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          NFL Nation

          Pro Bowl guard Josh Sitton was Packers' ironman on offense

          • Rob Demovsky, ESPN Staff WriterJan 26, 2016, 06:00 PM
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              Rob Demovsky is an NFL reporter at ESPN and covers the Green Bay Packers. He has covered the Packers since 1997 and joined ESPN in 2013. Demovsky is a two-time Wisconsin Sportswriter of the Year as selected by the NSSA. You can follow him on Twitter at @RobDemovsky.
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          GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Josh Sitton was the ironman of the Green Bay Packers' offense.

          No one on his side of the ball played a higher percentage of the Packers’ offense snaps than the Pro Bowl left guard. And he did it while battling a sore back for most of the season.

          Sitton was on the field for all but eight of the Packers’ 1,292 offensive snaps (including penalty plays) this season. It would have been 100 percent had coach Mike McCarthy not taken him out for the final series in blowout losses at Denver in Week 8 and at Arizona in Week 16.

          Of the Packers’ five regular starters on the offensive line, only Sitton and right guard T.J. Lang played more than 80 percent of the snaps. Both did it with injuries. Lang is expected to undergo shoulder surgery this offseason.

          “I’ve always prided myself on making sure I’m out there,” Sitton said late in the season. “It’s something that I’ve always made a point of. Sometimes it’s tough when you’re playing with four or five or six different lineups. I think offensive line is a very unique position in the fact that you need five guys to be on the same page all at once. You need to be on the same page, you need to have that chemistry, and you build that over the season.

          “That’s what we were able to do last year because we were able to stay healthy. That’s something, unfortunately, we haven’t been able to do this year because of injuries.”

          It was the fourth straight season that Sitton did not miss a start. In 2014, he played 95.5 percent of the season snaps despite a significant toe injury that prevented him from practicing much late in the year.

          “There were weeks last year that I just knew for a fact that I couldn’t go out and practice,” Sitton said. “I think that probably hasn’t been the case with the back. I would say the toe was probably a little bit bigger.”

          Below are the total snaps counts on offense from this past season (we’ll have the defensive and special teams breakdowns later in the week). For comparison, here are last year's offensive totals.

          Total offensive plays: 1,292 (including plays wiped out by penalties)

          Offensive line

          Quarterbacks

          Receivers

          Running backs

          Tight ends