The Green Bay Packers are yet again dancing in the postseason following a 2024 campaign that saw a remarkable defensive turnaround, an explosive offense, and too many self-inflicted blunders.

It was far from the season many thought coming into the year, after last season's playoff push led many to pick the still youngest team in football, the Packers, to be a Super Bowl favorite this season.

Regardless how the postseason plays out, this team looks and feels a year away until their young talent hits the stride that many forecasted they'd hit this season. After all, this is a team mostly comprised of second or third-year players who haven't entered their prime years and showed this year that development is still needed to sure up some funny business.

Through it all, there were some surprise performances and players who stood out for better or worse.

Biggest Surprises

Keisean Nixon

Coming off a season as the most targeted slot cornerback in the NFL, a 103.3 quarterback passer rating when targeted, and porous grades across the board, Keisean Nixon not only received a three-year extension but was thrust into a new role this season as a boundary cornerback with Jaire Alexander missing a large portion of the year.

There was rightful concern about whether the boundary was in good hands with Nixon. While yes, there are certainly more All-Pro-worthy cornerbacks out there, the results speak for themselves, and Nixon very well may have found a new home for his talents.

Nixon not only played the most snaps of his career, but in any season he's played at least 200 snaps, he also posted career-best PFF grades in coverage (60.7), pass rush (92.7), tackling (70.7) overall defense (64.5), and he found his footing again as a tackler.

In fact, Nixon led all cornerbacks with over five pass rush snaps in pass rush grade this season (92.7), his three forced fumbles were tied for the most, and his three sacks were second-best.

Call him a product of a new scheme, but previously, the Packers simply refused to let cornerbacks get after the quarterback. Nixon's speed made him a perfect candidate to change that narrative this year, producing cream of the crop results among his peers at the position.

Other elements to Nixon's game also became career bests this season, including reducing his missed tackles percentage down to only 10.2%, a 68.3% completion percentage allowed when targeted, and a commendable 8.9 yards allowed per catch was 16th best among all corners with at least 100 coverage snaps.

While Nixon still struggles to defend at the catch point, with only a 9% forced incompletion rate, he yielded an impressive 2.6 yards after catch, which is a substantial improvement from the 4.8 average last season.

Rashan Gary

2024 was far from the season that anyone, including Rashan Gary, would have expected. But there is both a good and bad surprise that came to Gary's season this year, one which might help explain the other.

The bad news is that Gary's pass rush production took a significant step backward. For a well-compensated, sixth-year edge rusher, it's far from encouraging to have the team's top pass rusher finish 31st among edge rushers in pressures (47), 26th in hurries (32), and 26th in sacks (8). And depending on the database, Gary, at best, has still only produced one double-digit sack season. Something that in itself is surprising that he was yet again unable to achieve this season despite how his violent play has made him such a menacing task in past seasons.

The Packers' disappearing pass rush act this season isn't solely on Gary, though. No Packers pass rusher started establishing any type of sustained disruption on the quarterback until week 11, and to Gary's credit, five of his eight sacks came in that stretch.

Similar to Nixon, Gary very well could have been a product of a new scheme that asked its edge rushers to play more outside contain and take long developing stunts rather than leveraging their strengths to attack the quarterback directly.

However, to the positive surprise then, Gary has always been a solid run defender, but this season he was an absolute force.

Not only were his 22 stops (plays that constitute as failure for the offense) in run defense good for 10th among all edge players, but 10.5% of Gary's snaps in run defense resulted in him being credited with a stop, and he was inevitable once he got his paws on a running back, resulting in a 2.5% missed tackle rate. Both held up as the second-best marks of all edge players with at least 200 snaps in run defense. Gary also finished with a career-best 30 total stops this season.

Yes, Gary is primarily paid a lump sum of cash to get after the quarterback. But if a team cannot stop the run, as the Packers have fallen victim to for years on end, they are eventually going to get exposed when it counts the most (i.e., Raheem Mostert 2019 NFC Championship). Gary has been the heartbeat of the Packers vastly improved run defense this season.

Honorable Mention: Evan Williams

Biggest Losers

Kenny Clark

Kenny Clark's disappointing 2024 campaign can be summed up by his dropping off from 10 sacks last season to only one this season.

Put simply, he was almost entirely a non-factor this season, and by watching every snap Green Bay played this year, it'd be very easy to forget Clark was even on the team. Of course, that is until noticing the $64 million extension he received before the year.

Again, Clark may have been the product of a new system and double teams, but even so, nothing schematically adjusted to put him in a better position, and no one around Clark seemed to statistically benefit from him taking on double teams when he did.

