Green Bay Packers: Dean Lowry having a Sneaky Good Camp

With the Green Bay Packers facing a salary cap crunch this past offseason, many thought that the team was going to move on from interior defensive lineman Dean Lowry in favor of some cap savings. And admittedly, I entertained the idea as well.

Had Green Bay cut Lowry prior to June 1st, they would have saved $3.3 million in cap space. That figure would have grown had they cut him after June 1st.

But with the restructuring of Lowry’s deal, which added voided years to the contract and pushed current cap charges to future years, that is now not going to happen. Lowry is here to stay—at least for 2021.

While from a pure production standpoint, Lowry’s numbers have dipped the last two years since he signed his extension, given the depth of the interior defensive line room — or lack thereof, I should say — cutting him was never really a viable option.

It’s easy to see that Lowry’s sack, pressure, and run-stop totals have dipped in recent years, but also a lot of what Lowry brings to this Green Bay Packers defensive front goes unnoticed and can’t be logged on a spreadsheet.

As Ben Fennell of The Athletic ($$) has noted in the past, Lowry does a lot of the “dirty work” along this defensive line:

"“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.”"

Now, this isn’t to say that Lowry can’t be better or that Kenny Clark doesn’t need additional help —both are true — but Lowry also hasn’t been as consistently bad as some want to believe. And as defensive line coach Jerry Montgomery points out, Lowry has had a very nice start to camp:

"“Dean does so much of the dirty work at the position he’s at,” said Montgomery via Packers.com. “He takes on a lot of double-teams, he pushes the pocket on third downs when he gets those opportunities. But he’s definitely had a good camp so far and saw some things last night from him which were nice. He’s headed in the right direction.”"

In addition to the praise from Montgomery, Mike Spofford of Packers.com has also taken notice of Lowry, adding that he has shown consistent push into the backfield on both running and passing plays, not to mention that he’s batted a pass or two at the line of scrimmage as well.

Coincidence or not, perhaps some of Lowry’s early success can be attributed to Joe Barry’s defense that allows him to play several positions along the defensive line and the freedom to move around in search of the best matchup.

Over the last two seasons, Lowry has been on the field for about 60 percent of the team’s defensive snaps. With the potential emergence of Kingsley Keke, we could see his snap count decrease a bit this year, which could potentially result in more production on the stat sheet. You know, one of those ‘less is more’ situations with Lowry being put in positions to be successful more consistently.

With what Lowry has been asked to do in the past, he wasn’t always going to be someone who was going to light up the stat sheet—even when he’s playing really well. It’s just the nature of his responsibilities.

And although “Mean Dean” is still going to be tasked with that dirty work, perhaps we also see more production this season as well in the new defensive system.

"“He’s Steady Eddie,” said Brian Gutekunst via Forbes. “He’s consistently improved from the time we got him. He’s a true professional, effort, work ethic, and he’s gotten better. You just see how he’s really worked himself into being a really good NFL football player, and he’s been very reliable and dependable.”"