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We won’t have a lot of opportunities to look at the Green Bay Packers’ first-team units on special teams this summer, in part because the Packers aren’t giving their preferred players reps there in preseason games. While special teams value is always stressed as a tie-breaker for roster bubble players going into the cutdown deadline, we’re sort of in a low-information environment for Green Bay’s special teams unit entering the 2025 season.
With that being said, we can get some data from unconventional sources.
On Wednesday, the Packers posted a mic’d up segment following defensive end Lukas Van Ness in practice. 45 seconds in, there’s video of him with the punt team, with the defensive end stating, “We love this.” Long snapper Matt Orzech replies, “Took him three years, but he loves it now.”
Special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia leaned into edge defenders on special teams more than any other coach in the 2024 season. Van Ness, Kingsley Enagbare and Arron Mosby, three 4-3 defensive ends, were among the Packers’ seven most-played special teamers last year, mostly getting on the field on punt protection and as punt rushers on the punt return unit.
At least as of now, the plan seems to be for Van Ness to continue those opportunities while he’s starting on the defensive side for the first time at the pro level. We’ll check in on his legs and stamina later this year to see if that is a good call. In 2024, Van Ness played half of the team’s special teams snaps (221 reps) on top of being on the field 39 percent of the time on defense (428). Based on his usage with the first-team defense this summer, expect those defensive numbers to shoot way up.
But Van Ness’ camera time on special teams wasn’t the biggest piece of information from the video. The clips actually caught the entire first-team punt unit’s personnel, the first time we’ve been able to capture that in full all summer.
On Family Night, the Packers fielded their first-team punt squad for the only other video we have of the unit in 2025, but there were notable players injured. The front line players on Family night, besides long snapper Orzech, were Van Ness, Enagbare, linebacker Ty’Ron Hopper and linebacker Isaiah McDuffie. All of those players were returning starters for the team, aside from Hopper, who displaced the then-injured Mosby.
In the clip the Packers sent out, the front line was the same group of players. What should you take from that? Stock down on Mosby’s chance to make this roster. Packer Report’s Andy Herman also noted that Mosby, who is now healthy, wasn’t among the players called to play the first-team kickoff unit in practice this week, a role that Mosby also “started” at in 2024.
Beyond the frontline players, the wings (backfield players) on the punt team were running back Chris Brooks and linebacker Kristian Welch. That’s also consistent with what the Packers fielded on Family Night.
Last year,...
