GREEN BAY, Wis. — Atop Tucker Kraft’s to-do list at his first practice since tearing his ACL last Nov. 2 was pumping up the crowd. So, early during Friday’s session at Ray Nitschke Field, the Green Bay Packers’ standout tight end ran alongside the stands with his helmet in his left hand while motioning for the fans to turn up with his right.
“Had to get the crowd juiced up, for sure,” Kraft said after practice.
Kraft said this spring that he expects to play Week 1 in Minnesota without a snap count, but he is not quite there yet. It’s a great sign for him and the Packers that arguably the team’s third-most-important player behind quarterback Jordan Love and edge rusher Micah Parsons is back at practice, but Kraft made sure to temper expectations for the immediate future.
After all, Kraft is defying the Packers’ nine-month no-football rule for players who tore their ACL because that mark for him doesn’t arrive for another two days.
Tucker Kraft returns from ACL rehab at training camp
Matt Schneidman
“I don’t want anyone to get their expectations too high,” Kraft said. “I’m not gonna be doing anything too crazy here for a while, but as long as our GM and our training staff, the coaches, everyone’s on the same page, I’ll just get phased in period by period until you guys see me out there taking team reps. So that’s the goal. We’re on that ramp-up phase right now to get ready for Week 1.
“Gutey (general manager Brian Gutekunst) and I have talked about how he’s essentially protecting me from myself because I’m all gas. Like a tricycle, I don’t come with brakes.”
“There’s a lot of science behind the nine-month mark, and so we’ll be very cautious as we head into it,” Gutekunst said Wednesday regarding Kraft.
Kraft isn’t participating in 11-on-11 work yet, but on Friday he took part in positional drills with the tight ends as they hit a blocking pad, caught passes on the side from tight ends coach John Dunn and the quarterbacks, and ran a couple of routes against air.
Kraft said that he first told the team he was ready to practice about a month ago. He campaigned to stay off the physically unable to perform list to start camp, and he ended up lasting only two practices on it, anyway. On Friday morning, Kraft met with doctors from the University of Wisconsin’s Badger Lab and was told by one of them that his knee looks “spectacular, almost like he had never seen rehabilitation like mine.”
“Rich Bisaccia used to say, ‘Every decision you make has an impact on your team,’ ” Kraft said of the former Packers special teams coordinator. “So when I’m sitting there feeling sorry for myself, drenched in sweat, maybe a little doubtful of my ability at the moment, I can really just lean into the pain knowing that what I have ahead of me is these 53 guys really relying on my ability when I return to play.”
Tucker Kraft works on a blocking drill during training camp on Friday. (Sarah Kloepping / Imagn Images)
Kraft will join team drills at some point. He doesn’t anticipate playing in a preseason game but wants to participate in the joint practice with the Arizona Cardinals during the third week of the preseason.
“That would be the closest thing I would get to stepping onto the football field before the football field. That might not happen. Still in the works,” Kraft said. “It’s just knowing how to play competitive again. I would say, like, I’m 98 percent back. That 2 percent, again, is me getting ripped on my face from a (defensive) end or taking on contact, playing a little bit more fullback and getting back to the catch transition again and everything like that. You can’t simulate that stuff when you’re constantly playing against your own teammates.”
All of that is what’s important regarding Kraft on the field. And then there’s his contract.
Kraft is a 2023 third-round pick who has become one of the NFL’s best tight ends. He said earlier this offseason that he felt he was the league’s best when he tore his ACL in Week 9 against the Carolina Panthers last season. From Weeks 1-8, he ranked first in the NFL among tight ends in yards after catch per reception, second in touchdown catches and third in receiving yards. The week before his season ended, he caught seven passes for 143 yards and two touchdowns in a 35-25 win in Pittsburgh on “Sunday Night Football.”
San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle tops the position with an average annual salary of $19.1 million. Kraft, who shares an agent with Kittle, has a case to top that mark. Gutekunst said Wednesday that he expects and hopes for an extension before the regular season. Kraft said Wednesday that it would be best for the deal to get done as soon as possible. Kraft wants to be a lifer in Green Bay, and the Packers have made it clear to the 25-year-old that they want him here long term.
