Green Bay Packers: Dean Lowry’s Impact Flies Under the Radar

While he tends to fly under the radar on this Green Bay Packers’ defense, Dean Lowry’s contributions, especially in the run game, shouldn’t go unnoticed.

When NFL teams draft a player in the fourth round – which is when the Green Bay Packers selected Dean Lowry back in 2016 – they hope that the player has the career trajectory that Lowry has had. With areas of his game to develop, Lowry’s role was small initially but with each passing season it grew, and now he has become a key contributor to this 12-3 Packers team.

With players like Jaire Alexander, Kevin King, and Adrian Amos in the secondary, along with Za’Darius Smith, Preston Smith, and Kenny Clark on the defensive front, it can be easy to forget about Lowry and what he brings to this team. Especially considering that he isn’t going to put up gaudy numbers or dominate as a pass-rusher.

From 2016 to 2018, Lowry would total seven sacks and 14 quarterback hits. While this season he has no sacks and only two quarterback hits, although in week two against the Vikings he did have a terrific game in which he had six quarterback hurries chasing Kirk Cousins around. However, while it is certainly nice when it happens, the lack of sacks and hits doesn’t mean that Lowry isn’t playing at a high-level. He just has a different job to do as summed up by Ben Fennell of The Athletic in his most recent article:

"“But Lowry is the type of player where every snap needs to be watched to appreciate his strong play and how it affects the defense. Lowry loves to work in the trenches and does the dirty work. He doesn’t have much pass rush upside and only sees the field on early-down situations. He doesn’t get the highlight sacks or flash plays in the backfield but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a strong, productive player.”"

As Ben put it, Lowry does the dirty work on this defensive line. He eats up blocks to free up other players and, not to mention that, he has been very good as a run defender this season. According to Pro Football Focus, Lowry has 25 run stops – tackles that constitute a loss for the offense – which is the second most on this Packers team only behind Clark and is tied for the 11th most in the NFL among interior defensive linemen.

Over the last month or so we have seen this Green Bay packers’ run defense playing much better than they did during the first few months of the season and a big contributor has been the play of Clark as well as Lowry who have both been terrorizing opposing offenses in their own way.

During this past summer the Packers signed Lowry to a three year – $20.3 million contract extension and even though he isn’t the kind of player who is going to put up huge numbers, he plays a very important role on this team and has been doing it at a high level in 2019.