The Green Bay Packers are dealing with several injuries in their front seven right now. The team is currently out its star edge rusher, Micah Parsons, and three interior defensive linemen are on the injured reserve (with Devonte Wyatt being limited due to injury). On top of that, both of the team’s starting linebackers, Zaire Franklin and Edgerrin Cooper, weren’t able to play on Sunday, too.
With all the uncertainty in the box, I’m sure a lot of Packers fans were hoping that edge defender Lukas Van
Ness would step up and win some one-on-one reps against the Detroit Lions…but that never came. So what happened? Did Van Ness lose a bunch of snaps on the edge?
Well, not really. When watching the film, the first thing that became immediately apparent was that the Lions had a pretty good game plan to limit Van Ness’ impact in the game and force the other defenders to “win” to get to quarterback Jared Goff.
In total, Van Ness got to line up on the tackle and rush the tackle just five times on Sunday. For perspective, Goff threw the ball 32 times (and was sacked once, a play where Van Ness lined up on and rushed the tackle – funny enough). If you want to count it, there was a sixth rep where Van Ness played a screen over the tackle and rushed. He tipped the ball from Goff on that play.
There were times when Van Ness lined up inside, only to get double-teamed, or dropped into coverage, to allow for a blitzing linebacker or safety without the defense being down an extra man in zone coverage. That can be controlled by the Packers, and maybe they want to stop playing fewer games with how Van Ness is deployed until their hand isn’t so short on cards. Still, it sure seemed like Detroit was much more willing to pass the ball when Van Ness was off the field than when he was on it.
In the run game, Detroit mostly ran away from Van Ness’ side of the field or gave Van Ness a long surface (like multiple tight ends) to try to limit his impact. Even on “outside runs” at the NFL level, the ball is expected to usually hit off-tackle, so having Van Ness line up outside of a tight end or two, when the Lions actually did run toward him, meant that the edge defender was going to have little impact, anyway.
To put it simply: The Lions were going to make the Packers’ backups make plays by accounting for Van Ness on nearly every down. Worth mentioning: Several of the five snaps that Van Ness got to rush the passer on the edge one-on-one were in Detroit’s two-minute drill, where they really had no other option but to let him get after Goff.
Here were the Packers’ top box defenders, in terms of their snap counts, outside of Van Ness on Sunday:
- LB Isaiah McDuffie: 66
- LB Ty’Ron Hopper: 62
- DL Karl Brooks: 46
- DL Chris McClellan: 38
- ED Dani Dennis-Sutton: 33
- ED Barryn Sorrell: 32
- DL Jordan Riley: 29
- ED Brenton Cox Jr.: 28
- DL Anthony Campbell: 26
- DL Devonte Wyatt: 23 (banged up during the game)
- LB Nick Niemann: 1
That lineup looks more like the group that played Green Bay’s third quarters in the preseason this year than the projected starters, due to the injuries they’ve already faced in 2026. Detroit has a good offensive line, but clearly, they went out of their way to limit Van Ness and take their one-on-one chances elsewhere on the roster. And it worked.
Look for other teams to replicate the Lions’ game plan moving forward, at least until the Packers get some pieces back in the box that can tilt things back in their favor. If opposing offenses are going to “overcommit” to making Van Ness’ life hard on a down-to-down basis, the group of misfit toys are going to have to be the ones who have to step up to the plate.
