Packers Staring Down Week 1 Without Micah Parsons and Josh Jacobs

The Green Bay Packers are about to start their season missing their best pass rusher and their starting running back, which is exactly the kind of news that makes Vegas oddsmakers aggressively adjust their spreadsheets.

Adam Schefter just dropped the hammer that Micah Parsons is officially out for the start of the year recovering from his torn ACL, and Josh Jacobs is staring down a likely league suspension. If you were holding a ticket on Green Bay to come out of the gates hot, you might want to look away.

"Adam Schefter reported that the Packers are set to open the season without Parsons and are poised to be without Jacobs."

Parsons missing time is a math problem we all saw coming. He tore his ACL and meniscus back in Week 15 against the Denver Broncos, had surgery on December 29, and was handed a strict nine-month ban from football activities. You do not rush a guy who racked up 12.5 sacks last year, even if his absence leaves the defense looking like a screen door in a hurricane.

The Jacobs situation is a completely different, entirely self-inflicted mess. He was arrested in May on multiple charges, including felony strangulation, and the NFL is currently running its own investigation. The league does not need a legal conviction to drop the hammer, and recent history suggests a six-to-eight-game suspension is very much on the table.

This leaves head coach Matt LaFleur trying to duct-tape a roster together before the real games even start. MarShawn Lloyd is suddenly the most important mechanical piece of this backfield, which is a terrifying sentence for a team with Super Bowl aspirations.

The Packers open their season on September 13 against the Minnesota Vikings, and they will have to survive a brutal early gauntlet without two of their biggest stars. Green Bay needs to keep its head above water until October, or this championship window might slam shut before Parsons even gets his cleats laced up.