GREEN BAY -- In the past, the Packers have been preparing for the first roster reduction following the third preseason game, but that's no longer the case.
Head Coach Mike McCarthy is a big fan of the change to one roster cut after the entire preseason concludes, and he harkened back to seven years ago to explain why, because a team never knows when it might need somebody to chip in along the way.
"I'm 100 percent in favor of it," McCarthy said prior to Wednesday's practice. "From my perspective, the opportunity to coach players a week longer is what you're looking for. I go back to the Super Bowl year. It took 77 players to win that Super Bowl. You don't win in this league with 53 players.
"We always talk about 63 players, your 53 plus 10 on the practice squad. But you're probably going to be another 10 or 15 above that at the end of the ride. The opportunity to continue to coach players a week longer, it's a benefit to everybody, a benefit to players, benefit to the club. It makes your team better."
McCarthy added he didn't really adjust anything in terms of the plan for the third preseason game now that there's no roster cut following it. How the playing time gets divvied up in Denver on Saturday night will be predicated mostly on the team's overall health.
"Our injury report reflects the way you have to move forward," McCarthy said, explaining that Wednesday's workout would be the longest of the week, lasting two hours and 40 minutes. "Once we get through this we'll determine how the play time shakes out. We won't know until tomorrow when the training staff gets through treatment of the guys.
"You have a goal where you might want to play certain guys, but at the end of the day, we have 30-plus rookies and we have to create as much opportunity for these guys as we can for the evaluation."
Among many areas the Packers are still sorting out the depth chart is the offensive line. Second-year tackle Jason Spriggs has had some rough moments in the preseason games thus far, but McCarthy isn't overly concerned about the 2016 second-round draft pick.
He suggested there have been some mental mistakes within the No. 2 offensive line group that created bad situations for Spriggs out on the edge at left tackle.
"He'll bounce back, yeah, I feel strongly about that," McCarthy said. "You don't overreact to mental errors, because the physical part at the end of the day is what it comes down to. When we're not coordinated properly because of a mental mistake, it's going to look bad from a physical standpoint. I feel great about Jason. He'll be fine."
McCarthy added he'd prefer to keep Spriggs working at both right and left tackle rather than at guard, a position he played in a few games as a rookie. Fellow second-year lineman Kyle Murphy, a sixth-round pick a season ago, has been working at both guard and tackle and is having "a heck of a camp" following a solid preseason outing at Washington.
Packers.com will have more following practice and locker room interviews.
