Packers: Kabion Ento Continues Roster Push w/ Strong Family Night Performance

Depending on how many roster spots the Green Bay Packers want to devote to the cornerback position and how things shake out on the back-end, there is for sure at least one spot up for grabs and possibly two.

Battling for that final spot or two are Josh Jackson, Ka’dar Hollman, Standford Samuels, and Kabion Ento–who continues to make a roster push with a strong showing at the Packers annual Family Night practice.

Ento signed as an undrafted rookie during the 2019 season with the Green Bay Packers as a cornerback even though he played wide receiver during his time in college at Colorado. That first summer, he made a few highlight plays during training camp, but as expected, he was stashed on the practice squad that year to continue developing his cornerback skill-set–he was still brand new to the position, after all.

Last season, Ento continued to impress during camp and the preseason, but he, unfortunately, suffered a foot injury that would keep him sidelined for the entire season. However, before being placed on IR, the Green Bay Packers put him on the initial 53-man roster. The strategy behind this is that it gave Ento the option to return to the active roster at some point during the season. Had he gone right to IR, his season would have been over right then and there.

Although we didn’t get to see Ento last season, as I’ve mentioned in the past, Green Bay wanting to have the option to bring him back and potentially have him contribute speaks volumes about what they think of the young cornerback.

During mini-camp last month, we saw Ento working out with the first-team special teams unit as a gunner — special teams contributions are of course vital to any back-end of the roster player — and then on Family Night on Saturday, he put together his best defensive performance of training camp up to this point.

As noted by Wes Hodkiewicz of Packers.com, leading up to the Family Night practice, Ento was seeing first-team defensive reps over the last week when Green Bay was in their dime formation, which utilizes six defensive backs on the field.

Ento, who has good size standing 6’1″ and weighing 187 pounds, finished the night with two pass-breakups during 11-on-11 drills, catching the eye of coach Matt LaFleur along the way:

"“I thought Ento did some nice things,” LaFleur said via Packers.com. “He’s a guy that’s got to go out there and compete and do it on a consistent basis. We’ll have three more opportunities in live game action to watch him out there, and we’ll see where he ends up.”"

Operating under the assumption that Jaire Alexander, Kevin King, Eric Stokes, Chandon Sullivan, and Shemar Jean-Charles are all going to make the roster, if Green Bay keeps six cornerbacks, based on what I’ve seen and heard so far, it would appear that Jackson and Ento are the front-runners for that final roster spot.

With King still on the NFI list, Jackson has seen his fair share of reps with the starting defense, and to his credit, he has made a few plays in one-on-one drills. But as I alluded to above, the deciding factor when filling out a depth chart very well could be special teams play. And if you recall, Jackson was a healthy scratch at the end of last season, meaning that Green Bay didn’t think he could contribute to the defensive side of the ball or on special teams.

Just as LaFleur mentions, it’s all about consistency for Ento–meaning, not only is he making plays on the ball, which we’ve seen him do in practice since he came to Green Bay as a UDFA, but also making sure that he is assignment sound and where he needs to be on the football field.

Ento brings good size and athleticism to the position; it’s clear that the Green Bay Packers coaching staff does think highly of him, he’s already seen some time with the starting defense during camp, and he can be an immediate special teams contributor. He’s put himself in a position to make this final roster, especially if he can build off of Saturday’s performance.