There’s still some shuffling near the top of the depth chart to be done, but Brian Gutekunst’s 2024 rapid rebuild of the Packers’ safety group is still largely holding strong.
Xavier McKinney figures to again be a leader, if not the outright best player, on the Packers’ defense, and Evan Williams and Javon Bullard give the Packers options alongside him. For my money, McKinney’s partner on the back end should be Evan Williams with Bullard figuring things out in the slot (and based on last year, there’s
a lot of figuring out to be done), but that’s a scheme question, not a talent one. Because of Gutekunst’s investment last offseason, the Packers have at least three safeties they like, and that’s a lot more than they could say two years ago.
Beyond McKinney, Williams, and Bullard, though, competition is heating up. If the Packers intend to keep five safeties on their initial 53-man roster (they haven’t kept more than that since 2016, when they had six), that means three of their five spots are already locked up. The presence of Kitan Oladapo, a 2024 fifth round pick, probably accounts for a fourth spot, meaning there’s a real chance any other safety contenders on the roster are competing for just one job.
And as of the Packers’ Family Night Scrimmage, those contenders should include Omar Brown.
Brown, a 2024 undrafted free agent who spent last season on the Packers’ practice squad, announced himself with three interceptions on Saturday night. He didn’t log any time with what passed for the first-team defense, but it’s hard to discount that kind of performance even if it was against fellow backups. Beating up the lower levels of the depth chart is the first step on climbing the ladder toward a bigger role.
Prior to his time with the Packers, Brown was a part-time starter at Nebraska after playing his first three years of college ball at the University of Northern Iowa, where he was twice named to FCS All-America teams. While at Nebraska, the bulk of his reps came in the slot; in 2023 alone, he lined up for 434 snaps as a slot defender according to Pro Football Focus, almost three times as many as at any other spot. He earned third-team All-Big Ten honors for his work there.
Coming out of Nebraska, Brown was not a particularly highly rated prospect. He was Dane Brugler’s 34th rated safety in the 2024 edition of The Beast and was prospect 292 on the NFL Mock Draft Database consensus big board. Part of that was probably due to his specialized (or small, depending how you want to look at it) role at Nebraska, but he also wasn’t a great tester in the pre-draft process. Not bad, by any means, but not great. His RAS card is pretty middling across the board, with his only elite numbers coming in the 10-yard split of his 40-yard dash time.
But Brown found himself a job in Green Bay and appeared in two games at the end of last season, logging eight snaps on defense and 16 on special teams.
Now, one Family Night explosion does not a career make, and Brown has a long way to go if he wants to unseat the other significant contender for the Packers’ final safety spot: Zayne Anderson.
Anderson is a long-time favorite of special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia (he was second on the team with 257 special teams reps last season) and has gradually carved out a bigger role on defense, even starting two games last year when the Packers were beset by injury at safety late in the year.
That may not sound like much, but that’s a pretty difficult resume for a newcomer to overcome. If Anderson is both a trusted member of the Packers’ special team units and a spot starter on defense, Brown would have to show out quite a bit between now and the end of training camp to unseat him. Three interceptions on Family Night is a good start, though. Now he’s just got to build on it.
More from acmepackingcompany.com:
- Black and Blue News: This Week in the NFC North for July 6, 2014
- Cheese Curds: Green Bay Packers News and Links for July 7, 2014
- Packers 2013 Top Plays Recap: Top Ten Best Plays of the Year
- Packers Featured Heavily in NFL's Top 20 Games of 2013
- Packers' 2014 Roster Preview: Returning Quarterbacks
- Packers' 90-Man Roster Countdown: Players 5-1
