Burks, MVS Eager to Deliver After Injuries
GREEN BAY, Wis. – As training camp started last summer, there were high hopes for two members of the Green Bay Packers’ 2018 draft class.
Oren Burks, who the Packers moved up to select in the third round, was supposed to start alongside Blake Martinez at inside linebacker. Marquez Valdes-Scantling spent all of camp alongside Davante Adams as the top tandem at receiver.
Instead, injuries ruined their seasons.
Burks’ season was thrown for a loss in the preseason opener when he sustained a torn pectoral muscle. While Burks avoided season-ending surgery, he missed the first month of the season and played only 57 defensive snaps.
“Definitely going into the offseason, my pec and my shoulder were the main focus for me,” Burks said after Tuesday’s practice. “Just making sure I rehab, get my strength back. Working with my strength trainer Josh (Cuthert), he did a great job with the group that we had down there in Nashville of really using functional movement, getting that strength piece back and feeling confident. Moving it in different ways and being explosive. This is the best I’ve felt in a long time, physically. Just have to keep things rolling, staying on my maintenance, on top of making sure everything feels strong and fresh. Just feeling really good about this year, just got to keep stacking days and making it count.”
While Burks played, he wasn’t at full strength. Literally. As noted by ESPN.com’s Rob Demovsky, Burks couldn’t even bench-press 135 pounds at the end of the season. Contrast that to the 2018 Scouting Combine, when he put up 18 reps on the 225-pound bench press.
Burks is back and working alongside Christian Kirksey as the top pair at linebacker. He’s certainly stronger and more confident; after all, he might have been the weakest player on the field on Sundays last year. Now, it’s about making up for lost time. As a rookie, he suffered a dislocated shoulder before a preseason game. Then, it was last year’s pectoral. The injuries didn’t just keep him out of games but off the practice squad.
“Just got to log reps,” he said. “I feel like with more and more reps I get, the more confident I get. Just continue to stack days. I keep saying I’m excited but there’s no words I can put forth to express to you guys how excited I am for this year. It’s just going to be the culmination of putting all the preparation in place, and just playing fast and confident.”
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Valdes-Scantling, the team’s premier deep threat, suffered knee and ankle injuries in a Week 6 game against Detroit but powered through the pain to play 77 percent of the snaps and catch two passes for 48 yards that night. Six days later, he caught two passes for 133 yards with a 74-yard touchdown in limited action against Oakland.
It was a show of toughness and athleticism that seemed to show his arrow was pointing straight up. Instead, his second NFL season went up in smoke. In the final nine regular-season games, he caught 5-of-19 passes for 36 yards. His 0.32 yards per pass route and catch rate of 26.3 percent were last among the 105 receivers with at least 19 targets during that span, according to Pro Football Focus.
Because Valdes-Scantling showed up and played every week, it was easy to forget he was injured. Thus, it’s easy to discount his chances of being a factor on a receiver depth chart that now flows through Adams and Allen Lazard.
“Obviously, I’m a competitor, so I’m always going to want to go out and play if I can,” he said after practice. “And, obviously, I didn’t do myself a service by going out and not being 100 percent, but I’m always going to be competitive and go out and play if I can. I just want to go out and battle for my teammates. That’s kind of what my mind-set was – if I can go, I’m going to go. And that’s kind of how I’ve always been growing up.”
Valdes-Scantling started training camp with a bang by running past cornerback Josh Jackson and hauling in a deep reception from Tim Boyle. Regardless of Lazard’s status, there is a big role available to be grabbed. With an elite combination of size (6-foot-4) and speed (4.37 in the 40), Valdes-Scantling brings a skill-set unmatched by any receiver on the team and few receivers in the league.
“That’s what I want to do every time the ball’s in the air,” he said of the bomb from Boyle.
