Green Bay Packers: 3 First Round D-Line Draft Prospects

The Green Bay Packers could use some help up front on the defensive side of the ball. While Kenny Clark is one of the best in the business, and they did sign Jarran Reed to bolster the group, it could still use some improvements.

Defensive line is a group that rotates a lot and while the Packers usually use only two or three for each play, having more than just four viable options that they have on the roster now is a big deal. If they were to take one of these three guys in the first round or early in the second if they made a trade, they could also look for instant impact and not just a guy to fill some snaps and give the others a rest.

All three of them have slightly different draft projections, so they’re all a little different in terms of where the Green Bay Packers might get them in the draft. Let’s dig into these three promising prospects.

Green Bay Packers Draft Prospect #1 – Devonte Wyatt

You might be familiar with one Georgia defensive lineman who’s been a big story this draft season because he’s been almost everywhere up and down the first round in mock drafts, Jordan Davis. We’ll get to him eventually, but his cohort on the d-line, Devonte Wyatt, could go off the board before Davis.

Wyatt isn’t the behemoth that Davis is, but at 6’3″ 304 pounds, he still has plenty of size to play in the NFL, not to mention that his 9.56 Relative Athletic Score (RAS) is up there with the best in this class.

The first thing that jumps off the film about Wyatt for me is how technically sound he is. His pad level when playing the run is almost always really low and he gets great leverage that way. He also stays square to the line of scrimmage very well and makes the game easier for his linebackers by eating up blocks and not letting them get to the second level. He also just has great natural strength that makes it really hard for anyone to push him back. He isn’t usually the one making all the plays, but he opens up the game for his teammates to do so, and he upped his tackles for loss to seven this year after his previous high for a season was two.

As a pass rusher, he hasn’t had much production and doesn’t project as a great one in the NFL. He can sometimes use his strength to get separation and he has an ok push-pull move, but doesn’t have much prowess in this area and only had 5 sacks over four years of college football. Georgia’s defense did do a lot of stunts and asked him to again take up blockers so the linebackers could get a free shot on the quarterback and he did do a pretty good job of that.

Devonte Wyatt isn’t the big splash player that some might want, but he would be a day one contributor that would immediately make the run defense better and take a lot of pressure off of the rest of the guys up front.