GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Matt LaFleur knew he had a problem on his hands when he took the Green Bay Packers' head-coaching job last January -- an injury problem.

The Packers, according the injury-tracking website Man-Games Lost, were one of the most banged-up NFL teams of the past decade. From 2009 through 2018, only six teams were considered more injured than the Packers.

The issue did not catch LaFleur by surprise.

"I was well aware of that coming in here," LaFleur said recently.

LaFleur had decisions to make.

Clean house in the training room?

Hire new team doctors?

Come up with a new nutrition plan?

Fire the strength and conditioning staff?

No, no, no and no.

The only thing the rookie head coach did in terms of a restructure was to flip-flop the strength and conditioning coordinator with the strength and conditioning assistant. According to LaFleur, the idea came from Mark Lovat, who had served as the head of that department from 2010-2018 but offered to take on an assistant's role and let his former top adviser, Chris Gizzi, take control.

When LaFleur blew out his Achilles playing basketball in May, the jokes came in quickly on social media.

"Nice start to the season, even our coach gets the injury bug, knew this guy was the perfect fit," said one commenter on Twitter.

Said another: "Good strategy. Keep all the injuries on the coaching staff this year. Not even [Bill] Belichick is that creative."

It turned out, that was about the worst of it.

Receiver Davante Adams' four-game absence from Weeks 5-8 because of turf toe was the most significant injury of the regular season, and the Packers won all four of those games. Adams still almost reached 1,000 yards for the season; he posted 997 for the second time in four years.

Of the 22 Week 1 starters on offense and defense, only two finished the regular season on injured reserve and one of them -- safety/inside linebacker Raven Greene -- was designated to return off IR this week and could play in the first playoff game Sunday. The other, left guard Lane Taylor, might have lost his job anyway even without his season-ending biceps injury after two games because the Packers had already begun to platoon him with rookie Elgton Jenkins.

No one around the Packers can pinpoint exactly the reason for the change. They'd rather knock on wood and keep going.

One thing was evident early: practices were shorter. The Packers' average training camp practice this past summer lasted one hour and 55 minutes -- or 17 minutes shorter than the previous summer.

"It's just a little bit more volume," Adams said. "I think it's a little bit more college-y, with the volume."

That worried some, at first, according to several players who privately expressed concerns about it during the offseason.

"I feel like before it was a little more maintenance, now we're continuing to build and strengthen throughout the season," Adams said. "Not that we weren't before; we had a good regimen before, but I think what we're doing now is a little more geared to keeping us going throughout the remainder of the regular season.

"It's a longer season. You're dealing with 20 games by the end of the regular season, so I think they don't really want to really tire you out, make you do too much, squat too heavy, things like that where in the past it was more just maintenance -- make sure we're not losing anything. Now, we're still trying to get stronger throughout the season."

Said running back Aaron Jones, who played in all 16 games for the first time in his career: "Starting from OTAs til now, with the schedule, the weight staff and making sure they stay on top of us, our hydration, our nutrition it's all monitored. It was done in the past, but it seems like more of an effort now to make sure you stay on top of it now."

Whether that change had anything to do to with it -- or it's everything else LaFleur has done from more walk-through sessions to a different midweek schedule -- or perhaps it's just football luck, the Packers managed to avoid the injury bug that had spread through the team like an incurable virus in previous years.

According to the Man-Games Lost site, the Packers had the eighth-fewest injuries in the NFL during the 2019 season. Their NFC divisional playoff opponent, the Seattle Seahawks, had the most in the league, according that same measure, losing 123 more games to injury than the Packers did.

What's more, it valued the Packers' injuries as the fourth-fewest in the league in what it calls "lost approximate value," which measures the impact of injuries based on the quality of players from their previous season's performance. The Seahawks’ lost approximate value was higher than all but two teams.

By that measure, the Packers ranked 24th, 32nd and 20th in the previous three seasons. For the 2017 season, when quarterback Aaron Rodgers played in only seven games because of a broken collarbone, the 7-9 Packers ranked as the team most impacted by injuries in the "lost approximate value" category.

"First of all, I think there's a lot of luck involved," LaFleur said. "But also, just trying to make sound decisions in terms of not overloading our guys so that you don't get a bunch more injuries. I've been really pleased with our strength staff and our athletic training staff in terms of, you know when a guys does get injured and the rehab."

The Packers have a few injuries, most of them on the offensive line, that could linger as they prepare for the playoff opener. Right tackle Bryan Bulaga spent all of last week in the concussion protocol; center Corey Linsley (back) and right guard Billy Turner (ankle) spent the bye week in rehab mode.

Some injuries, however, can't be measured. Rodgers didn't miss a game in 2018, yet revealed after the season that he played all year with a tibial plateau fracture in his left knee in addition to the sprained MCL he sustained in the season opener.

This year, he feels differently.

"I feel great," Rodgers said this week. "I started all 16 and wasn't in the training room a whole lot. Had some issues early in the season with my knee but then I felt great from about Week 8 on. So that was really nice. It helps when you can practice outside a good amount. It takes the wear and tear off some of the other guys, especially our joints. I know myself and Jimmy [Graham] and Marcedes [Lewis] definitely appreciate those outside practices. This has been one of my healthier years definitely in the last four or five, and it feels good to be where I'm at right now."

Defensive coordinator Mike Pettine, who has the second-most NFL experience (16 seasons) on the Packers' coaching staff, had to go back more than a decade to remember being part of a team this healthy: the 2006 Baltimore Ravens.

"We were 13-3 [and] never had a significant injury or have a starter miss at all," Pettine said.

"To still be able to trot your opening night starters out there is huge."