Tapp-ing into the Numbers: 40 Packers Stats Until Opening Kickoff (No. 16)
By JERRY TAPP
If you are looking for the Packers to have a 100-yard rusher in their first game of the season versus the Seahawks, history has shown that it is probably unlikely.
In the Packers first game of the year, there have been only five games where a Green Bay player rushed for 100 or more yards. The last time it happened was September 10, 2006 when Ahman Green had 110 yards rushing versus the Chicago Bears in the Pack’s 26-0 loss. In fact, Green is one of only two Green Bay players to rush for 100 or more yards in the Packers first game of the season.
Here are the five times when a Packers player had 100 yards rushing in the team’s first game of the season.
2006-Ahman Green, 110 yards
2004-Ahman Green, 119 yards
2002-Ahman Green, 155 yards
2001-Ahman Green, 157 yards
1982-Eddie Lee Ivery, 109 yards
Looking at the Pack’s history, there have been only 25 times when a Packers player rushed for 75 or more yards in the opening game of the season. Eddie Lacy had 85 yards rushing in the 2015 season opener against the Bears, the last player to reach these numbers on opening day.
In 1964, a pair of Packers, Jim Taylor and Paul Hornun, each rushed for more than 75 yards in the opening contest. Taylor had 79 while Hornung had 77 in the team’s 23-10 over the Bears.
Jerry Tapp
Jerry Tapp is a freelance writer from Racine, WI with a major concentration on sports statistics and numbers that define sports teams and players. He began his foray into sports stats-focused writing as a regular contributor to the “Numbers” column in Inside Sports magazine in the mid-1980’s and then began writing a weekly “Stats on Tapp” column for the Racine Journal Times. That column was eventually nationally syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate. He later wrote sports stats items for the Washington Post under the “Stat of the Day” heading. After launching his blog, www.statsontapp.com in 2011, Jerry turned his sports stats attention to sports websites. He wrote regularly for Bleacher Report, BallHyped, football.com and Heavy.com. Today he keeps busy writing weekly columns of stats-centric articles for three sports websites, Today’s Pigskin (NFL), Today’s Knuckleball (MLB) and Today’s Fastbreak (NBA), and as a monthly contributor to the Milwaukee Brewers “GameDay” publication that is distributed to fans attending games at Miller Park.