Green Bay Packers: Don’t Assume Lane Taylor will be a Backup

Although he may have been forgotten about last season, I don’t think it should be assumed that Lane Taylor is going to be a backup for the Green Bay Packers in 2020.

Lane Taylor went from the starting left guard for the Green Bay Packers to an afterthought fairly quickly last season. After signing Billy Turner to an expensive contract last offseason and then spending a second-round pick on Elgton Jenkins, it only took until Week 2 of the regular season that an injury would sideline Taylor and make him the backup guard in Titletown.

Then for much of this offseason, there was speculation that Taylor was going to either be cut or traded in lieu of some additional cap space. However, just a few weeks ago, he and the Green Bay Packers would agree to restructure his contract which freed up roughly $3 million in cap space and will likely keep Taylor in Green Bay for this year.

With a lack of experienced offensive line depth on the roster going into the 2020 season, at a minimum it is assumed that Taylor is going to be a backup in what is the final year of his current deal. But I don’t know that it is that simple as I believe there is the very real possibility that Taylor pushes Billy Turner for starting reps at right guard.

What many fans remember about Taylor’s 2018 season is that he struggled. And in terms of sacks, he did give up several more than what he had during the previous two seasons. But in fairness to Taylor, he was battling injuries for most of that year.

So for comparison’s sake, let’s take a look at Taylor’s 2018 season and Turner’s 2019 season, using a few different metrics.

The first are the stats compiled by Pro Football Focus. As already mentioned, Taylor would allow eight sacks in 2018, along with five quarterback hits, 23 hurries, which totals 36 pressures, and two penalties.

Meanwhile, Turner in 2019 would give up nine sacks, six quarterback hits, 37 hurries for a total of 52 pressures, along with two penalties as well.

Pro Football Focus also uses a pass-blocking efficiency metric to measure success for an offensive lineman. What it does is it provides an efficiency rating based on the number of pressures allowed on a per snap basis and is weighted more heavily towards sacks. Although close, Taylor’s 2018 rating of 96.3 edged out Turner’s 96.0.

We can also take a look at the Packer Report’s Andy Herman and his grading system. If you’re unfamiliar, Andy grades every play, for every Packers’ player, for the entire season. Each play can be graded from -2 to 2 and if at the end the player grades out with a score of 0, then they were average.

Well, according to Andy, Taylor’s 2018 grade was +6.40, and Turner’s 2019 grade was -5.85. That is an enormous gap between the two players with a difference of over 12 points. For some context, Andy’s final grade for Preston Smith was +10.40. Now, I’m not suggesting that Taylor is going to have the impact that Smith did, but this gives you an idea of how big that gap really is between Taylor and Turner’s seasons.

Not to mention that Taylor’s 2016 and 2017 seasons were much more clean on the stat sheet than his 2018 campaign as he allowed only four sacks and four hits during that two-year span. Turner on the other hand had his best season in 2018 with Denver – three sacks and one hit – but saw inconsistent playing time prior to that year other than in 2015.

Now, it’s worth pointing out that the Green Bay Packers are paying Turner quite a bit of money this season as he comes with a cap hit of $8.1 million while Taylor’s cap hit sits at just $2.525 million. However, my hope is that those figures don’t factor into who is the starting right guard. As always, that should go to the best player, but this is certainly something to be mindful of.

Having said all of that, when it comes to deciding the starting right guard in 2020, Taylor and Turner’s past performances don’t really mean a whole lot. It’s going to come down to who is playing the best when Week 1 rolls around.

But I wanted to point out that based on recent play, Taylor has been the better guard and it shouldn’t be assumed that he is going to be a backup this season.