The Green Bay Packers recently picked up the fifth-year option on former first-round pick Devonte Wyatt, rewarding him for his performance through three years in Green Bay and locking him in for 2026.
How impactful has Wyatt become? Where can he still improve in 2025? Here’s what the numbers say about his overall game entering year four:
Strengths
Wyatt has been a menace for quarterbacks since getting on the field more regularly in 2023.
Among qualified interior defenders, he ranks in the 97th percentile for hurries per pass rush opportunity (HUR/OPP), the 67th percentile for quarterback hits per opportunity (HIT/OPP) and the 91st percentile for sacks per opportunity (SK/OPP).
Versus true pass sets, Wyatt is in the 91st percentile for HUR/OPP and he 75th for SK/OPP. He has 61 hurries and 12 sacks (using PFF’s data, which counts half sacks as full ones) since 2023 despite not being a full time player.
Wyatt has been one the most effective interior pass rushers in the NFL on a snap to snap basis, grading out in the 94th percentile in PFF’s pass rush productivity metric (PRP), and the 89th percentile in pass rush win rate (WIN %).
When facing true pass sets, he ranks in the 88th and 80th percentile in those metrics respectively.
He has also made his fair share of plays in the run game, ranking in the 81st percentile for stop percentage, which are tackles which mean a failure for the offense, and the 86th percentile for average depth of tackle (AVDT), meaning he is making plays where it matters, around the line of scrimmage.
Weaknesses
There are two glaring weaknesses in the data for Wyatt, the first of which is penalties. He ranks in the 17th percentile for penalties per snap since 2023, committing six of them, which for a rotational player, is too many.
The second is missed tackles, and his inability to get the ball carrier down at a high rate has negatively colored the overall perception of the impact he is having each game.
He is in the 19th percentile in missed tackle rate against the run. Only three of 145 interior defenders were worse in 2023, a year where he missed 15 tackles overall. Wyatt has a career miss rate of 22.1%.
If he can start to finish more tackles and sacks, he is capable of truly breaking out and becoming a weekly difference maker.
Trending up
Wyatt improved in his ability to get hands on the quarterback between 2023 and 2024, with his HIT/OPP against true pass sets going from the 33rd to the 67th percentile.
His most notable growth came versus the run though. Wyatt was generally a much better run defender in the opportunities he got in 2024.
After ranking in the 45th percentile for tackles per snap in 2023, he improved to the 88th percentile last year.
His missed tackles were also more under control in 2024, ranking in the 35th percentile, still a weakness, but a step in the right direction compared to the 3rd percentile the previous year.
Trending down
The only area Wyatt trended down between 2023 and 2024, and it is an interesting one, is snaps played per game. His pass snaps per game went from the 61st percentile to the 39th, while his run snaps dropped from the 60th to just the 7th percentile.
This is not a weakness per se, but it is curious that as he appeared to develop his game in both aspects, but especially against the run, he actually got less opportunities. Was his increased success in the run game actually fool’s gold and mostly down to him being used less?
Snaps per game accounts for games missed due to injury, so his three games out with an ankle injury are not dragging the number down. He did however leave two games early, the Vikings matchup in week four with said injury, and the playoff loss to the Eagles after playing just five snaps.
He was also questionable in Week 8 as he returned from the ankle issue. Although he did ultimately play, his snap count could have been limited. It could simply be that the injury persisted and meant he could not play as many snaps as he wanted to throughout the season.
Whether that is the case, or it is a situation where he needs to earn the full trust of the coaching staff, as a former first-round pick who can make splash plays and have a significant impact on the game, it is important Wyatt earns becomes much closer to a full-time player going forward.
Overall, Wyatt has been one of the league’s best interior pass rushers over the last two years, and last year improved to being an above average player against the run.
The only questions are can he play more if healthy, and does the coaching staff think he should? The answer to those queries will ultimately dictate how impactful a player he can end up being for this Packers team in 2025 and beyond.
This article originally appeared on Packers Wire: Devonte Wyatt analysis: Fearsome pass rusher needs to become full time player in 2025
Reporting by Mark Oldacres, Packers Wire / Packers Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
