First it was Tucker Kraft, then it was Elgton Jenkins, and now it’s Devonte Wyatt.
The Green Bay Packers have suffered season-ending injuries to three key members of their offense and defense in November, each with varying degrees of long-term impact. I think it’s safe to say that Kraft is the biggest loss of them all. There simply isn’t anyone else on the roster who can duplicate what he brings to this team.
Jenkins seemed like a big loss at the time as the starting center. Still, when looking at it realistically, he never had the impact at the position that the Packers probably envisioned and wasn’t having a very good season. However, losing Wyatt throws a huge wrench into Green Bay’s defensive plans for the rest of the season and will be a tough loss to overcome.
On Green Bay’s last defensive snap of their thrilling 31–24 Thanksgiving Day win over the Detroit Lions, Wyatt endured some friendly fire when fellow defensive lineman Warren Brinson fell onto his ankle, ultimately resulting in a fracture.
It was a bad-looking injury from the start. Wyatt was down on the turf for several minutes before being taken away on a stretcher – never a good sign. Matt LaFleur confirmed as much postgame: “It doesn’t look good, guys. I’m sick for him, I’m sick for us. That’s a critical loss for our football, for our defense obviously.”
As LaFleur stated, it’s a critical loss for the defense. The fourth-year defender was having a good season and was the elder statesman of a young defensive line. After the Packers traded Kenny Clark, the longtime defensive tackle and leader of the unit, in the Micah Parsons deal, Wyatt assumed that role. He was the team’s most productive interior defender.
Despite missing three games earlier this season with a knee injury suffered in the Dallas Cowboys game, he still managed four sacks and 22 pressures over 379 snaps. Wyatt also added six tackles for loss and was becoming a real disruptor not only as a pass rusher but as a run defender. The Packers have the horses to help make up for what he provided as a rusher. Still, do they have enough to help against the run?
There isn’t a player on the roster who’s going to be a clear-cut replacement for Wyatt. Instead, it’s going to fall on everyone.
“Yeah, it’s tough, but that is the nature of our game,” LaFleur said on Monday. “Certainly, he’s a guy that’s going to be pretty tough to replace. I think it just falls on everybody else, kind of raising the level of their game.”
Third-year players Karl Brooks and Colby Wooden are going to assume the starting defensive-tackle roles and play the brunt of the workload. Rookies Warren Brinson and Nazir Stackhouse will also see a sharp increase in their playing time.
Colby Wooden might be the most improved player from last year on Green Bay’s roster. From roster-bubble player coming into camp to starter, he has 36 combined tackles, six tackles for loss, and two quarterback hits. He’s overcome a slow start to his career, has fully embraced the position switch from defensive end to defensive tackle, and is having a career year at the perfect time.
Karl Brooks is recovering from an ankle injury, but in 11 games played this season, he’s added 17 tackles and a half sack. These were the first games he had missed in his three years as a pro; Brooks had regularly been playing three dozen snaps or more per game. Jeff Hafley will need someone he can reliably pencil in every week, so hopefully Brooks recovers this week.
In limited snaps this season, Brinson has shown that he has a little bit of pass-rush juice that might help replace Wyatt. In just 21 snaps against the Minnesota Vikings, Brinson was credited by Next Gen Stats with five quarterback pressures as well as the first half-sack of his career. For someone who was a healthy scratch for the first handful of games in favor of the more run-defender body type in Stackhouse, Brinson is now a very important player for Hafley.
When asked how he would handle an increased role, Brinson said all the right things: “We just gotta do our job. It’s time to be next man up, and it’s time to grow. We’re not rookies no more. We’re just trying to work, trying to get better.”
The Packers will definitely need to get better – and get better in a hurry.
Stackhouse, a fellow Georgia Bulldog who joined the Packers as an undrafted free agent this offseason, is now the biggest body on the line at 6’4 and 327 pounds. He’s more of a run stuffer who doesn’t provide much in the way of pass rush. He has also played as few as three snaps in a game and as many as 27. I’d look for Stackhouse to play early downs and be the big body clogging running lanes. The biggest concern for the Packers is relying on two low-drafted (and undrafted) rookies to play significant snaps for the first time in their professional careers, because there isn’t much help behind them.
It’s hard to see the team going outside the building to find anybody. The best solution would be to add Lukas Van Ness’ talent and versatility. He can (and has) slid inside and provided a jolt of pass rush, but his return doesn’t appear imminent. Van Ness has missed five games with a foot injury suffered in the Cincinnati Bengals game, and then played only five snaps in his attempted return against the Minnesota Vikings.
Van Ness missed the Thanksgiving game and is back to rehabbing the foot. At this point, the hope would be to have him back for the playoffs. Look for Hafley to try to get creative to help generate pressure from the middle if Brinson and Stackhouse can’t do it on their own.
James Ester is the only other option on the roster. The former undrafted free agent from Northern Illinois has been on Green Bay’s practice squad for the last two seasons.
The Packers clearly like what they see, or else they wouldn’t have kept him around this long. Ester improved as a pass rusher every season in college, going from 17 pressures in 2021 to 22 in 2022 to 24 in 2023. He also added 20 tackles for loss. Maybe they found a diamond in the rough, and he can make an impact if given a chance.
It sucks that the Packers have to weather the rest of the season without two of their best young players in Tucker Kraft and Devonte Wyatt. It sucks even more that both were in the midst of career seasons, but that’s the nature of the NFL. If the Packers are going to make a deep run, they’ll need these replacements for Wyatt to step up in a big way and help the team overcome yet another injury setback.