It looks like Lukas Van Ness isn’t close
The second-year defensive end looks firmly placed as DE4 to start the season.
By rcon14 Sep 10, 2024, 9:39am CDT 18 Comments / 1 New
A few weeks back after his nice pre-season outing against the Cleveland Browns, I broke down the pass-rushing snaps from that game for Green Bay Packers second-round defensive end Lukas Van Ness and came away much less impressed with his overall performance than I did on first watch. The same strengths were apparent. Van Ness is very strong and has the prototypical defensive end build, and you can see it on tape when his bull rush connects. Unfortunately, the same problems were still glaring. Van Ness looks very stiff as a pass rusher, frequently getting washed out when trying to run the loop, and looking uncomfortable with his hand usage, leading him to regularly rely on his bull rush, which while good, is not a recipe for consistent success at the NFL level.
At this point in time, it looks like the Packers agree with a more bearish assessment of where Van Ness is. Van Ness was a distant fourth in the defensive snap counts for Packers defensive ends. Preston Smith led the unit with 54, then Rashan Gary at 49. JJ Enagbare was the clear third defensive end at 30, and then Van Ness pulled up the rear at 19. And this was not a game where the starters were providing a ton of production or Enagbare had a breakout game. Gary collected one sack, but he had a disappointing 12.5% pressure rate, per NFL Next Gen Stats. Preston Smith had a pressure rate of just 7.1%, and Enagbare of just 6.3%. The Packers' defensive end group was almost non-existent in the game, as the Eagles admittedly good offensive tackles completely shut them down. What was Van Ness’ pressure rate? 0%. Now, Van Ness only had 11 pass-rushing snaps in the game, so it isn’t a meaningful sample, but Van Ness did not register a single pressure (though he did register a stop in the run game, he’s still useful there!).
I do want to give Van Ness some credit, as depending on the system being used, this one could be considered a pressure.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1833506563744494065
Then there’s this one, where Hurts slips past LVN and then ices the game by truck sticking Stokes back to the States.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1833507240436756691
Van Ness still has some usefulness as a run defender, but with Green Bay playing mostly single-high shells, that skillset is just far less useful under Jeff Hafley than it was in the two-high quarters/post-snap spin world that Joe Barry lived in.
The rest of the pass rush snaps from Friday are a combination of some quick-game snaps where pressure isn’t really able to be generated or Van Ness bull-rushing into Jordan Mailata and getting swallowed up. No one in the Packers EDGE room had much success this week, and so that is less the issue for me, but that the Packers coaching staff clearly favors Enagbare over Van Ness is not a great sign for his future. Enagbare has been a nice surprise, as most Day 3 defensive ends produce little-to-nothing, but his pressure rates have been more fine than actually good (12-15%).
The idea for Van Ness as a project behind two veteran players was more akin to Rashan Gary, but Gary produced pressure rates of 16% after a semi-redshirt rookie season (where his pressure rate was about 13%). Van Ness would need to literally double his pressure rate from his rookie to get to Gary’s rate. Van Ness' rookie season pressure rate compares to mostly off-ball linebackers and nose tackles, and while it was only just one game against a very good tackle duo, it hasn’t been a pretty start to 2024, and it looks like the coaching staff doesn’t see a breakout coming soon either.