Brian Gutekunst has a little heater going right now.
On Tuesday, the Green Bay Packers’ general manager signed former Washington Commanders linebacker Jamin Davis to the practice squad, which *looks* like an interesting decision.
The move was initially reported by ESPN’s senior NFL writer Jeremy Fowler.
Davis was the 19th overall choice in the 2021 NFL Draft, but he has yet to live up to expectations. Davis appeared in 50 games for the Commanders, starting 36 of them, and recorded 174 solo tackles, seven sacks, 21 tackles for loss, and ten quarterback hits across three years.
Interestingly, some stats – mostly those from Pro Football Focus – show that Davis was actually playing well this year: PFF had his overall defence, run defence, and tackling grades all above 70, which are all pretty impressive scores, especially for a practice squad guy. The 86-snap sample size definitely has something to do with it, but there’s much to be thrilled about, and you don’t even need to squint *that* much.
The Packers may have just made another sneaky spectacular midseason addition.
On paper, this move appears to be another gem of a signing by Gutekunst, but that could be due to recent events. There’s plenty of precedent to suggest he could pull off another excellent one: the Malik Willis, De’Vondre Campbell, and Rasul Douglas transactions are all recent examples of Gutekunst seeing value where others didn’t.
One of these days, he’ll take a big swing and miss, but for the time being, it’s difficult to argue with the Packers’ front staff.
And perhaps Davis’ latest position move will make it simpler for him to find and contribute meaningful snaps with the Packers. Davis was originally drafted as an off-ball linebacker, but he spent all but one snap in 2024 at a defensive end.
The Packers aren’t short on defensive end depth, so they have plenty of time to find out how Davis, who is still only 25 and possesses a lot of above-average qualities, fits into the defence in the long run. It’s possible that nothing comes of the signing, but as Fowler points out, there are worse problems than having young, former first-round picks on your practice squad.
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