Injuries for Packers, Cowboys and holdout for Seahawks open up NFC
Unless you’re from Philadelphia, Detroit or Arizona, at some point this offseason you figured out there was a very good chance that the NFC champion was going to be one of three teams: Green Bay Packers, Seattle Seahawks or Dallas Cowboys.
August hasn’t been kind to any of those three teams, and suddenly maybe the rest of the pack is a little closer to them.
The latest big blow happened Tuesday when Cowboys cornerback Orlando Scandrick blew out his ACL. Scandrick isn’t one of Dallas’ headliners, but he was one of their more indispensable players. Scandrick was by far Dallas’ best cornerback, and now there’s a big hole there. Brandon Carr and Morris Claiborne have struggled. Byron Jones was the team’s first-round pick, but he’s still a rookie. A weakness of the Cowboys got a lot weaker.
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The Packers and Seahawks have their own issues. There has been plenty of talk that Jordy Nelson’s season-ending ACL injury doesn’t really affect the Packers because they have Aaron Rodgers, but that’s just ignoring how good Nelson is. He caught 98 passes for 1,519 yards and 13 touchdowns. He’s one of the best deep threats in the NFL, and the Packers don’t have anyone that can come close to replicating the big plays Nelson provided for the offense. The Packers will replace him — Davante Adams becomes a full-time starter and either Ty Montgomery or Jeff Janis fills in his No. 3 role — but to not expect any drop-off from one of the best receivers in the NFL is naive. It’s possible to overcome it. They lost top receiver Robert Brooks in 1996 and had 16 players on injured reserve in 2010 and won Super Bowls each season. But losing Nelson makes life a lot harder for the Packers.
Those two ACL tears should mean that Seattle is far, far ahead of the rest of the NFC, but the Seahawks have their own issue to deal with. Strong safety Kam Chancellor’s holdout is now almost a month old. Coach Pete Carroll is asked often about it by the Seattle media and the answer is usually some form of “nothing new to report.” We’ve reached the point where it’s not just a foregone conclusion that Chancellor caves and reports. Will he be traded? Will the holdout continue well into the regular season? Will Chancellor be happy once he does report? If Chancellor isn’t with the Seahawks, that eats away at their identity. The Seahawks have a great defense and a foundation of it is Chancellor roaming the middle and making sure short crossing patterns are punished. The Seahawks seem to have settled on Dion Bailey as a possible replacement. Seattle would be going from possibly the best strong safety in football to an undrafted second-year player who has never played an NFL game. Chancellor is a cornerstone player for the Seahawks defense, and his holdout is reaching a point where the conclusion is really up in the air.
The AFC is wide open this season. You can make a case for and against many of the top teams going to the Super Bowl. The NFC never seemed that up for grabs. For months it seemed like there was a good chance the NFC representative would come from one of three teams. That might not be the case anymore.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
