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Prior to the Green Bay Packers losing tight end Tucker Kraft with an ACL tear, the team had never dabbled in six-offensive line sets, which are mostly ways to get an extra blocker on the field for the running game. Starting in Week 10, though, the week after Kraft’s injury, the team started sprinkling in some looks where offensive lineman Darian Kinnard, whom the team traded a 2027 seventh-round pick for at the roster cutdown deadline, played the tight end spot. Hey, you might as well figure out a way to get him on the field and get maximum value, considering that he’ll be a free agent in 2026.
In Week 10, Kinnard played four snaps at tight end. In Week 11, he was up to six. Then in Week 12, in the win over the Minnesota Vikings, his numbers exploded.
Versus the Vikings, Kinnard played 21 snaps at tight end, nearly one-third of the offensive snaps on the day. For perspective, the Jacksonville Jaguars have the season high for offensive line at tight end snaps in 2025 with 25 in a game against the Las Vegas Raiders this year, when starting tight end Brenton Strange was on the injured reserve.
On a season-long basis, the Houston Texans lead the NFL with 9.25 six-offensive line snaps played per game. The Packers’ last performance had them playing more than double that amount. Only four NFL teams have played at least 40 snaps this season in six-offensive line looks, despite 30 of 32 teams doing it at least once on offense this season. If Green Bay keeps up their Week 12 pace next week against the Detroit Lions, who play a blitz-heavy scheme that can be viewed similar, in some ways, to the Vikings’, then they will shoot up into the top-10 teams in six-offensive linemen rate, off the strength of two weeks of play.
The Packers weren’t world beaters in the ground game on Sunday, as Emanuel Wilson earned 3.8 yards per carry and Chris Brooks earned 2.6 yards per carry over 36 combined rush attempts. With that being said, Green Bay has usually performed extremely poorly against run defenses that are even average this year, so that was still a step in a positive direction.
Between the move of Kinnard to tight end and Anthony Belton seemingly taking over at guard, maybe the Green Bay rushing offense has another gear it can kick into once Josh Jacobs returns from his knee injury.
