Acme Packing Company
Devonte Wyatt’s season is done, and his mangled ankle now leaves a gaping hole in the Packers’ defense. The Packers’ defensive line was thin enough without Wyatt’s untimely injury, and now that he’s gone, they’ll have to make do with what they have on hand as they try to sustain their Super Bowl aspirations.
The Packers currently employ five candidates to fill Wyatt’s spot. Karl Brooks and Colby Woden, both 2023 draft picks, are the most obvious candidates, but we know them well. Newly acquired Jordon Riley, lately of the New York Giants, is on the other end of the spectrum: we know practically nothing about him, other than that his size (large) appears to make up the bulk of his skill set. He seems to be more of a nose, though. The Packers have needed a reliable run stuffer in the vein of T.J. Slaton all season, but adding one now doesn’t solve their Wyatt problem.
Smack in the middle of the “do we know them or not?” spectrum are 2025 draft picks Warren Brinson and Nazir Stackhouse. Stackhouse, like Riley, is a big space eater; his skills don’t really align with what the Packers need at the moment.
That leaves us Brinson. What’s he shown us so far this season?
Let’s start with his playing time. Brinson’s snaps have ebbed and flowed with Wyatt’s so far this year. When Wyatt isn’t in the lineup, Brinson has played. When he is, Brinson, by and large, has not. Additionally, Brinson has played the most when fellow interior lineman Karl Brooks is out of the lineup, as he has been for most of the past two weeks with an ankle injury. Here’s a graph of what we’ve seen from these three so far this year.
At a listed weight of 315 pounds, Brinson doesn’t quite have the heft of a typical nose (though Kenny Clark played that position capably for many years at about the same weight), but he showed good explosiveness in the vertical leap and broad jump at the NFL Combine. That paints a pretty solid picture of a stereotypical 3-tech: a bit smaller than a nose, but with good overall athleticism.
Generally speaking, when Brinson has gotten to the field this year, that’s where he’s played. The chart below shows his week-to-week and overall usage; he’s aligned as a 3-tech on a little more than 71% of his snaps so far, according to Pro Football Focus.
Is he doing a good job when he’s out there? It’s been a mixed bag. Brinson profiled as a run-game-ready defensive tackle pre-draft, with a little bit of flash as a pass rusher, but the reverse has actually been true. Brinson, so far at least, has been more effective as a pass rusher than as a run stuffer. PFF grades should be taken with a grain of salt, but among the 150 interior defensive linemen who have played at least 100 snaps this year, Brinson has graded out as the 126th-best run...
