Green Bay Packers tight end Tucker Kraft’s low block on Patrick Jones did not seem to cause any serious injury to the Minnesota Vikings edge rusher.
However, it sparked a lot of debate between the two NFC North teams.
Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell said Monday that Jones might still play in Sunday’s game against Detroit, which will decide the NFC North champion and the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs. Jones left the Vikings’ 27-25 win over the Packers after the incident with Kraft in the second quarter.
“He’ll have a chance to even possibly make it this week,” O’Connell said. “We’ll see how he works through it.”
Vikings edge rusher Jonathan Greenard took to social media to criticize Kraft’s block, which did not result in a penalty. During his Monday news conference, Packers coach Matt LaFleur defended Kraft’s actions, calling it a “totally legal play.”
The play happened in the second quarter when Kraft was trying to help create space for Josh Jacobs on a 5-yard run.
“Dude motioned from 30 yards away to STILL cut him,” Greenard wrote after the game on an X post. “Pathetic. Be a man block up high. NFL, get rid of this block PLEASE.”
LaFleur said Kraft’s move was allowed by the rules and pointed out that “it’s the same thing that their guys were doing to our defensive ends.”
“That’s a way to try to slow down just the speed off the edge,” LaFleur said. “It’s a great equalizer. That’s tough for the offense, to have to deal with that, so you’ve got to have some sort of recourse to try to slow somebody down.”
LaFleur suggested that if low blocks were banned, all hits below the knee should be as well. He pointed out that receivers often get hit low when crossing the middle. He proposed having a strike zone for each player from below the neck to above the knee in that case.
“Our intent is not to go hurt somebody,” LaFleur said. “You never want to see that. I don’t want to see that from either team. The intent is to slow somebody down, and I do think it’s part of our job as coaches, is to teach our, whether it’s an edge rusher or whoever, how to defeat a cut block.
And conversely, you’ve got to teach them how to throw a good cut, you know? That’s part of our responsibility, and then the players have got to go out there and apply that.”
