Acme Packing Company
Perhaps the non-injury story of Packers camp so far is the apparent ascension of 2023 first-round draft pick Lukas Van Ness. After two very disappointing campaigns to start his NFL career, the third-year defensive end seems to have made a big leap this offseason and it is showing up on the practice field, even against solid competition.
At the Packers’ joint practice with the Indianapolis Colts on Thursday, Van Ness made waves against the Colts starting line:
And then he added another sack later in practice.
That Colts line as a whole is hardly anything to write home about, but Raimann is the fresh recipient of a four-year $100M deal with $60M guaranteed. That’s a real NFL starting offensive tackle.
A third year breakout from Van Ness would be a desperately welcomed sight after two disappointing years to begin his career. Van Ness didn’t break 40% of snaps played in either of his first two seasons and posted below-average pressure rates for a defensive end/EDGE player in both campaigns. That said, it hasn’t been all bad; one thing that was always notable on film for him is his stoutness against the run. He routinely throws tight ends around when given the unfortunate assignment, and holds his water against offensive tackles.
What has been desperately missing was a consistent pass rush presence. Teams don’t draft defensive ends in the top-15 to be just stout run defenders. Still, in fairness to Van Ness, he was seen at the time as a project. The “no collegiate starts” fun fact is more of anomaly for Iowa’s deference to senior players in their program, as Van Ness played starter-level snaps at Iowa his final year there, but he came out early. Even given this caveat, Van Ness was fourth in the pecking order at the start of last season, behind Rashan Gary, Preston Smith, and JJ Enagbare. It was given away in that pre-season that he was destined to at least begin the season in a backup role, given he received quite a few snaps in the pre-season. Van Ness played 23 snaps in the pre-season opener last year before playing in another 17 against Denver, most of which came with the second defensive group.
This year however, it appears Van Ness is firmly planted as a starting defensive end across from Rashan Gary. In the Packers’ opening preseason game against the New York Jets, Van Ness exclusively played with the first-team defense, logging only nine snaps.
Within the context of that game there wasn’t too much to write home about. Van Ness had a nice run stop, but the Packers defense had a couple of errors and an atypical playcall in the red-zone (Hafley is never calling cover-1 against a scrambling quarterback in the redzone during the regular season) that lead to a scoring drive, but there’s really nothing to be concerned with there, in my opinion.
The key takeaway is that not only is Van Ness seemingly having a good camp beating up...
