Green Bay Packers: DT Kenny Clark
It will come as no surprise that Aaron Donald led all interior defensive linemen this season with 80 total pressures, per Pro Football Focus, because he’s Aaron Donald. But who finished second? That would be Kenny Clark, the fourth-year man from UCLA who the Packers selected in the first round of the 2016 draft. Clark finished the 2019 regular season with 62 total pressures, a career high, and when he’s on the field with edge-rushers Preston Smith and Za’Darius Smith, it’s very difficult for opposing offensive lines to know where their focus should go. Defensive coordinator Mike Pettine lines Clark up everywhere from head-over nose tackle to defensive end, but Clark does his best work shaded to one side of the center or guard, where he can shoot off the snap quickly, use his estimable power to rag-doll enemy blockers, and terrorize opposing quarterbacks and running backs. As Clark also tied for second in the league with 31 run stops with Atlanta’s Grady Jarrett (behind only Miami’s Davon Godchaux), you know he’s also one of the league’s best inside threats when it comes time to shut down a run play.
This sack of Bears quarterback Mitchell Trubisky in Week 15 shows the effectiveness of one of Pettine’s favorite alignments — put Clark (No. 97) at a three-technique spot, have Za’Darius Smith (No. 55) as a stand-up pass-rusher over the center, and it’s a race to the quarterback.
Seattle’s depleted offensive line will have its collective hands full with this.
Danielle Hunter | Dee Ford | Harold Landry III | Matthew Judon |
Duke Johnson, Jr. | Charvarius Ward | Poona Ford | Kenny Clark
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”