going to be better or worse,” Parsons said, via Matt Schneidman of TheAthletic.com. “For me, I’ve done everything I possibly can to be better. People are worried about if I come back. People should worry about how I’m gonna be when I come back. That’s my mentality and how I feel, how I’m gonna approach when I’m back. People worried about the knee, they should be worried about how I’m gonna play when I get back. The anger, the frustration, the things that I’m about to let out because of how long it’s been since I’ve played. So I think that’s what people should really worry about. How great is Micah gonna be when he gets back? Not about when I get back because that’s the short term.”
The Packers know Parsons’s long-term value to the team is greater than what a few early season games are worth, so everyone should be on board with Parsons getting as much time as needed to feel like he can be the defensive force that the Packers need him to be this season.
It really is a “full circle” year for Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
At a time when Rodgers was seemingly creating a kinder, gentler vibe as he embarks on his final year in the NFL, Rodgers brought the knives out during a Monday appearance on ESPN’s The Pat McAfee Show.
Rodgers started by taking the Fifth Amendment in response to McAfee’s first question. Rodgers then went off on Dr. Anthony Fauci, who last week repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment in testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
“You got a pardon, and you’re in front of — and you pleaded [the Fifth] over 100 times?” Rodgers said. “What are you scared of, Tony? I thought you were the science. I thought you [were], ‘I am science.’ And you get up there and you can’t answer a question?”
The vitriol extended to ESPN, the owner of the channel on which he was appearing.
“How much time did the network spend on that?” Rodgers said. “How much time do they spend on my responses every week? On my vaccination status, on Taylor [Swift] and Travis [Kelce’s] wedding? Did they do even a minute? Did they do even a minute on Tony Fauci? No, I bet they didn’t.”
Rodgers then made reference to ESPN’s conspicuously scant coverage of the Mike Vrabel-Dianna Russini situation.
“Then there was another scandal this offseason, too, involving a voter for MVP, for coach of the year,” Rodgers said. “How much time did your network spend on that?”
Later in the segment (after it migrated from ESPN to YouTube only), Rodgers returned to the Russini story.
“Like, you have literally an individual that maybe used to work at ESPN that covers our league at the highest level, and there’s a major scandal, and it’s just, like, nobody can fucking talk about it,” Rodgers said. “What are we even doing here? . . . [I]f it’s affecting certain things, if there’s leaks going on, if there’s tampering going on, if that person is also an MVP voter and a coach of the year voter.”
Rodgers also referred to ESPN as a “gutless organization” with “no integrity.”
As to Fauci, Rodgers eventually called him “an absolute criminal” while repeatedly labeling him an “absolute coward.” (Rodgers at one point suggested that Fauci’s wife is Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister, before adding “allegedly.”)
Here’s the part where I say some things about what Rodgers said.
First, Rodgers is right about ESPN looking the other way on the Russini-Vrabel story. It’s still not clear why that happened. Given that the relationship (whatever it was) between Russini and Vrabel apparently existed during Russini’s time with ESPN, and to the extent it tainted her work (e.g., the 2021 reporting prior to the Julio Jones trade), ESPN prefers not to peer down that rabbit hole. What did the producers know about the situation, and did they perhaps welcome the benefits it generated for Bristol? Those questions haven’t been asked by ESPN, and surely won’t be.
Second, as to Fauci’s decision to repeatedly invoke the Fifth Amendment, Rodgers doesn’t seem to realize that Fauci’s pardon wouldn’t apply to any effort to paint anything he said last week as perjury. Considering some of the specious (to say the least) prosecutions that have been attempted by the current administration, anything Fauci said could have been called perjury. Even if it wasn’t.
“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something — anything — that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words — quote — ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said in his opening remarks to the committee run by Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
Third, Rodgers did not mention the one specific thing that caused him to attract the ire of many in 2021. In August of that year, Rodgers publicly lied about being vaccinated. Well, he didn’t lie per se. He played a deliberate word game about being “immunized,” forcing someone to ask a followup question about whether “immunized” means “vaccinated.” (The followup question wasn’t asked.)
