Acme Packing Company
There are no shortage of quality players to choose from at the guard spots.
Our quest to define the best players of the last 25 years for the Green Bay Packers continues this afternoon as we move to the interior of the offensive line. The entire line has largely been a strength for the Packers over the last quarter-century, and the left guard spot — while never having a single player start for more than five years in a row or so — has managed to have several high-quality players nonetheless.
An intriguing angle for voting on the Packers’ guards, however, is how to judge players who switched spots over the years. Both Josh Sitton and T.J. Lang played left guard for stretches on either side of the 2013 offseason, when the two traded spots. Then there’s Elgton Jenkins, who has provided high-quality play at LG but has been asked to bounce around to several different positions.
Who gets your vote as the top left guard of the last 25 years? Let us know below.
80 games played, 70 starts
The Packers’ last pick in the Supplemental Draft, Wahle heard his name called in 1998. After sitting most of his rookie year, he started most of the 1999 season between left guard and left tackle.
Starting in 2000, he manned the left tackle spot for the first six games until rookie Chad Clifton was ready to take over, then headed to the bench. But 2001 saw Wahle take over the left guard job after Ross Verba’s departure, and he started every game for the Packers over the next four seasons.
Wahle was a tough, nasty player on the interior, and he was a big part of the Packers’ excellent running game during the early 2000s. He left for Carolina as a free agent in 2005, earning his only Pro Bowl appearance that season.
80 games played, 76 starts
After a one-year dalliance with late-round pick Will Whitticker in 2005, the Packers found another multi-year starter in the second round of the 2006 draft. Colledge, who had played tackle at Boise State, stepped into the starting lineup in week two of his rookie season, never missing a game as a Packer. He did briefly get benched late in the 2007 season, but he bounced back into the starting lineup and remained a solid player for three more seasons.
Colledge’s final game with the Packers came in the team’s Super Bowl XLV victory over the Steelers, and he signed a free agent contract with the Arizona Cardinals a few months later. All told, he played five of his nine NFL seasons with the Packers, starting all but four possible games during that tenure.
3x Pro Bowl, 3x second-team All-Pro (overall); 2x Pro Bowl, 3x second-team All-Pro (at LG)
121 games played, 112 starts (overall); 47 games played/started (at LG)
Yet another former college tackle-turned-guard, Sitton...
