Monday Cheese Curds: Packers’ Young Talent Is Starting To Grow Up

For years the Packers have been one of the youngest teams in the NFL.

They still are, but their young core — especially the ultra-young players — has begun to age up a bit. This is no longer baby’s first NFL season for most of the youngsters, who have grown into significant roles, by and large.

But where does that leave the developmental group, the true young up-and-comers who are mostly potential at this point? If you ask ESPN, at least, it leaves the Packers pretty close to the bottom of the league.

Our first link today has ESPN ranking the entire NFL by how strong their under-25 cohort of players are, and the Packers (spoiler alert) rank third from the bottom. The reasoning makes sense in the context of the piece: a lot of the true young talent has aged out of that bracket (Lukas Van Ness and Tucker Kraft, for instance), but it also dings the Packers for having young players that haven’t proven themselves yet…which is kind of the point of young players at the developmental stage of their career.

After all, how do you get young stars? They have to be young non-stars first.

That said, the Packers’ youngest players are pretty unproven. I think there’s good reason to be excited about Brandon Cisse and Chris McClellan from this year’s draft class, and I’m as high on Matthew Golden as anybody, but you can’t really get around the fact that none of them have really done anything yet. The whole book on Golden to this point is that he did very little as a rookie. There’s a lot of ground to cover for these guys.

The better question might be how the Packers’ under-25 players will change over the course of the season. That’s a trend worth watching, and how it turns out could determine how the Packers’ season plays out.

Ranking NFL teams by under-25 talent: Pats, Texans lead list | ESPN

Another thing worth pointing out here is that a lot of the teams with a lot of young talent only have that talent because the team has been really bad lately.

Packers Training Camp Battles to Watch (And Who Is Most Likely to Be Cut) | Sports Illustrated

What’s your favorite position battle?

Countdown to camp: Packers’ receiving corps comes into focus | Packers.com

What will we think of the Packers’ receiving corps at year end?

Packers training camp preview: Newcomers arrive at defensive tackle | Packers Wire

Defensive tackle got a big facelift this offseason. How will that work out?

How Ron Wolf’s 76-day overhaul sparked Green Bay Packers resurrection | Packers News ($)

Ron Wolf made a lot of big moves early in his tenure that paid off handsomely.

World’s longest foosball table debuts in Brooklyn | UPI

I don’t care how long the table is. No spinning allowed.