GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Mike McCarthy was having a little fun at the beginning of his press conference on Tuesday, when he pretended not to know who Knile Davis was or why anyone would ask about him.
“Who?” McCarthy replied when asked if his new running back could step in and help the Green Bay Packers on a short week with the Chicago Bears coming to Lambeau Field on Thursday night.
Yes, it was that surprising that Ted Thompson made an in-season trade. A blue moon occurs more frequently than the Packers general manager makes that kind of move.
Six years to the day of his last trade to bring a player to Green Bay -- the unmemorable Anthony Smith, a safety who played four games for the Packers after the Oct. 18, 2010 trade for a conditional draft pick from Jacksonville -- Thompson dealt another conditional pick to the Kansas City Chiefs for the fourth-year running back, who had fallen to fourth on coach Andy Reid’s depth chart.
Smith’s tenure made so little impact -- he played four games -- that he didn’t meet the conditions of the trade, and it cost the Packers nothing other than the weekly minimum salary.
Whether Davis, who has 775 career yards in three-plus season but only one carry for minus-2 yards this season, makes any more of a mark on the Packers likely depends on how quickly James Starks and Eddie Lacy can recover from their injuries and how adept Davis is at learning the Packers’ offense.
Starks will miss “a couple of weeks,” according to McCarthy, after the backup running back underwent surgery on Sunday to repair a torn meniscus, and Lacy’s sprained left ankle is “very sore," McCarthy said, and will keep him out of practice on Tuesday.
That will give Davis, who arrived at Lambeau Field shortly before McCarthy’s 11:15 a.m. local time press conference, a chance to jump right in. He’ll likely split reps with practice-squad running back Don Jackson, who was going to be promoted to the roster until the trade went down Tuesday morning. There’s a chance Jackson still could get the call before Thursday night.
Davis caught the Packers’ eye in the preseason, when he rushed 14 times for 58 yards and a touchdown against them in the finale at Kansas City.
The focus now is on getting Davis as versed as possible in McCarthy’s offense, which should have some similarities to Reid’s version of the West coast system.
McCarthy wasn’t even thinking about Thursday’s game but rather a more immediate situation.
“The goal is to get him ready for practice today, and we’ll take it from there,” McCarthy said before Tuesday’s on-field session.
“It’s obviously a big challenge when you’re on a short week, but he’s definitely a talented young player,” McCarthy added. “Obviously had a chance to compete against him and see him play live in the preseason game, and he had a lot of production that night. So just looking forward to getting him into the mix and get going.”