Aaron Rodgers will undergo surgery to repair his injured collarbone, Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy said Monday.
"Aaron Rodgers suffered a significant injury in the game," McCarthy said. "It will require surgery. He'll be out a minimum of a significant amount of time. Potentially, his season can be over. He'll have surgery here in the near future. After we see how that goes, focus on getting better and healthy -- that's all that really matters right now."
McCarthy stopped short of saying definitively that Rodgers' season is over, but surgery likely means a lengthy rehab that would wipe out the rest of 2017. The quarterback was not placed on injured reserve on Monday. If Rodgers goes on IR, he would be out a minimum of eight weeks.
"The key is to get Aaron healthy, it's not to develop a timeline. That's not the focus," McCarthy said when pressed on Rodgers' potential availability.
Rodgers injured the collarbone on his throwing shoulder in Sunday's loss to the Minnesota Vikings when he was drilled into the turf by linebacker Anthony Barr.
"I didn't like the hit," McCarthy said. "I had a chance to watch it last night on the plane. He's out of the pocket. He's clearly expecting to get hit, but to pin him to the ground like that, I felt was an illegal act. To sit here and lose any of your players on something like that doesn't feel very good. I didn't like the hit. It was unnecessary, illegal, whatever you want to put it. It was totally unnecessary in my opinion."
The Packers (4-2) will turn their season over to third-year quarterback Brett Hundley, who will make his first career NFL start at home Sunday versus the New Orleans Saints. Green Bay signed backup quarterback Joe Callahan from the practice squad on Monday.
A fired-up McCarthy insisted he's confident Hundley can move the offense when the pieces around him are performing their jobs.
"I've got three years invested in Brett Hundley. I've got great confidence in Brett Hundley," McCarthy said. "I've got two years invested in Joe Callahan. It's a quarterback room that has structure and there is a philosophy behind the development of it and it will be applied to the game plan. So, I feel great about the room. That's not really a concern of mine. I'm more focused on getting back to playing Green Bay football because yesterday was not anything where we need it to be."
McCarthy added it's on him to get the third-year quarterback into a better rhythm and the other 10 players on the field to play up to the team's standards.
"I've got to do a better job. I've got to get Brett into a flow," McCarthy said. "But more importantly we need to get our offense in a flow. We didn't run the ball very well yesterday. Pass protections was a negative. We didn't handle basic blitzes that they came with. So we need to get that shored up and then the pass game will then come. We've got to play cleaner football. "
