Chris Brooks Camp Update — August 16: Back at Practice While Lloyd Took the Game Reps

Chris Brooks is back at practice in Green Bay, and the man he is competing with for the number-two running back job just played an actual football game without him. Brooks returned to the field on or around August ninth after opening camp on the active non-football-injury list, a placement NBC Sports reported in late July, and Packers News posted a video dated August ninth of Brooks talking about his return to practice. Then Thursday night in Pittsburgh, Green Bay lost its preseason opener 28 to nine, and Brooks did not appear in any of the game coverage we reviewed, while MarShawn Lloyd got his first in-game action in a calendar year.

The June preview's core read was that Brooks's value was never really about Brooks. We said he was a rugged rotation back who had backed into the number-two job behind Josh Jacobs when Emanuel Wilson left for Seattle, that his passing-down hands were the one real tell in his file, and that the thing to watch all summer was whether Brooks or Lloyd owned the backup work. That competition is now fully live, and this week it tilted the other way. The non-football-injury stint cost Brooks the first two weeks of camp, and when Josh Jacobs sat out Thursday with a groin injury, the backfield opportunity in a real game went to Lloyd, with no usage attributable to Brooks at all.

Nothing here erases his standing. He is healthy, he is practicing, and the two-year contract Green Bay gave him in the spring still says the staff wants him around. But the June argument rested on Brooks holding the second chair by default, and the default just got contested by a healthy Lloyd taking game snaps.

Does the June read hold? COMPLICATED — the number-two role we said he had backed into is now an open competition, and the missed camp time plus a game with no attributable role both cut against him this week.

Next week, Green Bay hosts Denver on Thursday night. Watch whether Brooks dresses and gets backfield touches, and how the work splits with Lloyd while Jacobs recovers, because that pecking order is the entire Brooks case. We'll check next Sunday.

_Data via nflverse._