Green Bay Packers Week 16 Stock Report
There are no style points in the NFL.
The Green Bay Packers' 30-20 win over the Oakland Raiders on Sunday may have been ugly, but it was their 10th win of the season, and it came on a day when the team secured a playoff berth.
Now, the Packers will look to maintain control of the NFC North by winning out the season and beating Minnesota in Week 17.
The offense may have looked anemic again in the win over Oakland, and the run game was M.I.A., but there were performances by multiple players that stood out.
Let's take a look at the weekly stock report heading into Week 16 and chart which players are rising and falling.
Rising: WR James Jones
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Given the way James Jones' season has gone, you can expect to see his name on the rising section of the stock report about once every four games.
Since Week 6, Jones has gotten into a pattern: score in a game, then go three games without scoring. Score in another game, and then go three more games without scoring.
Jones' stock is on the rise because his outing against the Oakland Raiders was one of the aforementioned games with a score, but that's not the only reason. His overall production is increasing, and his 82 yards against Oakland were the most he's amassed since Week 11 against Minnesota.
Now that head coach Mike McCarthy is back to calling the plays for the Packers, he'll surely want to get Jones more involved, given Jones' knowledge of the playbook and experience in the system.
The Packers will hope that translates to Jones finishing the final two games of the regular season the way he started his first two: with three touchdowns.
Falling: Eddie Lacy
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Eddie Lacy's path on the stock report officially resembles that of a yo-yo.
Lacy's stock has risen and fallen (and then risen and then fallen again) more than that of any other Packers player this season.
Just when it seemed that Lacy and the coaching staff had moved past his curfew misstep in Detroit and that Lacy was rounding the corner on the season in terms of production, neither the volume nor the output was there for Lacy in Oakland.
It was a case of the chicken or the egg: Lacy wound up with only 11 carries against the Raiders and netted just 23 yards. On the one hand, if Mike McCarthy had fed him more, perhaps Lacy could have put together a more successful day. On the other hard, it's hard for a coach to lean on a back who is only averaging 2.1 yards per carry, as Lacy did against Oakland.
Regardless of his performance against the Raiders or the direction his stock is trending in, the Packers will feature him in Weeks 16 and 17. They'll have to. When he's successful, so too is the offense as a whole. And James Starks, who had his career-high fourth fumble of the season on Sunday, just isn't a reliable substitute.
Rising: DB Micah Hyde
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Don't blame Micah Hyde for the 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty the Packers had levied on them after his 34-yard interception return.
He couldn't help it.
"I couldn’t get up, I was getting hit, I was getting picked up. I don’t know, man. I want to see it on film," Hyde said after the game, in which he had his second interception on the season, per Michael Cohen of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Hyde also had two punt returns for a total of 24 yards against the Raiders. But his main contributions came on defense, where, in addition to the pick, he had two tackles and two passes defensed.
The interception helped the Packers to build a 14-point lead in the first quarter.
In coverage, Hyde was targeted four times and allowed just one reception, per Pro Football Focus.
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Rising: LB Julius Peppers
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Julius Peppers has already topped his sack total for his first season with the Packers in 2014 (seven) with 9.5 sacks and counting in 2015.
By the end of the year, Peppers could reach 10 or 11 sacks, the same numbers he used to put up in his prime years in Carolina and Chicago.
Not bad for a 35-year-old veteran.
Peppers was all over Raiders quarterback Derek Carr on Sunday. In addition to his 2.5 sacks on the day, a season-high, he also had three hits.
He added another two tackles for loss to those numbers for one of the better games of his season.
Peppers has gotten a reputation for taking certain plays off, but his season has been remarkably productive, if not the most consistent, given his age.
His stock is definitely up heading into the last two games of the season, and the Packers will look for him to get tons of pressure on Arizona quarterback Carson Palmer and Minnesota quarterback Teddy Bridgewater.
Rising: WR Jared Abbrederis
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Aaron Rodgers wants to see more of Jared Abbrederis, and head coach Mike McCarthy is doing his best to facilitate that.
"He can get open," Rodgers said, per Robert Zizzo of the Green Bay Press-Gazette. "He’s a good route-runner. He needs to be on the field more."
Abbrederis certainly saw increased snaps on Sunday, which was only his third game this season with a reception. He totaled three catches for 33 yards against Oakland and could be in line for even more to finish out the year.
McCarthy was so focused on getting Abbrederis on the field more that he ran a package four times in which Randall Cobb lined up in the backfield so that Abbrederis could split out wide.
Abbrederis caught all three of his targets, and two of them were for first downs to keep drives alive.
Per Pro Football Focus, Rodgers had a passer rating of 112.5 when targeting Abbrederis.
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