Kenny Clark had an unexpected season in 2024, just not in the way you would think.
The production dropped, the numbers across the board neared or exceeded career lows, and the ever-consistent presence on Green Bay’s defensive line just looked … off.
Green Bay dished out a big extension for Clark before last season, and the team will need him to be the guy he was before 2024. Fortunately, there are plenty of reasons to believe he’ll have a bounce-back season.
Clark had posted a career-high 7.5 sacks in 2023. Last year, he had one without missing a single game.
The veteran on the interior defensive line also had the second-fewest tackles for loss (four) and quarterback hits (five) in his career. The only year he saw fewer was his rookie campaign in 2016.
Clark will be 30 in October, and, as we know, the Packers treat that age milestone like they’re in the movie Logan’s Run. Despite all that, Green Bay still forked over a three-year, $64 million extension.
When speaking to reporters at minicamp in June, Clark cited a foot injury he suffered on the turf in Brazil against the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 1 as one reason for his reduced productivity.
It was a tough year for me. I had surgery on my foot in January, so yeah, it was a tough year. But I’m excited. I’m back out practicing, back doing (individual drills), so today was my second day doing indy with the team, and just have to keep building forward.
For those thinking Clark was using the injury excuse as a crutch, I have two counterpoints. One, he had foot surgery in January. Secondly, shortly after the game in Brazil, Clark ripped the field conditions without hesitation.
It was trash, man. I’ve played in snow, I’ve played in rain, I ain’t never played on a surface like that. … There was like clay coming out of the ground. You got holes in the ground. It was a tough surface to play on.
Despite turning 30 this fall, a healthy Clark will yield better results for Green Bay. His résumé directly reflects that.
However, everything else about Clark’s résumé suggests that 2025 will yield better results. He has missed just one game in the last four years combined and remains a constant presence in the lineup. He’s as durable as it gets.
Upon examining Clark’s game logs and the data, it became clear that there was no stretch during the season where he was as dominant as he has been in the past. If there were, there would be more reason to believe that what we saw last year could be the start of Clark’s decline.
The injury is the most likely culprit. The Clark of 2024 looked like a shell of the player who recorded 7.5 sacks and 16 quarterback hits the previous year.
Given how consistent he’s been otherwise, it’s super unlikely that the floor would fall out beneath him in the span of one season, at least not that drastically.
We also need to consider the change at the top.
Jeff Hafley was brought in as defensive coordinator and accomplished many great things in Year 1. The glaring struggle the Packers faced throughout the season was generating consistent pressure on the opposing quarterback. Many of the names remained the same, including Clark, but the production fluctuated throughout the year.
Clark wasn’t alone in that department, and Year 2 under Hafley should yield better results now that there’s more familiarity with his system.
Clark doesn’t have a history of inconsistent seasons. He’s never been a player you worry about stepping up — quite the opposite, actually. Even in the nine years he’s been in Green Bay, where in some instances he hasn’t had a consistent sidekick on the interior of the defensive line, Clark has always been reliable.
If he were an up-and-down player who fluctuated with his production, this would be a different conversation. Suppose he had just a slight dip in numbers in 2024. Then, this would be a different conversation. If he had been on a run of two or three years where the numbers were slowly but surely dropping, this would be a different conversation.
It wasn’t any of that. This was a guy who had arguably his career season in 2023 in his eighth year at age 28. It’s doubtful that Clark is hitting a sharp decline or that 2024 is a sign of what is to come in 2025.
Don’t expect another season like that from Clark. Get ready for the bounce-back.
