Late October is when rosters stop pretending. Practice squads churn, veteran kickers get flown in for Tuesday workouts, and a questionable tag ahead of a Monday night game carries more weight than it did in September. Notes from Detroit, Chicago, Green Bay, Los Angeles, and the Monday night game.
The Detroit Lions signed WR DeAndre Carter to the practice squad, and the temptation is to file it as receiver depth. It isn't depth. A practice squad slot in late October is scout-team reps plus an elevation clause, and Detroit knows exactly how thin that is. My read: this is topping off the bottom of the receiver room because the Lions expect to need it, not because they expect Carter to change a game. The question worth tracking is whether he ever gets a game-day elevation. If he does, something above him broke.
The Chicago Bears signed DB K.C. Eziomume to the practice squad, and the read here is different from Detroit's even though the transaction looks identical on a wire. Secondaries are where teams hoard bodies, because a defensive back is the hardest player to plug in cold. The Bears aren't fixing anything with this signing. They're buying an option, and the option only gets exercised if the injury report turns.
Then the Green Bay Packers, the only item here with a whistle attached. Matt LaFleur said Jordan Love has not been getting potential roughing-the-passer calls, then suggested Love should be more aggressive with officials, noting he has seen other players do it and it works. The consensus take writes itself: work the refs, join the club. I don't buy it. Once a coach says that at a podium, the lobbying stops being private and Love becomes the quarterback whose team publicly campaigns for flags. Officials notice that. The more useful thing LaFleur revealed is the diagnosis, not the remedy. If Love isn't drawing those calls, the likelier explanation is how the pressure is arriving, not how loudly the quarterback complains about it. Coaching him to sell it treats a symptom while the cause keeps landing on him. My expectation is Love picks up a reputation for working the officials before he picks up the calls.
Los Angeles: NBC Sports' ProFootballTalk reports the Rams are bringing veteran kickers Matt Prater and Brandon McManus in for Tuesday workouts. Prater and McManus, one job, and that's the tell. Teams don't fly in established kickers in October to run a friendly competition. Whichever one signs inherits a short leash, and if the Rams work out both and sign neither, that's the loudest message of the week to whoever currently holds the job.
Washington has the problem with a kickoff time attached. Stefon Diggs is officially listed as questionable with a hamstring injury for the Commanders' Monday night meeting with the 49ers. Questionable on a Monday is the worst flavor of it, because there's no Wednesday to fall back on. The inactive list lands before warmups and the week's plan is already spent. A hamstring also taxes a receiver more directly than most soft-tissue issues, since it's the muscle that has to decelerate at the top of the route. I expect Diggs to dress and be a partial participant at best, and I expect San Francisco's secondary to play him exactly that way.
What ties the day together isn't flattering to anyone. Practice-squad churn and a kicker audition are the same behavior: patching the bottom of the roster during the part of the season when the top of it has already been exposed.
Verdict, signed: LaFleur's press conference is the item that will still matter in December, and not in the direction he intended. The Rams sign one of those two kickers. And Detroit gets Carter onto a game-day roster before Chicago gets Eziomume onto one. Wrong on any of it and I'll own it in this space.