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Clark’s injured foot slowed him down in 2024. Will his health be the answer for the Packers up front?
Kenny Clark revealed this week that a foot injury limited him significantly in 2024. It was a toe problem, one apparently caused by the ragged turf of the Brazilian soccer stadium on which the Packers and Eagles played in Week 1 — though Clark wouldn’t specifically say the ground was to blame for his painful toe. He already earned negative attention from Brazilian diehards with his post-game comments on the turf and didn’t want more.
But ailing digit now healed, Clark should be back to his Pro Bowl form, healing the Packers’ defensive line with his return to dominance, right?
Maybe, but nothing in football is ever that simple, and even a return to dominance for Clark is anything but guaranteed.
Though he might now be healthy, Clark is still aging. He’ll be 30 in October and has already logged well over 6,000 career snaps across nine professional seasons, not including any postseason work. Nobody outruns Father Time forever, not even people with ten healthy toes. At some point, Clark will decline. Everyone does. And even a gradual age-related decline might mean that he’s unable to be the 2023 version of himself in 2025.
On top of that, Clark’s injury issues weren’t the only problems for the Packers up front. A season-long injury to one of your best players is never going to be a good thing, but let’s not pretend that the Packers were simply one healthy Kenny Clark away from having a dominant defensive line. No single toe carries that much weight.
For starters, 2022 first-round pick Devonte Wyatt also battled injuries throughout 2024. And although he was better as a pass rusher when healthy last season, run defense has never been one of his strong suits. That likely won’t be any difference this season.
Beyond Wyatt, 2023 draft picks Karl Brooks and Colby Wooden are the only returning interior defensive linemen from last year. Brooks is a much better player than Wooden, who’s undersized even after reportedly bulking up last season, but both are probably pretty close to their ceilings as players, and heading into the season with either one as the top interior defensive line option behind Wyatt and Clark is a tenuous proposition, at best.
The Packers also sport 2025 sixth-round pick Will Brinson and his teammate Nazir Stackhouse (undrafted in 2025, though interesting in his own ways). Both may be decent depth in the long term, but it’s hard to rest too many hopes on a sixth-round pick and an undrafted free agent.
The plan for the defensive line sounds like a laundry list of wishes: hope that Kenny Clark fully recovers, hope that Devonte Wyatt stays healthy and can be a better version of himself in 2025, hope that one or both of Brinson or Stackhouse turn into something sooner than later. You can even extend those hopes beyond the interior of the defensive...
