GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Johnny Jolly's story was probably better than his play.

The Green Bay Packers defensive tackle's return to the NFL after three years away from the game while serving jail time and a suspension for violating the league's substance-abuse policy was one of the feel-good stories coming out of training camp.

His impact on the field, however, was minimal, especially as this season progressed.

After a strong early start, which helped the Packers' run defense climb to as high as No.

Rob Demovsky  wrote:

Jolly has played almost half the snaps of Raji, but has more tackles, sacks, fumble recoveries and passes defensed. Also making $4M less.

I have been low on Raji too lately, but it would be hard for an organization running a 3-4 defense especially to let someone with his physique and movement in relation to that get away especially considering where he was drafted.

That would also admit a big failure of evaluation of the personnel department and a development failure on the coaching end.

Originally Posted by: DarkaneRules 

Neither Jolly or Raji have sacked the QB. The sack that was awarded to Jolly was because the QB ran out of bounds and he was closest to him. And according to PFF, they are tied in tackles.

Originally Posted by: Zero2Cool 

I've never really understood, the decision to move Raji to DE and Pickett to NT. Raji's best season was 2010 when he was the NT and Pickett and Jenkins were the DE's. In 2011, they moved Pickett to the Nose and Raji to DE expecting him to replace Jenkins, and he hasn't been as productive since.

Originally Posted by: PackFanWithTwins 

Judging only best on Raji's best season is a pretty small sample. I rather use the sample of the last couple of years where he simple hasn't gotten the NT run clogging down right... while Pickett has. That's why Pickett got moved back to the NT spot even though he has no pass rush to speak of.

Also you note Raji's move to DE in 2011... yet he wasn't moved to DE then... he mainly played NT and they would let him play DT... Packers have a couple of base sets, in the normal base set they have two DEs and one NT, Raji played NT in that package.

In other baseset they have one DE, who's manned up on the strong side OT, a NT who's lined up between the strong side OG and C and a DT who's lined up on the OG. Raji would play the DT in this role... the Packers didn't want Raji matching up on an OT because his arms aren't long enough to get a good pass rush. But since he's pass rush has been sucking no matter where you put him, they decided Pickett run stopping skill is more vaulible than Raji skill and so Pickett is back at NT.

Originally Posted by: beast