GREEN BAY − MarShawn Lloyd has played only one game of real football in the past two years, and it shows.
Yes, the main point with the third-year pro is he’s made it through two weeks of practice and now a preseason game without an injury. That’s the longest he’s been healthy enough to play in his two-plus years with the Green Bay Packers.
In his four touches (and 12 snaps) in the loss to Pittsburgh in the preseason opener Aug. 13, Lloyd also flashed the quick-twitch talent that convinced the Packers to select him in the third round of the 2024 draft.
But his four runs against the Steelers also suggest that he needs more carries to either knock off some of the rust or learn the subtleties of ball-carrying in the NFL.
Lloyd rushed for 13 yards on four carries, and on two of those runs left yards on the field because he didn’t run with his eyes.
On the first play of the game, for instance, he picked up 5 yards on a cutback to some open space to his right. In college, he probably made that kind of run often, and he was so much quicker than the players on the defense that he’d still get a nice gain out of it.
But against the Steelers, he was stopped for only a 5-yard gain. If he’d run more with his eyes, he’d have seen the play was well-blocked to where it was intended to go, to his left. If he’d stayed on his original track, there was a blocker on each defender, and he had a chance to break a nice gainer with only safety Rayshawn Jenkins to beat on that side of the field.
A little later in the series, Lloyd again missed a chance at a bigger gain. He took a handoff going to his left and saw Jenkins about 7 yards down the field. Lloyd immediately cut back the run because Jenkins was seemingly playing the outside gap.
However, left tackle Jordan Morgan had pummeled safety Jamel Dean, and tight end Josh Whyle had walled off outside linebacker Zach Frazier on the left side of the line. If Lloyd had just stayed on track, he would have had room to get outside and only Jenkins to beat to turn the play in to a big gainer. He has the quickness and burst to do it.
For now, the most-important development regarding Lloyd is that he’s healthy two weeks into camp. The Packers offense can use a back with his quick twitch.
But they need to get Lloyd more work in the preseason, because after hardly playing any real football for the past two years, Lloyd needs the reps so he’ll begin to trust what he sees when he has the ball.
Following are looks at several other young players’ performances in the Packers’ 28-9 loss to the Steelers:
Offensive lineman Anthony Belton
The second-year pro played 36 snaps at right tackle and came out of it looking like he belongs at guard.
Belton entered camp as the starting right guard, and the Packers presumably have been working him at right tackle for the past week mainly to see if he can be their backup swing tackle if needed. They don’t have a ready-made backup tackle and, in a pinch, Belton probably can do it. He played left tackle his entire college career, after all.
But his aggressive play style is very much that of a guard, and his footwork as a pass protector at tackle was not good enough in this game.
Most egregiously, on one pass early in the game, he committed a cardinal sin and crossed his feet as he slid in pass protection to block Steelers outside linebacker Nick Herbig. Luckily for Belton, Jordan Love got the ball out fast, but that kind of footwork gets offensive linemen beat and quarterbacks hit. On the other side of the line on that play, Jordan Morgan was textbook with wide feet as he shuffle-stepped in protection.
Belton is a mauler in the run game, and his forward style is an asset there. But his footwork in pass protection is an issue. On a couple of other plays, he got too far over his feet and off balance as a pass blocker. Based on this game, he looks much better suited to playing guard than tackle in the NFL.
Pass rusher Collin Oliver
If you ever wondered why general manager Brian Gutekunst likes big edge players, you saw why with Collin Oliver.
The second-year pro, who’s listed at only 240 pounds, got worked by 264-pound tight end Darnell Washington on a run that Lew Nichols bounced outside and turned into a 6-yard touchdown. The play was called back because of a Steelers holding penalty elsewhere, but Oliver’s inability to hold up on the edge was glaring.
Oliver did flash some speed and explosiveness, and if there’s a role for him as an edge defender on this team, it will be strictly on pass-rushing downs.
Defensive tackle Chris McClellan
The early impression is that the 2026 third-round draft pick is a slightly bigger version of Devonte Wyatt.
McClellan is 6-foot-4 to Wyatt’s 6-2⅞, and 313 pounds to Wyatt’s 304. Like Wyatt, McClellan has quick feet for a player his size and, against the Steelers, he showed an ability to get off blocks. That included a run stop late in the first quarter when he beat Frazier and tackled Nichols for only a 2-yard gain.
But McClellan needs to get stronger in the upper body so that when he uses his hands, he punishes blockers. That probably won’t happen until he spends an offseason in the Packers’ training program.
Still, even though he’s raw, there’s enough talent there to wonder whether by the end of the season he could be their third-best defensive linemen, behind Wyatt and Javon Hargrave.
Defensive tackle Warren Brinson
Watching Brinson in this game, it was easy to tell he’s now a second-year player.
He was quicker off the ball than in his rookie season, probably because he’s more comfortable and isn’t thinking as much.
One play in particular showed the difference between Brinson and camp-darling Anthony Campbell. It came with 9 minutes, 9 seconds left in the second quarter on a draw play to Nichols.
Brinson made the play like a pro. He came off the ball fast and, most importantly, got off his block on the front side rather than trying to go around it on the backside. That put him in position to drop Nichols right after he took the handoff. If he’d taken the backside, he probably would have been too late.
Campbell, on the other hand, went around the backside of his block and was able to get in on the tackle only after Brinson already had made it.
Judging by this game, Brinson is making the kind of improvement teams look for from draft picks going from their rookie season to their second. He might even have surpassed Karl Brooks as the third-best defensive lineman on the team.
Defensive tackle Anthony Campbell
Campbell, who finished last season on the Packers’ practice squad, has been one of the darlings of camp, mainly because he’s knocked down five or six passes in two weeks of practice. There’s no denying he made those plays.
But he’s a player with a big frame (6-6, 307) who doesn’t play to his size because he doesn’t play with enough knee bend. That was evident on a play late in the second quarter, when Steelers center Ryan McCollum and guard Brock Hoffman pushed him back 5 yards on a 5-yard carry up the middle by Nichols. It’s the kind of play McClellan, for instance, stood up to better against the Steelers.
There’s no taking away Campbell’s ability to knock down passes. He’s done it several times on the practice field. But he’s not quick or super strong. Based on this game, Jonathan Ford and Nazir Stackhouse still are better inside pluggers than Campbell.
This article originally appeared on Packers News: MarShawn Lloyd showed rust in Packers opener vs Steelers | Film review
Reporting by Pete Dougherty and Eric Baranczyk, PackersNews / Packers News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Pete Dougherty and Eric Baranczyk, PackersNews | USA TODAY Network
