Green Bay Packer’s left tackle Bryan Bulaga is out for the season with an ACL tear. Bulaga is the latest in a slew of season-ending injuries to key players in the NFL during the 2013 training camps.
For the Packers, this news is potentially devastating, because Bulaga was switched to left tackle to protect the blind side of quarterback Aaron Rodgers. That position used to be Marshall Newhouse’s but Green Bay opted to flip the positions of the right and left tackles to opposite sides for the 2013 season.
Bulaga didn’t get much work in before going down. The other bad news for Green Bay now comes with the next move, and what to do to replace the left tackle. There is just one month to the start of the regular season. To make a move to sign a new left tackle would mean taking a player who is likely without a team at the moment. That means an unsigned free agent to come in and compete for protecting the back of arguably the best quarterback in the league is at stake.
The offensive line has been a problem for Green Bay even with their normal starting rotation. Rodgers went down behind the line a season-high 51 times in 2012, more than any other quarterback.
Couple this with the fact that the Packers wanted to go for a more balanced ground attack by drafting Eddie Lacy out of Alabama, and the aggravation only adds up.