Paul Bretl | 1/14/2025
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Packers rookie running back MarShawn Lloyd is ready to turn the page and begin preparing for his second year in the NFL after dealing with injuries and setbacks throughout the 2024 season.
“Been a very, very rough year,” said Lloyd at his locker the day after Green Bay’s loss to Philadelphia.
Lloyd’s start to training camp was delayed due to a hip injury. A hamstring in the Packers preseason opener would keep him sidelined until Week 2 of the regular season, at which point he suffered a foot injury against Indianapolis.
That would land him on injured reserve. Then, as Lloyd was working his way back, he was hit by appendicitis. In his recovery from that, Lloyd would tweak his hamstring, which ended his season. He finished his rookie season appearing in one game and playing 10 snaps.
“Everything happens for a reason,” said Lloyd about the injuries. “So that’s the thing that went through my head. I’ve always tried to, okay, ‘why this happen, why this happen,’ but at the end of the day you just gotta go with it. Go with it, trust your guy, believe everything happens for a reason. Believe, have faith, and just hope for the best.”
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Helping Lloyd along as he navigated these injuries was Josh Jacobs. The two would drive over from Lambeau Field to the Don Hutson Center each day for practice, with Jacobs making sure that Lloyd “stayed in it,” as he put it, by providing pointers along the way and taking the rookie under his wing.
While rehabbing from the various injuries, Lloyd did everything he could off the field to stay engaged and familiarizing himself with the playbook, the weekly game-plans, and after a play was made, putting himself in each experience, thinking through what he might have done differently.
“Honestly just not being on the field I got better mentally, emotionally, being able to be there with the teammates,” Lloyd said. “Every practice, every meeting, I’m in every meeting. My coaches still give me the game test as if I’m playing. So I know the plays.
“Everything mentally is pretty good, so that’s the way I got better. Even though I wasn’t able to go out there and play, I still made sure like I was, when people made plays, I thought what I could have done different or just try to put myself in each experience.”
Just as Christian Watson and Eric Stokes did last offseason, Lloyd recently spent time at UW-Madison to get to the root cause of the soft tissue injuries. It was a full five hours doing a variety of exercises to find “deficiencies,” or areas that need to be strengthened.
Lloyd has already began the program prescribed to him after his visit to Madison.
“You’re just doing multiple different things to figure out how your body works,” Lloyd said. “Deficiencies in your body, seeing what’s stronger, what’s—really focusing on everything. Running on different treadmills to see how you run, to see if you’re running correctly, if there’s a problem with certain things. The science around it is crazy.”
The Packers selected Lloyd in the third round of this past April’s draft and he brings something “different,” as GM Brian Gutekunst put it, than the other running backs on the roster. Lloyd measures in at 5-9 – 220 pounds and has terrific burst–running in the 4.4s–and change of direction ability that is easily spotted on the practice field when the ball is in his hands.
Matt LaFleur views Lloyd as a back who can bring a change of pace to the running back position with his speed and also be someone who can impact the passing game as well, giving the Packers a “matchup nightmare,” as LaFleur called him during the offseason, out of the backfield.
Priority No. 1 for Lloyd this offseason is to get his body healthy so he’s physically able to do everything he needs to in order to prepare for the upcoming season. Although Year 1 in the NFL didn’t go as planned, Lloyd now knows what’s required on a daily basis from a preparation standpoint and he’s ready to put his foot on the gas to make sure that he can help the 2025 Packers as much as possible–something he’s very much ready to do.
“Josh had a really good year,” added Lloyd, “and I do think and I do know that I can help him a lot. He had a lot of hits on his body, I’m there to help and he knows that. It’s going to be fun when I get out there on the field to play with him.”