Well, we have our 53-man roster - FOR NOW. And I emphasize FOR NOW as I believe we will see more changes than we usually do. A couple of things just don't make sense.
Overall, my prediction got 49/53 correct and if not for two last minute changes I made, where I talked myself out of the correct choices, it would have been 51 which would have tied me for best result on #Packers Twitter. But alas, such goes the life of a roster prognosticator. Every year, I tell myself I will enter a cone of silence the day before the cuts so I'm not influenced by anything I read or hear. Invariably, that never happens and I outsmart myself. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
Anyway, let's talk about a few "rostery" things...
On offense, I was perfect except for one roll of the dice I took, and that was putting Lecitius Smith on the roster. I really felt he played well at center against the Seahawks, looking much better than Jacob Monk. Knowing I would probably be wrong, I kept Smith (to make myself happy) and sent Monk to one of the two recallable IR spots (which the Packers did). However, the Packers chose to keep Donovan Jennings, another player I am not too crazy about. On the bright side, they cut Kadeem Telfort as I was hoping they would.
A smart thing I did was keeping Ben Sims. I saw a lot of people going with three tight ends in their predictions and just going by the Packers' past history, I knew that just wasn't going to happen.
The rest of the offense was easy-peasy, with the only players requiring some debate were Mecole Hardman and Marshawn Lloyd, but I made the right choices.
Now for the defense.
I was 95% convinced the Packers would want to keep BOTH Brinson and Stackhouse. When paired together in short yardage situations in preseason games, they were very effective and complimented each other well. I'm sure it helped that they were Georgia teammates, and you could see Brinson benefitting from the freedom to find gaps as Stackhouse jammed up the middle. I see them as the future of the Packers' interior defensive line and I think the Packers do as well. The mistake I made was not thinking the Packers would keep 6 DL, which I can't remember them doing, so I had to roll the dice and say the surprise cut of the day would be Colby Wooden. I didn't actually believe it, but I thought I had to do it to facilitate getting Brinson AND Stackhouse on the roster. So I lost that gamble.
Defensive end was rather obvious, with five keepers and Arron Mosby being the odd man out.
The Linebacker position was seemingly a Sophie's Choice of Kristian Welch or Isaiah SImmons. Precious few would have predicted that Gutey would choose to abandon both of his children. I certainly didn't.
The safety position would have required a lot of work to get wrong, with the obvious five being kept.
Finally we have the cornerback position. The first four were obvious, and that includes Melton, who some still had doubts about his ability to convert from WR (I didn't), That left four players fighting for either one or two spots, Kaylin King, Kamal Hadden, Micah Robinson and Corey Ballentine. Some people had them keeping only five, but I never considered that a possibility, even if Hobbs were completely healthy. I originally had King and Hadden, but at the last minute decided to go with Ballentine instead of Hadden, figuring they would value Ballantine's NFL experience over the youth of Hadden. In the end, I struck out completely here, picking the two out of four the Packers did not keep.
Summary: As stated in my first sentence, the Packers' roster could change over the next day or two and I expect it to. I could see either Anderson or Sorrell being put on IR and Welch being brought back to add a fifth linebacker and assume his special teams ace role. I could also anticipate the Packers scouring interior offensive linemen let go by other teams in an effort to upgrade from Donovan Jennings. A G/C type might make sense to give the Packers another option at backup center besides having to move Sean Rhyan there.
Finally, for your general entertainment, I bring you this. Some guy on twitter is claiming to be a friend of someone who lives next door to one of the Cowboys' team physical therapists. He did some work with Parson today and the word is that the Packers have a deal in place for a Parsons trade and a contract that will pay him $45M/yr if Parson agrees to it. Others have chimed in with their own "inside information" that the Packers have offered two 1st round picks, a 2nd round pick and a 5th round pick. Soooooooooooooo, do you believe it?
Whatever happens, in two weeks, we will have real football!
Go Pack Go!