The Packers left Sunday’s 31-7 win over the Bears with more than just a lopsided result. They may also have found another defender who can tilt a game.
With Edgerrin Cooper already lost for the season to an Achilles injury, Green Bay needed somebody else to help keep the heat on. Rookie Dani Dennis-Sutton stepped into that opening and kept showing up in key spots, turning in the kind of disruptive performance that gets noticed fast.
Dennis-Sutton matched Devonte Wyatt with a team-high two tackles for loss and added one of the Packers’ four sacks. Along the way, he outproduced fellow linemen Lukas Van Ness and Barryn Sorrell, who did not record a tackle behind the line.
His first big stop came late in the first half, when he shut down a D’Andre Swift run on second-and-goal for no gain before the two-minute warning. Later, he dropped Kalif Raymond for a three-yard loss on third down, a play that pushed Chicago toward a missed field goal attempt.
He stayed busy in the fourth quarter, too. After Devonte Wyatt forced a fumble, Dennis-Sutton recovered it and handed the Packers the ball with a little more than four minutes left.
Then he helped finish off Chicago’s last drive. Dennis-Sutton hit Case Keenum on first down to force an incompletion, then got to him again on the next snap for a sack that set up third-and-21. Keenum followed with two incompletions, and Green Bay was able to run out the clock.
For a fourth-round pick taken in April, Dennis-Sutton is starting to build a real case for more work. He has appeared in all five games, though he has played more than 50 percent of the snaps only once. After posting just three tackles across the first two games, he has added 10 since then.
The trend is hard to miss. He has 1.5 sacks over the last three weeks, and the Packers appear to be getting more out of him every time he’s on the field.
That matters even more now, with injuries continuing to reshape Green Bay’s defense. Javon Hargrave is the latest starter to go down for the season after tearing his Achilles on Sunday.
There is also the possibility of Parsons returning in the coming weeks, which could create even better chances for Dennis-Sutton if opponents are forced to put more attention on the superstar edge rusher.
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The contrast in how the game was framed and how it played out was hard to miss, especially with Green Bays overall performance trending up in the kind of way that usually matters in divisional games. Whether Johnson meant to spark anything or not, his choices gave the Packers a clear target, and the way they played suggested they noticed. [Read more 🡒]