It’s been a tough start for the Packers’ 2024 first-round pick.

It was less than three months ago that Jordan Morgan was the Packers ’ starting right guard.


Sure, unofficial depth charts aren’t really worth the digital paper they’re printed on. But when the Packers dropped the first edition of their 2024 depth chart, they listed Morgan, not incumbent Sean Rhyan, as their starting right guard.


That was August 5. The next day, Morgan left practice with a shoulder injury, and on August 7, head coach Matt LaFleur said the 2024 first-round pick would be out “probably a week or so.”


Instead, Morgan’s injury lingered for three weeks, wiping out his entire preseason. Rhyan, who split time down the stretch in 2023 with Jon Runyan Jr., reclaimed the starting job and hasn’t given it back.


Worse, Morgan has seemingly not been able to make up any ground. When healthy, the Packers have continued to drip-feed him a few snaps, but he’s consistently been well behind Rhyan.


Through eight weeks, Rhyan has never played fewer than 55% of the Packers’ snaps on offense, while Morgan has only broken 50% once. Even that small success comes with an asterisk: Morgan played 52% of the Packers’ snaps in Week 6, but that’s only because he and Rhyan were briefly on the field together. That day, Rhyan bumped to left guard after Elgton Jenkings slid to center due to an injury to Josh Myers.


For his part, Rhyan has been playing well, and part of the reason Morgan hasn’t played more is a recurrence of his shoulder injury. He reinjured his shoulder in the Packers’ Week 2 win over the Colts and was out the next three weeks.


But now completely healthy, Morgan seems to be falling further behind. He has played just 22 and 31 snaps in Weeks 7 and 8, respectively. Those are the lowest and third-lowest snap totals he’s posted this season.


Morgan’s season has been concerning on several fronts. Even with respect to Rhyan’s relatively strong play, it’s hard to spin any kind of positivity out of Morgan’s inability to surpass a player who was, until relatively recently, all but an afterthought in Green Bay. Part of that is because the Packers have asked Morgan to play a position he’s never played before, but that itself is a frustrating decision because it didn’t have to be made.


To wit: the Packers are once again in the position of watching a player taken directly after their selection immediately establish himself as a solid NFL player. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers  took Duke interior lineman Graham Barton 26th overall this spring, installed him at center, and never looked back. Outside of Week 6, when a hamstring injury kept him on the sideline, Barton has played every single snap for the Buccaneers. It’s not quite a one-to-one comparison to the Josh Myers/Creed Humphrey situation, but it is frustrating to see the Packers take a project player when a ready-made option was sitting right there.


To be clear, Morgan could still develop into a high-quality NFL player. Five games (along with three missed due to injury) do not a career make. Rhyan alone is evidence of what can come with a little patience. But it’s been an inauspicious start for the Packers’ top selection in the 2024 NFL Draft , and hopefully things will turn around for Morgan in the near future.










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