When the Green Bay Packers won their last Super Bowl in 2010, the biggest in-season addition that the team made was the waiver claim of defensive lineman Howard Green, who helped the Packers get over the injury hump at the position. Green wound up starting in three of the Packers\u2019 playoff games that year, even hitting Ben Roethlisberger\u2019s arm on Nick Collins\u2019 pick six in the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n
Green Bay\u2019s defensive tackle room is in a similar need of a jolt this season. First, the team traded away starting nose tackle Kenny Clark to the Dallas Cowboys in exchange for pass-rusher Micah Parsons, which everyone rational person would have done.<\/p>\n
With that being said, the Packers\u2019 defensive tackle depth hasn\u2019t been great this year. Starting under tackle Devonte Wyatt has dealt with a knee injury, which caused him to drop out of several games before eventually missing games entirely. He returned to the lineup last week.<\/p>\n
Behind Wyatt, Karl Brooks and Colby Wooden, who would have been full-time backups if Clark were still on the roster, have basically had to play a starter\u2019s share of snaps this year. Even further behind them are rookies Warren Brinson, who has been inactive for most games, and Nazir Stackhouse, who has been limited to five-ish snaps per game on average in a situational role as a run-stopper.<\/p>\n
But now\u2026there\u2019s a decent defensive tackle available for the Packers.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the Cincinnati Bengals released old friend Mike Pennel, who previously played for Green Bay from 2014 to 2016. The 34-year-old has been underrated for most of his career, bouncing around as a journeyman on seven teams, playing 146 games and starting 25 at the NFL level.<\/p>\n
According to Pro Football Focus, Pennel ranks as the 60th defensive tackle in the league out of 120 qualifiers. No one is expecting Pennel to be prime B.J. Raji or Kenny Clark, just Howard Green \u2014 a player who can help spell the starters and play consistent football.<\/p>\n
Because Pennel is a vested veteran, he\u2019s not subject to waivers. Anyone has the opportunity to sign him, giving the Packers a fair shake at adding him. The big hurdle that Green Bay will have to overcome, if they actually try to sign him, will be pitching him to come to the Packers instead of the Kansas City Chiefs, where he played from 2019 to 2020 and also 2023 to 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Green Bay Packers won their last Super Bowl in 2010, the biggest in-season addition that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[139733,18815,349,99],"class_list":["post-258596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-green-bay-packers-free-agency","tag-green-bay-packers-roster","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}