News

(Desmond’s injury occurred during practice?)
Desmond Bishop has had this hip injury kind of ongoing. It just kind of flared up on him, so we wanted to be smart with him and treat him. He went through the jog-through. I fully expect him to play.

(How did Driver look?)
Donald Driver looked good. We sent him on a few deep balls. Really, the biggest factor in Donald Driver being available for Sunday will probably be tomorrow’s evaluation, to see how he responds to the full practice.

(How about Ryan?)
I would say Ryan Pickett would be exactly in the same category. Ryan did much more team today than he did yesterday. I’ll be very curious when Dr. McKenzie has the opportunity to visit with Ryan and Donald both tomorrow and on gameday.

(What will be the key coming out of the bye to putting consistent performances together in this stretch?)
I think it’s important at this time of year to practice with rhythm, routine, continuity. It’s so important to group activity. It gives you the chance to heighten your performance.  The bye week came at a great time for us as far as the ability to reset, kind of re-boot everything that we’ve done physically, mentally and in some matters emotionally. I feel like we’ve been able to do that. I feel very good about the preparation this week, and it’s time, not to be cliché here, to take them one at a time, and that’s what you do. I’m actually excited that we play the rest of our games are always on Sunday. I think that’s important. You get to work in those seven-day windows. We’ve come off the bye week and I feel like we’re back on our routine and it’s important for us to go to Minnesota and play well and win.

(Does last night’s Chicago result maybe sharpen the intensity of the guys, knowing there’s another team pushing you in your division?)
Maybe so. Personally, I didn’t watch the game. I had zero interest in watching the game. I know it’s important. Chicago is playing very well. I had a chance to watch that on Sunday. We’ll have an opportunity to see them again here at Lambeau. But there’s so much that’s going to happen between now and then. Our focus is clearly on Minnesota. I really don’t, I’m not trying to … I don’t talk about it to our football team. I hope they’re not even thinking about it. They need to be thinking about Minnesota because that’s who I’m thinking about.

(What’s the benefit to your winter schedule as far as curtailing practices?)
I just think you get to this point in the year you have to look at this as a 12-round fight. Technically a 16-round fight. You can only take so many body blows, and practice reps definitely factors into that. The winter schedule is something that I’ve always done, something I’ve always believed in. Because it’s more about quality right now. Quantity, you have to be smart, and I think we do a good job of that with our scheduling, but the quality needs to be better than it’s been in our first nine games, just because of the challenges we’ve endured through those first nine weeks, I feel very strongly that we will accomplish that, and we did accomplish that this week. Like I said already, I feel good about our week’s preparation.