Acme Packing Company
Why would anyone break up Corey and Carrington?
The Green Bay Packers have few big names among the group of players who are set to become unrestricted free agents in 2025, but several important role players. The tough question facing Green Bay is all about which role players were truly important, which still have some potential for development, and which can be safely cast aside.
Today we look as special teams gunner and occasional corner Corey Ballentine, a useful depth piece, but one who is entering free agency just before his age 29 season.
6 Tackles, 1 FF 0 PD, 0 INT, 195 Special Teams Snaps
100 Tackles (76 Solo), 2 FF, 9 PD, 1 INT
Let’s start with some level-setting. Corey Ballentine isn’t “good” in the traditional sense, and really, few of the Packers’ free agents are. He’s unlikely to ever morph into an average starting corner, and he almost certainly is what he is at this point, but with role players, it’s not about what they can’t do. When you buy depth at a position, you’re generally buying discrete skills, and hoping you don’t have to plug the poor guy into a situation where they’re out of their element, at least not for long.
On decisions like this I often think back on poor Ladarius Gunter, a perhaps the least athletic man to ever play NFL corner, forced to cover Julio Jones in a playoff game. Gunter was an outstanding technician, and served admirably as reliable zone corner depth, but then injuries to other players happened, his role increased, and things got ugly.
Gunter was one end of the depth corner spectrum: the technician without the athletic chops, while Ballentine is on the other.
A 9.35 RAS player out of Washburn, he moves quite well for a bigger corner, which makes him an ideal special teams gunner. Ballentine received a solid 70.9 PFF grade for his special teams work this season, and for the bulk of his career he’s managed something similar. In his 2023 season, he was a bit lower at 60.2, but that is because injuries forced Ballentine into a much larger role on defense, where he started six games and accumulated 7 PDs and a pick. Ballentine unsurprisingly suffered as his coverage snaps increased, but in the nine games where he had over 20 coverage snaps, he posted a 70+ PFF grade four times, all while providing good run support and some of the best tackling on the team.
Ballentine did not play much on defense this year (somewhat surprisingly given the many injuries to the secondary and the struggles of Eric Stokes) and had only one game with at least 20 coverage snaps against Minnesota in Week 4. It didn’t go particularly well, which may have led to his reduced snaps.
The Packers also changed defensive coordinators, which may have had an impact on how the team views Ballentine. It’s hard...
