Al Harris: Ruptured Spleen May End His Season

When someone comes on our site to comment, it's usually a good thing, even if they are more passion than knowledge. When a regular commenter disappears, it is usually because s/he has been proven wrong, like all the people saying Rodgers was going to stink.

I wonder if this one is going to be back now that jsonline is reparting that Al Harris may be done for the season with a ruptured spleen.

See, this person hates Harris. She has been vehemently repeating the exact same message: Al Harris is to blame for the Packers loss last January.

Not Brett Favre for having a bad second half and throwing the interception that ended up as his final pass in Green and Gold, setting up the New York score. Not the defense for failing four times to come up with a fumble, including one where the defender (I don't remember who, but it was not Al Harris) obviously wanted to make the SportsCenter highlights so badly he passed up on falling on a ball that would have put us less than one first down away from field goal range.

Not Mike McCarthy for completely abandoning the run even though it was clear to all of us that Favre was pressing. Not Ted Thompson for failing to sign even one significant player with all the cap space he had.

Al Harris. The guy who had to cover the third best receiver in football one-on-one all day. Never mind that he was in the top third of cornerbacks in passes defensed last year; to a flamer, facts just get in the way of prejudices.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying he didn't have a bad game. I'm not even saying it was his only one--he certainly stunk the joint up against Terrell Owens (the second best receiver in football) five weeks earlier. Charles Woodson proved last night that he was our better cover corner, shutting down TO with only a little help up top.

But now we are going to see how important Al Harris was, as we have to rely on Jarrett Bush, Tramon Williams, and Wil Blackmon. They will struggle more in the bump-and-run, allowing teams to maintain their timing and diminishing the effect of the pass rush. They will need more safety help, meaning there will be a ripple effect on Woodson and the run defense.

This will also put more pressure on the offense, and the Packers chances of winning the division again just went from safe bet to better-than-even. Their chances of playing through January just went from decent to slim.

Then again, the youngest team in the league will now have more young players get better, so maybe their chances of winning a title by 2010 just went up.