Just look back to 2015, when a banged-up Packers team shifted JC Tretter, with all of three career starts at center, out to left tackle in place of David Bakhtiari for a playoff game at Washington. Or in 2016, when an undrafted second-year pro in LaDarius Gunter started 18 of 19 games at cornerback, partly because he was the only player at his position who could stay healthy. Or that same year when injuries forced rookie tackle Jason Spriggs to play out of position at guard for three weeks until T.J. Lang could come back.

The Packers made the best of those situations and still found success, coming an overtime away from the NFC title game in '15 and then getting there in '16. But the state of the depth chart made those tasks infinitely tougher.

Having the level of experience at all positions that reserves like Kendricks, Bell and House bring to theirs isn't realistic, not with a salary cap and the need to have young players in the pipeline.

But now in at least a few places the Packers have been put in some really difficult spots before, the players they might have to call upon are more known quantities who have large bodies of work to fall back on.

"You'd always like to have a little bit of both (youth and experience) and have it tiered through your roster, but that's not always the case," Gutekunst said. "Those players, having that kind of experience made us feel better about the backup spots."

As for the young reserves still developing their games, undrafted rookie linebacker James Crawford from Illinois might have been the most surprising inclusion on the 53-man roster, especially given he didn't arrive in Green Bay until two weeks into training camp.