After upending their offensive line over the post-Thursday Night Football mini bye, the Packers coaching staff reached into a hat and pulled out a new name to start at right guard for Sunday’s game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Instead of Kevin Zeitler or Donovan Jennings or Jacob Monk or Jager Burton, it was Travis Glover getting the nod between Sean Rhyan and Anthony Belton.
A 2024 sixth round pick, we haven’t seen Glover on the field for a game that matters in quite some time. The last time he made
an appearance was in the Packers’ loss to the eventual Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles, when he came in at left guard in relief of an injured Elgton Jenkins, who dropped out after just four plays. Facing off against a ferocious Philadelphia front, Glover was penalized three times before he was ultimately benched in favor of Kadeem Telfort. However, after an injury to starting center Josh Myers forced Sean Rhyan to take over at center, Glover got back into the game at right guard.
All told, he played 33 snaps and had a dreadful day, posting a pass blocking grade of just 1.8 according to Pro Football Focus. For comparison, Donovan Jennings and Jacob Monk put up pass blocking grades of 40.0 and 48.2, respectively, in the Packers’ Week 1 loss to the Vikings this season, and that was one of the single-worst blocking performances we’ve ever seen. You can and should take PFF grades with a grain of salt, but that’s a startling difference.
Glover missed all of the 2025 season with a back injury, but was back in action this preseason lining up primarily but not exclusively at right tackle. He played 39 snaps on the outside against just 28 at right guard, but with Jennings struggling, Monk unavailable due to injury, and Burton’s experience coming primarily at right guard, those 28 snaps apparently represented enough time on task to give Glover the start.
How did Glover do? It wasn’t a spectacular day for the Packers on the ground or through the air, but Glover came close to achieving a lineman’s ideal day: by and large, he was seen but not heard.
In 60 snaps of work, surrendered just one pressure and was penalized one time, a holding penalty on the Packers’ first offensive play of the fourth quarter. A 19-yard completion to Jonnu Smith on the next play erased that penalty and then some, though, so ultimately it was of little consequence.
Pro Football Focus gave Glover a 59.4 grade overall, bolstered mainly by his 71.4 grade as a pass blocker (they gave him a 53.8 grade for his run blocking). That aligns well with the eye test of the Packers’ offensive line as a whole; by and large, they did a good job protecting Jordan Love but struggled to get much push in the ground game.
It wasn’t necessarily Glover’s fault, but you can see some of the struggles the Packers had on the ground in a 2nd and 3 play in the second quarter. Jordan Morgan gives up ground to Buccaneers’ defensive lineman Rakeem Nunez-Roches so quickly that Glover, coming right to left as a pulling guard, ends up smacking Morgan in the face. For a second, it looks like Glover and Morgan are giving each other a hug as Nunez-Roches takes Kaleb Johnson down for a two-yard loss.
But in a game where the Packers’ offensive line looked relatively competent, especially compared to the rest of the season, Glover, at the very least, was not obviously bad. That’s a step in the right direction.
And hopefully, it’ll be the last the Packers see of him for a while. It was probably unrealistic to expect newly arrived Kevin Zeitler in the lineup this week, but going forward, he’ll hopefully be ready to go. Whatever workouts he’s been doing on his own were almost assuredly not enough to get him from “active, but sitting at home” to “ready to play in an NFL game” in roughly three days of practice, one of which would have been at walkthrough speed. He was always going to need some time, and hopefully another week will do it.
But if he can’t go, the Packers should at least feel good putting Glover out there again. He wasn’t a clear detriment to the team’s performance, and given what we’ve seen from his teammates this year, that’s a huge compliment.
