AP

The Packers will definitely be without wide receiver Randall Cobb for the near future and may be missing wide receiver James Jones in Week Seven as well, leaving the team awfully short on guys to catch Aaron Rodgers’ passes.

Rodgers acknowledged the difficulties of playing without key offensive pieces during his weekly radio show with Jason Wilde of ESPN Wisconsin on Tuesday, but pointed to a change that’s already been made on the offense as the best way for the team to weather the absences. The Packers have broken from recent tradition by churning up the fifth-most rushing yards in the league and Rodgers said that’s been essential to the offense.

“We are a top five running and throwing the football offense. This is exciting. It’s exciting offensive football,” Rodgers said, via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Running the football has opened a lot of that stuff up. I give all those guys a lot of credit. The majority of credit for the players goes to the offensive line. Those guys have done an excellent job of opening up some holes. Teams have been daring us at times to run the football. But against Baltimore, especially in the second half, there were some real tough looks that we stuck with some runs and the guys did a good job of getting a hat on hat, and Eddie [Lacy] did a good job of making a guy miss. Eddie as a runner is underrated when it comes to being elusive. I mean he has the ability to make guys miss in the hole. And when you pair that with some great power, he’s the kind of back who makes you smile.”

Outside of the win over the Redskins, we haven’t seen the Packers offense we expected to see this season. The one we have seen has been productive, though, and the emergence of a consistent running game has been vital to that effort. If Lacy can give them more of what we’ve seen the last two weeks, the absence of Cobb will be overcome more easily.