Packers Add MVS to COVID List, Complicating Matters at Receiver
GREEN BAY, Wis. – Marquez Valdes-Scantling was added to the Green Bay Packers’ COVID list on Tuesday, the latest blow to the team’s increasingly thin receiver corps.
Valdes-Scantling is coming off one of his best games of the season. On Sunday at Baltimore, he caught 5-of-7 passes for 98 yards and one touchdown. One of the league’s top deep threats, Valdes-Scantling had a 31-yard reception. He also used his strength to fight across the goal line on his 11-yard touchdown. All five of his receptions were for first downs.
Discussing his franchise-record-tying 442nd career touchdown pass, which went to Valdes-Scantling, Rodgers said, “Marquez is a special human being. He really has a great personality. I could feel, confidence-wise, he’s been a little up and down. To be able to have him come out tonight and play the way he played, catch the record-tying touchdown, I think was very apropos of football and the beauty and the redemption stories that happen every single week. So, I’m really happy for Marquez.”
Having missed time earlier this season with a hamstring injury, Valdes-Scantling has caught 25 passes for 471 yards and three touchdowns in nine games.
Since entering the NFL as a fifth-round pick in 2018, Valdes-Scantling is fourth in the NFL with 18 receptions of 40-plus yards. Expanding it to 50 yards, Rodgers has 10 such touchdowns since the start of the 2018 season. Eight of those went to Valdes-Scantling.
If Valdes-Scantling isn’t cleared before Saturday’s game against Cleveland, Rodgers would be working with an incredibly watered-down group of pass catchers. Tight end Robert Tonyan, who led that position in touchdown grabs last year, is out with a torn ACL, and receiver Randall Cobb, a key security blanket for Rodgers in his return to the team, is out following core-muscle surgery.
Also, two backups were out by the end of the Baltimore game. Equanimeous St. Brown was inactive against the Ravens with a concussion; he would have been limited participation had the team practiced on Tuesday. Malik Taylor, who had been battling an abdominal injury, would not have practiced after suffering an injured shoulder vs. the Ravens.
The healthy receivers on the depth chart are starters Davante Adams and Allen Lazard, and two rarely used players: Amari Rodgers, a third-round rookie, and Juwann Winfree, who was promoted from the practice squad last week.
With the Ravens doubling Adams on just about every snap, it was Valdes-Scantling who stepped up.
“I just walked past him in the locker room and I said, ‘That’s the Marquez I know,’” Rodgers said after the game. “I’m very, very proud of him. He’s been battling. His back’s been a little tight and, confidence-wise, we wanted to get him feeling confident again. He had some really important catches. The slant for a touchdown is a great route and then, not just that, but it’s a great hands catch and extension to the end zone to get that touchdown. That’s the Marquez that we all know and love. Happy we got him going tonight. That was important and that’s what we’re going to need if defenses are going to change their entire scheme and put two guys on Tae.”
