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Countdown to training camp: 29 days
By Lori Nickel of the Journal Sentinel
July 2, 2010 |(80) Comments

Hi everyone. If this were the desert southwest you could cue up the tumbleweeds blowing by this ghost town. It is just quiet. The noise is all on the water, from Summerfest to the fireworks, to the power boats and wave runners. Everyone else seems to be golfing like Tony Romo.

In the drought from real news -- NFL fans know well that July is a dead month -- here are a few quotes and notes, just little additional bits aside from the new stuff in Packer Insider (subscription required) and what we already covered this summer, to keep your discussions going until Clay Matthews makes that first full padded tackle against Ryan Grant:

TE Donald Lee seems OK with taking a backseat to Jermichael Finley and returning to the special teams. Im here to help this team win games and make it better. Thats how I got my name, came in to the league playing special teams. Im fortunate enough to be a starter for a couple of years and now it seems like I am passing the torch. So it is J-Mikes time and I am happy for him and I am willing to back him up and stay in his corner to help him succeed. By doing that, they want me to play more special teams. Now my goal is to be one of the key guys on special teams, one of the best players there. I will continue to work and whatever they ask me to do I will do.

Offensive coordinator Joe Philbin on Lee in lesser role: "I don't know, we haven't really talked to him about it. I'm sure him being a competitor, he would like better numbers - whatever they were last year. He looks great, he's had a good offseason, he's working hard. I'm sure in his mind he's going to re-establish himself."

OL Bryan Bulaga said it has been strange to see the 3-4 defense every day. Yeah. Well, its gotten better. But in college you see it maybe three times maybe my whole entire college career. Minnesota showed it to us a little bit. Ohio State has a couple variations of it. So yeah it was different getting adjusted to it, the different personnel groups that come in and the blitzing packages and third and long packages.

RB Brandon Jackson said coach Mike McCarthys OTA schedule, with an extended break in between, kept everyone energized. I feel great. He did a better job in spacing out the time. He put a lot of rest and recovery in to our OTAs which is letting us stay around. From last year to this year participation in OTAs went up.

And finally, the offseason was productive for the Packers, but they won't be able to make real evaluations until camp. Said Philbin: "You like to see how they move around, see if they can pick up the system, see if they're in tune with a line call or a blocking scheme adjustment or a blitz that happens fast, what they do in the middle of that play, can they pick up a twist. So there's a lot you can gather from these practices. Is it everything? No, you can't make a total evaluation."

Have a good Fourth.