If the preseason progresses without that long-term security, however, will Kraft be hesitant to go full speed coming off a major injury?
“I understand other people’s worries in that facet,” Kraft said. “However, I myself, I’m just worried about getting back to who I was pre-injury.”
That doesn’t mean Kraft isn’t thinking about his impending lucrative extension. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
“I’m as involved as I can possibly be in it,” Kraft said. “Every number, data point, argument, I’m going to be my own advocate as much as I can because I know what my abilities are and what I bring to the table.”
Here are seven other notable observations from Friday’s practice:
1. Cornerback Keisean Nixon was active on Friday. He pressured Love into an incompletion on the first play of 11-on-11s with a corner blitz. He also had two nice pass breakups: one against wide receiver Christian Watson down the right sideline and one against wideout Skyy Moore over the middle.
2. Nixon also got beaten by wide receiver Matthew Golden, who made the catch of the day on a bomb from Love down the right sideline. The ball wasn’t Love’s tightest spiral, but Golden tracked the ball perfectly for an over-the-shoulder catch. Golden was again busy on Friday, making a couple of nice hands catches and a leaping grab across the middle over safety Xavier McKinney and cornerback Carrington Valentine.
3. Speaking of Valentine, he also had an impressive day in his quest to hold off rookie second-rounder Brandon Cisse and veteran Benjamin St-Juste for a starting spot. Valentine burst off the edge for what probably would have been a tackle for loss on running back Josh Jacobs, broke up a sideline ball for Golden with sticky coverage and did the same against receiver Savion Williams.
4. St-Juste, however, made the play of the day when he jumped an out from quarterback Tyrod Taylor for a pick-six. St-Juste, who missed all of OTAs with a shoulder injury, said the defense discussed before practice how the offense had been hitting them with a lot of quick routes. They emphasized reading the quarterback’s drop steps to better identify whether a quick throw was coming or a longer-developing one.
“If they’re in the shotgun, they’ll take maybe two or three steps; it’ll be a little bit deeper-developing,” St-Juste said. “I saw him not take his drop steps off, so I didn’t take any ground or backpedal and then drove on the ball … as a quarterback, you’re not taking the ball from the shotgun and going, like, flat-footed and trying to throw a deep ball. It’s pretty much impossible, so as soon as I see you open up and go flat-footed, I know you’re not going anywhere. So I’m driving on that. … I put my eyes back on the receiver and saw that he broke and was able to break before him and make the play.”
5. The Packers have had an undrafted rookie on their Week 1 roster in 21 consecutive seasons. Could that be wide receiver J. Michael Sturdivant this year? The rookie from Florida saw a handful of balls on Friday with varying degrees of success. He made a nice catch on a slant thanks to a perfectly timed throw from Taylor, corralled another ball from Taylor deep over the middle, and made a sliding catch near the sideline while almost taking out Parsons standing nearby (perhaps Parsons ought to watch practice from further back). Sturdivant, who has been running with the second-team offense, also has two bad drops in the past two days.
“You’ve got to have a short-term memory when it comes to the drops,” Sturdivant said. “Everybody’s going to drop a ball. Obviously, you don’t want to drop one, but it happens, and you have to be able to move on to the next play as fast as possible.”
6. Other notable plays included Love hitting wideout Jayden Reed on a wheel route for a big gain, defensive tackle Karl Brooks batting down a Love pass at the line, nickel Johnathan Baldwin notching two “sacks” off the edge, wide receiver Isaiah Neyor making another big catch past Baldwin down the right sideline on a great ball from Taylor, and safety Murvin Kenion III blowing up a dump-off to running back Damien Martinez in the low red zone.
7. Linebacker Edgerrin Cooper participated in team drills Friday, a day after leaving practice early with an injury. Left guard Aaron Banks returned to practice in a limited capacity, while Parsons, defensive tackle Javon Hargrave, tight end Luke Musgrave, offensive lineman Jager Burton, running back Chris Brooks, long snapper Matt Orzech, cornerback Kamal Hadden, defensive tackle Jordon Riley and offensive lineman Brant Banks remained sidelined.
