GREEN BAY, Wis. – For about a minute at the end of training camp in 2018, Green Bay Packers defensive tackle Kenny Clark thought he had entered Lambeau Field for the final time of his career.
The team’s first-round pick in 2016 had emerged as one of the team’s top defenders. But, on the day general manager Brian Gutekunst was cutting the roster to 53 players, Clark walked through the front doors of the stadium and was greeted by one of the team’s younger scouts.
“I was scared as shit,” Clark recalled on Thursday. “I walked in and it was like, ‘You got your iPad?’ I’m like, ‘What?’”
What ensued was one of the longest minutes of Clark’s football life. He figured he was being traded. Why? What had he done wrong? What would be his next team? It all would be clear once he reached the football department’s offices on the third floor.
“I was so scared,” he said. “I was walking down the hallway and people were walking past me and they’re looking at me like, ‘What?’”
Clark can laugh about it now, a case of mistaken identity that demonstrates how the football side of the operation lacked a connection to the players it was asking to win games. How can you not recognize Kenny Clark, one of the building blocks of the franchise?
“I can’t tell you. I don’t know. I don’t know how it happened,” Clark said. “I just blame it on them being younger guys and not knowing.”
That lack of a personal touch was the root of Aaron Rodgers’ feud with the franchise last year. Gutekunst and Rodgers are on much better terms now. Lessons have been learned and things have changed. Presumably, that ugly moment with Clark won’t happen again.
Rodgers understands a front office’s desire to keep a separation from the players so relationships don’t get in the way of important personnel decisions. He just doesn’t agree with it.
“I think it’s easier to get cut by someone you appreciate, that you can have face-to-face, eye-contact conversations and get released by or traded by than somebody that you have zero relationship with,” Rodgers said on Wednesday. “There’s funny stories – not funny, actually – about Kenny Clark coming in on cut day and somebody thinking he was a different guy who was going to get cut, and they told him, ‘Grab your playbook and head upstairs.’ And Kenny’s like, ‘What? I was a first-round pick. I’m getting cut? It’s my third year.’
“Stuff like that just can’t happen in an organization that’s run well. Because the relationships are the most important thing in this game. That’s what fuels the chemistry, the chemistry fuels the cohesion of a team, and that makes a difference in those crunch-time moments when the game is on the line. And it starts at the top.”
Clark, a two-time Pro Bowler and one of the stars of a powerful defense, can laugh and joke about it now. At the moment, during that short walk from the front doors to the elevation, it was no laughing matter.
“They were coming down the elevator and we were about to go up,” Clark said. “As soon as the door opened, one of the other scouts was in there and said, ‘No, not Kenny.’ I’m like, ‘OK, give me my iPad.’ He was like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ He apologized. It is what it is.”
https://www.si.com/nfl/packers/news/kenny-clark-was-scared-as-during-2018-roster-cuts