Paul Bretl | 8/16/2025
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Overall, the Packers are in a good position when it comes to their offensive line unit. They currently have a recent first-round pick, Jordan Morgan, competing with a 35-game starter, Rasheed Walker, for the starting left tackle spot.
Morgan could also push Sean Rhyan for playing time at right guard, and Rhyan has appeared in 30 NFL games with 17 starts of his own.
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However, the offensive linemen behind the first six players on the Packers’ depth chart are quite inexperienced, and that showed in the team’s second preseason game against Indianapolis.
Starting up front for the Packers in this game was Morgan at left tackle, followed by Donovan Jennings, Rhyan, Jacob Monk, and Anthony Belton. Jennings, 2024 UDFA, has no regular-season NFL snaps on offense, and neither do Monk, a 2024 fifth-round pick, or Belton, a second-round pick this past April.
According to PFF’s early tracking data, Monk was credited with allowing three quarterback pressures, as was Jennings, and Belton was credited with surrendering two.
To help provide some sort of context around those figures–and keep in mind, a full game wasn’t played–two pressures per contest would total out to 34 on the season. Among all guards in 2024, 34 pressures allowed would have been the 12th-most in the NFL.
But going beyond the pressures, there were the penalties. Belton was flagged five times in the first half alone–including a personal foul penalty–in this preseason game, while Jennings was penalized once. Several of the penalties wiped out positive plays for the offense as well.
“We’ve got to do a better job,” LaFleur said of the penalties. “We coach these guys to line up off the guard so we might have to look at our guards and see their alignment in terms of if they were too far back and then I know he (Belton) had, what, two illegal formations, a holding penalty, a facemask.”
And an unnecessary roughness penalty.
“That’s the one that really bothers me,” LaFleur continued, “because that is, I mean they all bother me, but you can’t be getting personal fouls because that really hurts the team, puts you in a really tough position.”
For Monk and Jennings in particular, these performances come on the heels of what wasn’t the best showing in Week 1 of the preseason, either, against the New York Jets. Belton was penalized twice in that game as well.
With that said, while the offensive line and the offense as a whole did struggle in the first half, that unit was able to rebound a bit in the second half, helping the Packers secure the come-from-behind win.
“We did a much better job in the second half,” LaFleur said. “Guys kinda just dialed in and focused in just making sure that they’re doing all the little things the right way just with their alignments and then focusing on your fundamentals because you’ve got to lean on those in the heat of the action.”
As mentioned, to have six offensive linemen that can be trusted and relied upon like the Packers do is a good spot to be in. But this is a position where injuries frequently occur.
Among the 32 NFL teams last season, only 11 had their most-used offensive line combination play at least 50% of the offensive snaps, according to TruMedia. In fact, over one-third of the NFL’s most frequently used offensive line combinations were on the field together for fewer than 34% of their respective offensive snap totals.
The Packers experienced this themselves in the playoff game against Philadelphia, with Morgan on IR at that point and Elgton Jenkins having to exit the game, which left them relying on Travis Glover and Kadeem Telfort against a mighty Eagles’ defensive front.
From a roster construction standpoint, as recent draft picks, Belton and Monk will make up the seventh and eighth spots on the Packers’ 53-man roster. But that ninth spot on the depth chart is very much up in the air and waiting for someone to seize control of it.
Competing for that roster spot are Kadeem Telfort, Trey Hill, Lecitus Smith, and others.
With six capable linemen, the Packers have a buffer if an injury occurs, but the margins get extremely thin–at least based on what we’ve seen so far this preseason–if we wonder any further down the depth chart.
“It’s just underperforming,” Belton said of his play. “Getting penalties like that, that’s not the standard that I hold myself to. You’ve just got to bounce back from it.”