Clark went on to produce his fourth-lowest career total for combined pressures, hurries, and sacks this year (33), and his 57.1 run defense grade barely snuck inside the top 100 for all interior defensive linemen.

PFF grades aren't everything, sure, but all players are graded on the same scale, so barely cracking the top 100 at anything in one's position is not a good sign. Especially for a veteran turning 30 next season on a contract where Green Bay has an out after the 2025 season.

The defensive tackle class in the 2025 draft is fairly loaded. Even though Clark is fresh off his extension, his "burn the tape" type season cracked the door ajar to welcome a conversation around Green Bay potentially looking that route in the first round or two.

Quay Walker

It took roughly 2.5 years, but everyone finally got to see Quay Walker playing consistently good football for a few weeks after the Packers' week ten bye until missing the last three games.

But Quay's problems this season are a couple of things: off-ball linebacker is not a strongly valued position by the NFL right now, he doesn't produce many run stops, his coverage grade hit rock bottom this year, and he officially has an Edgerrin Cooper problem.

Walker's career has become the most recent chapter in a cautionary tale about drafting off-ball linebackers in round one. The past ten times that's happened have produced some severely underwhelming careers for the draft capital spent to obtain those players.

Another systemic issue for the Packers has been their middle-of-the-field coverage and Quay, despite his athletic ability, has been a leading culprit to that result.

Outside of three fairly solid games in pass coverage this season against Minnesota, Chicago and San Francisco, Walker finished 134th in PFF coverage grade for linebackers. While Quay definitely flashed the upside more late in the season, and while the Packers have remained invested in trying to get him going, his coverage abilities are simply not cutting it.

He also finished with the 41st most stops among linebackers, and there's a rookie he shares a film room with who has been playing out of his mind while Quay has been injured.

Honorable Mention: Dontayvion Wicks

Biggest Winners

Edgerrin Cooper

That rookie would be Edgerrin Cooper and it's safe to say the Packers are rostering what could very well be one of the premier off-ball linebackers in all football by as early as next season.

In 93 fewer snaps in run defense than Walker, Cooper finished with one more stop and four more tackles for a loss (13). In a scarce 491 snaps throughout 14 games, Cooper's 13 TFLs accounted for the second most among all off-ball linebackers. 

Cooper was simply everywhere on the field and embodied the torturing "Micheal Myers" persona he regularly posts on his Instagram before games.

Was never a doubt that Edgerrin Cooper was going to have himself a game pic.twitter.com/OcHaI4FfDL

— Hogg (@HoggNFL) December 16, 2024

He finished as the 4th highest-graded linebacker in the NFL (84.0) and posted the second-highest pass rush grade (90.1) with having four sacks. This, along with two NFC Defensive Player of the Week awards, very firmly confirms his top spot as the highest-graded rookie linebacker in the NFL and a top candidate for Defensive Rookie of the Year.

Cooper has also made a tremendous difference coverage-wise. His 84.1 grade in zone coverage was third highest among linebackers, and not only did he tally his first interception, but he house-called it. Because why not? Watching him play, it's hard to believe he's not a five-year veteran playing the best football of his career.

It's almost impossible to image Cooper is not leading all Packers linebackers in snaps next season. He has quickly become one of those players that the Packers can not afford to have on the sidelines with how he's played at an elite level across all phases of the defense.

Tucker Kraft

Another player who's playing at an elite level across all phases, except on offense, is Tucker Kraft aka 'Yac and Cheese'.

#Packers Tight End Tucker Kraft officially has his own Mac & Cheese “Yac & Cheese” 😂 pic.twitter.com/CK3tbanuy6

— ~ 𝑨𝒏𝒕 ~ (@PCK3RS) January 2, 2025

A player who has been a driver of the Packers' newfound, physical style of play, Kraft has quickly become a household name across the NFL fan-sphere this season.

With Luke Musgrave missing a large chunk of the season, Kraft had the opportunity to dominate the tight-end snaps. As a result, he turned in the most yard-after catch among all Packers (456) and led all tight ends in average yards after the catch (9.3).

Kraft, who excels at barreling through people, embodies not only what the city of Green Bay is all about but also the old-school, iconic grit of Packers teams of the past. His 419 run block snaps were second among tight ends, and he busts his tail to get his running backspace to operate.

The Packers have long been searching for their long-term tight end since losing Jermichael Finley to injury in 2013, and Kraft seems to have done that and broken the team's "third-round curse" in the process.

While the wide receiver room has had its ups and downs this season, Kraft remained steadfast as a reliable target for Jordan Love. Of tight ends with at least 25 targets, Kraft was sixth in quarterback rating when targeted (134.6).

The Packers can finally lay to rest the search at tight end. 

Honorable Mention: Zach Tom