Green Bay Packers: Rookie report entering final stretch of season
By Kenn Korb
Dean Lowry
Out of all the guys Green Bay drafted, Lowry impressed me the least. His limitations were immediately obvious. While he could be good run defender, he was invisible as a pass rusher in college and didn’t portend to improve in that regard as a professional.
Despite those issues, he might actually end up as the rookie defensive lineman making the best impact in these final few games.
Lowry has seen little snaps in that six-man lineman rotation this year (only one game of 10-plus snaps through the first 11 games), but two weeks ago he saw a major uptick. Against Houston, he received 18 snaps; in them, he grabbed a sack and batted away a pass. Versus Seattle, that jumped up another level; in a career-high 34 snaps, he grabbed another sack.
In the coming weeks, that snap number could continue to stay pretty high.
There is the Pennel suspension opening about a dozen snaps for his teammates. I mentioned how Clark could see an increase because of that, but Lowry has graded out vastly better on the year in his snaps (surprisingly, Lowry is now the highest graded rookie on the Packers, according to PFF’s numbers) and is coming in off his best two performances. Due to that, he’s probably the better choice right now to continue seeing a consistent snap increase.
The opposing offensive lines remaining do not really have anyone scary set to line up at right guard and right tackle against him (his usual spot when he’s on the field is at left end), so he should be able to win those matchups decently often, at least in run defense. If he can also manage to do so in his pass rushing chances (and with two straight games with a sack, that isn’t as farfetched as it once seemed) his team’s chances will rise dramatically — especially since the OLB spot for Green Bay is still pretty damaged by injuries.