Super Bowl Odds: Packers’ Driver Will Play

Added on Feb 04, 2011 by Jack Thurman in

Super Bowl

Green Bay Packers wide receiver Donald Driver is nursing a quadriceps injury that limited him in practice on Thursday and kept him out of practice on Friday, but according to coach Mike McCarthy it’s a non-issue and expects him to play on Sunday. The injury has had no impact on the Super Bowl betting line, which remains Green Bay -2′ with the total set at 44′. Driver missed a game due to a quad injury earlier this season, and the Packers have added him to the official injury report indicating that he was ‘limited in practice’ but listing him as ‘probable’ for Super Bowl XLV.

According to McCarthy, Driver ‘tweaked’ the quad in Wednesday’s practice but added that he would be ‘shocked’ if he doesn’t play:

“He would practice today if I would let him. He tweaked it in Wednesday’s practice, and frankly I just do not want to take any chances at this point. So I will hold Donald from practice again today. Donald’s played a lot of football, he knows the offense, he’s had a whole week of preparation with the plan last week, so this is clearly just being safe.”

McCarthy also used some more unorthodox tactics to prepare his team for the big game, showing them a scene from the movie “Hoosiers”:

“Everybody loves the movie Hoosiers, where the basketball team walks into the arena and they measure the foul line and it’s 15 feet, and they measure the hoop and it’s 10 feet, and everybody goes ‘OK, it’s big in here. That’s our approach. We’re going to play football.”

McCarthy also suggested that minor issues like the Driver injury aren’t likely to cause problems for his team:

“There are a lot of steady personalities in our locker room. We don’t have a lot of people bouncing off the walls when something goes wrong. I think that is a real credit to our people, to our players, and I think that is a big part of why we have been successful this year.”

Overall, McCarthy says that the week has gone fairly smoothly in terms of Super Bowl preparation. It’s been pretty much a typical game week schedule, though McCarthy did say that he’s scheduled an unidentified guest speaker to address the team on Saturday night.