Rodgers had every right to not be vaccinated. He wanted to avoid the protocols the league developed (right or wrong) for unvaccinated players, including wearing a mask during press conferences. (Rodgers didn’t wear one during the press conference when he claimed he was “immunized.”) If he hadn’t tested positive in November 2021, the hair-splitting never would have come to light.
It’s kind of amazing that folks are relitigating the fog-of-war niceties of a pandemic that killed more than a million Americans, and which prompted people to say and do all sorts of things (including a suggestion by a fairly influential person to inject bleach) in an effort to get it under control. The issue has been dusted off for one reason: To motivate voters who may be inclined to stay home for the upcoming midterm election, due to growing apathy and/or flat-out antipathy regarding the person who mused about bleach as a potential treatment for the virus.
Bottom line? Rodgers’s decision to take the high road as to his family is hardly an indication that he has fully committed to that path. On Monday, Rodgers took an extended jog on the low road — to the likely dismay of the executives at ESPN who had to hold their breath and count the seconds until it all finally ended.
Is Aaron Rodgers really going to play in the preseason this month?
A report from Mike Silver of TheAthletic.com noted that Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy has asked Rodgers to play in the club’s first two preseason matchups. Rodgers told Silver that he didn’t necessarily want to play in the preseason, but if McCarthy wants it, the QB will suit up.
McCarthy was asked about Rodgers playing in the preseason during his Monday press conference and said it’s still to be determined.
“Those decisions, really, will be made once we get up to it,” McCarthy said, via Mark Kaboly of The Pat McAfee Show. “Trust me, I have a lot of ideas. … We have plans. But being in a healthy system, let’s see what happens — a lot can happen between now and then, too.
“But he’d like to play. I would like to see him play. But we won’t make a decision until we get all the way up to it because there’s more that goes into that than just having one player play. It’s the combination of the players.”
McCarthy and Rodgers’ separate comments do not necessarily match, as Rodgers explicitly told Silver, “I’m not saying I want to do it.” But with McCarthy as head coach, he’s the one who should have ultimate authority on the decision.
The Steelers will be facing Rogers’ two former teams to start the exhibition slate, hosting the Packers on Thursday, Aug. 13, and the Jets on Friday, Aug. 21. The Steelers will finish the preseason on Thursday, Aug. 27, on the road against the Bills.
The Packers are expected to have the same starting right tackle as last season when they take the field in September, but there will be a different name on the back of his jersey.
Zach Tom told reporters on Sunday that he has changed his last name to Bako-Bewele. The name is a combination of names from his grandparents and the tackle explained that he wanted to honor his family’s Nigerian heritage.
“That’s really the main reason why I did it,” Bako-Bewele said, via Matt Schneidman of TheAthletic.com. “I want to have a name, especially when I start having kids, I want to have a name that I can pass down where it represents where they came from, where I came from. I just feel like that name — people will see that name and have a good understanding of who I am, where I come from.”
Bako-Bewele is going into his fifth season with the Packers and he signed a four-year extension before the 2025 campaign.
Packers tight end Tucker Kraft was able to ride a bike to the practice field — and to practice on it — on Friday, his first work since suffering a torn ACL on November 2.
With the primary goal having him ready to go for Week 1, Kraft could be back in the mix when the Packers engage in a joint practice with the Cardinals on August 26.
Coach Matt LaFleur said it’s a realistic target.
“I mean, he’s got to hit all the benchmarks along the way, and if that’s the case, then absolutely,” LaFleur told reporters on Sunday.
So far, LaFleur is happy with what he has seen from the third-round pick in the 2023 draft.
“I think we’re obviously taking it slow with him because he’s such an important player to us,” LaFleur said. “But, yeah, I think he handled everything great.”
Kraft is in the last year of a rookie deal that pays him $3.6 million in 2026. He has said he has no qualms about practicing without the long-term security he has earned.
And while LaFleur praised Kraft for doing so, here’s the inescapable reality — if Kraft gets injured again, he won’t get the kind of multi-year deal he’d prefer to receive. At that point, the Packers would press the brakes, possibly with a one-year deal for 2027, until Kraft would be able to demonstrate that he’s back to form.
Of course, Kraft may feel compelled to do that now, given his 2025 knee injury. Which requires Kraft to take a calculated risk aimed at securing his reward. Ideally for Kraft, he’ll get it before Week 1.
