RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesGreen Bay Packers defensive end Lukas Van Ness (90) celebrates his sack of Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Flacco (16) during the third quarter of their game Sunday, October 12, 2025 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. | Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
There has been much discussion of the Green Bay Packers’ need to get more out of their pass rush in 2026. With Micah Parsons likely out for at least four games, the team certainly needs to find a way to generate more pressure on the quarterback while their superstar gets back towards full health.
Parsons’ 12.5 sacks represented just over one-third of the team’s total, underscoring the need to find more sources of pressure. However, a look at when sacks took place shows just how much of a one-man show the Packers’ pass rush was late in games and how badly the team needs help for Parsons when games are on the line.
A whopping 8 of Parsons’ 12.5 sacks came in the last 15 minutes of regulation or in overtime, the most for any player in the NFL last season. Unfortunately for the Packers, that number was half of the entire team’s total, as the rest of the defense was especially inept at bringing quarterbacks to the ground with the game on the line.
Here are the sack totals for the Packers in the 4th quarter and overtime last season:
Micah Parsons: 8
Rashan Gary: 2
Devonte Wyatt: 2
Brenton Cox: 1
Kingsley Enagbare: 1
Lukas Van Ness: 1
Karl Brooks: 0.5
Barryn Sorrell: 0.5
As noted above, Parsons recorded almost two-thirds of his sacks late in games. Gary, on the other hand, had 7.5 sacks in total last season, but only had two after the fourth quarter began. That only bolsters the argument that his conditioning was abysmal in 2025, and it surely helps to explain why the Packers were content to deal him away this offseason.
To make matters worse, a few of these sacks are barely meaningful at all. One of Gary’s two sacks came on the very first play of the fourth quarter in week one, just barely fitting inside the criteria. Meanwhile, Cox’s sack came in the week 18 game against the Minnesota Vikings, when he blew up Max Brosmer — it happened in an entirely meaningless game against the worst quarterback to start an NFL game last season. (Well, probably the second-worst, behind his counterpart in week 18, Clayton Tune.)
If this isn’t illustration enough of the team’s need to find someone to help Parsons close out games on the defensive side of the ball, let’s look at the team’s splits when they did or did not record a late-game sack. When getting at least one sack after the start of the 4th quarter last season, the Packers were 7-2-1. But when they failed to sack the quarterback in that time frame, they had just a 2-6 record.
There’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation here, of course. Teams with a lead are more likely to be able to pin their pass rushers’ ears back and get after the quarterback, giving them more sack opportunities. In many ways, it’s similar to the old cliché about getting a certain number of carries or yards in the run game and the correlation (not necessarily causation) those numbers have with winning games. Still, even if the sacks aren’t always directly responsible for wins, they certainly did correlate closely with the Packers’ results in 2025.
Look at what happened to the team when Parsons got injured. The team’s five-game losing streak to end the season coincided with his injury, and in that time frame they had just two late-game sacks: the one from Cox mentioned earlier and one from Lukas Van Ness early in the fourth quarter of the Wild Card loss in Chicago (which also came very early in the 4th quarter). Their pass rush completely fell apart without Parsons, but it was most evident late in games when they absolutely needed someone on defense to make a play and they just couldn’t get it.
Maybe Van Ness takes that step and can help Parsons close the door on wins this season. Maybe Devonte Wyatt stays healthy and contributes a bigger interior rush to help get some big stops. Maybe a younger player like Sorrell or Dani Dennis-Sutton can step up. If Parsons is going to be the Packers’ closer once again, it sure would be nice if he had a couple of setup men to help him out.
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