A player Jeff Hafley coached in college tops the list
Beyond cornerback, a position we already addressed in a previous advanced stats post, the biggest need for the Green Bay Packers this offseason is at defensive end. Despite paying Rashan Gary and Preston Smith, who was traded mid-season, and drafting Lukas Van Ness in the first round, the Packers struggled to get to the quarterback with their front four this year.
To make matters worse, all of the buzz entering the season was about how defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley’s new defensive system was going to allow the defensive line to be more aggressive and let the players fly off of the ball. It simply never happened, outside of spurts against the Tennessee Titans and Seattle Seahawks, when the team recorded sacks in clusters against spring league-caliber offensive lines.
After the season, head coach Matt LaFleur, Hafley and general manager Brian Gutekunst all stated that they hope that the team can rush with four moving forward, rather than having to rely on second-level blitzers for their pass rush. Defensive line coach Jason Rebrovich was fired after just one year under Hafley and was replaced with former New England Patriots defensive coordinator DeMarcus Covington, who is tasked with getting the ship back on course in 2025.
With all that in mind, let’s take a look at some numbers that paint a picture of the Packers’ defensive end landscape entering the new league year. We’ll try to identify how well (or poorly) Green Bay’s ends are playing and what the free agency crop looks like right now.
The best way to capture how good edge defenders are as pass rushers, in my opinion, would be to look at how many pressures they were able to record. To get rid of odd one-year outliers, either one-year wonders or injury seasons, I’m going to look at the last two seasons of play, as I did with the cornerbacks.
According to NFL Pro’s data, the league-level player tracking data, 84 pass-rushers have played as many edge defender snaps as Lukas Van Ness over the last two years. For the purpose of this exercise, we’re going to call those players “qualifiers.” Among qualifiers, players registered pressures on roughly 13 percent of their snaps over this period.
Now that we know that number, we can compare a player’s individual pressure rate to the league-wide average to figure out how many pressures above or below the “qualifier” average an edge rusher has played over the last two seasons and rank them.
Packers Edge Defenders
- +19.1 pressures vs. average: Rashan Gary (13th of 83 qualifiers)
- -6.2: Kingsley Enagbare (48th)
- -9.8: Lukas Van Ness (54th)
Despite having a down year in 2024, Rashan Gary still ranks 13th in this metric with 113 total pressures, 19 more than would have been expected for an average edge defender over the 723 snaps that he’s played from 2023 to 2024. Unfortunately for the Packers, though, both Kingsley Enagbare and Lukas Van Ness have performed significantly below average, good for -16 pressures compared to the average. Gary’s good is basically wiped out by the bad that Enagabare and Van Ness have been in the pass-rushing game. On top of that, Preston Smith was -16.9 pressures vs. average over the last two years, with most of that production coming from his time in Green Bay.
In short, Gary hasn’t really been the problem, but he hasn’t been good enough to overcome how poorly the rest of the Packers’ edge defenders have played, either. While +19.1 pressures vs. average is nice, it still doesn’t come close to the numbers that Micah Parsons (+51.6), Trey Hendrickson (+48.6) and Myles Garrett (+43.7) have hit over the last two years.
Top Free Agent Edge Defenders
- +24.6: Chase Young (9th)
- +19.8: Khalil Mack (11th)
- +12.7: Dante Fowler Jr. (23rd)
- +1.7: Haason Reddick (29th)
- +0.3: Josh Sweat (32nd)
- -1.5: Baron Browning (35th)
- -3.5: Dayo Odeyingbo (43rd)
- -7.4: Matthew Judon (50th)
- -11.9: Azeez Ojulari (63rd)
According to Pro Football Focus, the nine edge defenders above are the qualifying players who were able to crack their top-100 free agents of the 2025 class. Really, it’s a two- or three-man free-agent pass-rusher class with some average to below-average options after that.
Per this metric, the most productive free-agent edge defender is Chase Young, the former second-overall pick who played for Hafley at Ohio State. After starting his career with the Washington Commanders, Young has spent the last two seasons with the San Francisco 49ers and New Orleans Saints, bouncing back from an ACL injury that required reconstructive surgery in 2021. In the 2024 offseason, Young underwent neck surgery that limited his free-agent options, which is why the Saints were able to take a swing on him on a one-year deal.
This offseason, when Young will potentially sign with his fourth team of his NFL career, he will still only be 25 years old.
On the other end of the age spectrum is Khalil Mack, a 33-year-old — soon to be 34-year-old — five-time All-Pro and nine-time Pro Bowler. Don’t kid yourself here: Mack would be a rental, not a franchise cornerstone. The Packers did try to add Mack in the past, though, when they were outbid by the Chicago Bears who were able to land him in a trade from the Raiders in 2018.
Like Mack, the Washington Commanders’ Dante Fowler Jr. is another older edge defender. The 30-year-old was a former third overall pick from the 2015 draft and has been playing the best football of his NFL career late into his run. Last year, he posted 10.5 sacks with Washington. He had only recorded double-digit sacks one other time in his 10-year professional career.
After those three, the next best option is probably Josh Sweat, who just had a great Super Bowl run with the Philadelphia Eagles but generally produces like a league-average player. Haason Reddick ranks above Sweat in this metric, but Reddick only posted one sack in 10 games with the New York Jets in 2024 after recording four straight double-digit sacks seasons prior to this past year. Reddick was traded from the Eagles to the Jets last offseason and he sat out the first six games of the 2024 season before new contract terms ended his holdout.
Other Edge Defender Options
- +51.6: Micah Parsons (1st)
- +48.6: Trey Hendrickson (2nd)
- +43.7: Myles Garrett (3rd)
- +22.1: Bryce Huff (10th)
- +19.7: Bradley Chubb (12th)
- -3.4: Maxx Crosby (41st)
Due to the buzz at the position this offseason, it’s worth keeping our eye on some non-free agents here. Micah Parsons, Trey Hendrickson, Myles Garrett and Maxx Crosby are players who could be available for a trade, either due to contract disputes or because these players are attempting to push their way to a playoff contender. On top of that, Bradley Chubb, who didn’t play a single snap in 2024 because of a 2023 ACL tear, is likely to become a cap casualty. Bryce Huff, who was a healthy scratch for the Super Bowl, might end up becoming available, too, even if he’s more of a designated pass-rusher than a true edge defender.
For whatever reason, this metric does not like Crosby’s production over the last two seasons. When you look at the top 20 players in the metric, they’re generally the players who you would expect: Parsons, Hendrickson, Garrett, Josh Hines-Allen, Danielle Hunter, Alex Highsmith, Will Anderson Jr., Nick Bosa, Young, Huff, Mack, Chubb, Gary, Za’Darius Smith, Jared Verse, Will McDonald IV, Nick Bonitto, Aidan Hutchinson, Montez Sweat and Jonathan Greenard. The numbers are not favorable for Crosby (41st among 83 qualifiers) or T.J. Watt (69th), though. It’s possible that double team rates, something we can’t sort for on NFL Pro, are having a significant impact there.