Young NFL breakout candidates for 2024: Packers IDL Devonte Wyatt

Although Devonte Wyatt was a highly-regarded four-star recruit coming out of high school, Wyatt’s academic levels did not meet Georgia’s requirements and he had to spend a year at community college before finally arriving in Athens.

Even throughout his time with the Bulldogs, he was typically overshadowed due to playing next to Jordan Davis and even Jalen Carter eventually – now both on the Eagles.

Looking beyond the traditional statistics and seeing the tape match up with the 90.2 overall PFF grade he received as a redshirt senior, the Packers did end up selecting him at the end of the first round in 2022. However, he was almost a non-factor as a rookie, playing less than a quarter of the snaps for them, despite only missing one game that year.

Devonte Wyatt earned the trust of the Packers coaching staff heading into year two though, as he played about 2.5 times as many snaps (552), starting six compared to only one game. His stats increased from 15 to 36 tackles, from zero to six TFLs and from 1.5 to 5.5 sacks. However, it’s the advanced numbers that really indicate his individual growth.

After only logging eight QB pressures on 111 pass-rush snaps in his debut campaign, he sky-rocketed up to 45 total on 305 such opportunities. That earned him the second-highest pass-rush productivity (9.1) among interior D-linemen with at least 50 chances, sandwiched right in between walking Hall of Famers Chris Jones and Aaron Jones.

Devonte Wyatt also logged 24 total defensive stops, up from five in year one. So while it would be unfair to expect the efficiency metrics to improve even further, I believe we’ll see him become an even more integral piece to Green Bay’s defensive front and have more palpable production, which even casual fans can notice as they look at the stat sheet.

Why Packers' Devonte Wyatt could have a breakout season

At Georgia, you rarely see defensive linemen be allowed to just shoot up the field and create havoc. Instead, it’s built around being able to gap-control a lot, which is where you saw Devonte Wyatt be able to fit his hand, create knock-back and lock out, squeezing down rushing lanes inside of him and take care of his assignment.

Those abilities equally showed up on his tape as a second-year pro. He also displays a pretty good feel for angular blockers arriving on quick combos and anchoring against those, in order to not get bumped off his landmarks. Wyatt provides good lateral mobility to track wide zone concepts and then is able to disengage in order to wrap up the ball-carrier trying to blow through that front-side gap on him.

He could definitely be a little more sudden with falling back a gap as he’s tracking lateral plays down the line or just deconstructing blocks, in order to wrap up the ball-carrier. Some of that of course has to do with improving his agility in his offseason training, but also advancing technically, lifting underneath the arms of blockers, and not forcing himself to work through contact.

In terms of stops around the line of scrimmage – even by the way PFF tracks those – Devonte Wyatt was already an impactful run defender, but you do see ball-carriers run by him quite a bit, as he’s engaged with an opposing lineman and can’t quite get off contact quickly enough to wrap guys up from the side or at least clip their ankles.

We have yet to see what exactly the Packers will be schematically on the front- or back-end under new defensive Jeff Hafley, but being a primary even-front time compared to the more traditional 3-4 looks we saw recently is to be expected. So the third-year D-tackle being able to just line up at the three-technique and be a play-disruptor instead of having to read and react as much should definitely help him out.

Something I’ve always valued about Devonte Wyatt in the pass game is that he has an impressive ability to link his arms and hips, in order to actually get by interior protectors. In particular, on tilted rushes from a 4i- or even 5-technique, cross-facing guards for quick wins is something that popped on a few occasions.

However, also when guys tried to short-set or sit on him, quickly pulling off high swim moves and cornering around them towards the quarterback was an effective tool for him. Devonte Wyatt is also one of the better speed-to-power rushers on the interior, when they’d get to designated passing situations and the guard would almost kick-set like you’d see on the edge, providing more of a runway to build up momentum.

Yet, what really gives me confidence in his development in this regard are his reactionary skills, to sort of read-rush opponents and either stab at their chest as they get to tall, dip-and-rip when they present a soft shoulder, slide inside or hit spin moves as counters as they get their body-weight shifted too far one way. Something that weirdly stood out to me about Wyatt from the start was his snap anticipation.

At Georgia, Devonte Wyatt's ability to come off the ball when allowed to penetration was a massive plus, but too often he’d nearly jump or was a tad late, which is something that should continue to improve as he familiarizes himself with different cadences by quarterbacks.

And there’s a little bit of tightness in his ankles when Wyatt wins the outside shoulder on his blocker or comes free on a loop or off some kind of game up front, and the quarterback takes off up the middle, not being able to circle around or suddenly redirect in order to trip that guy up.

Nevertheless, even if he never quite puts up those All-Pro level sack numbers as a finisher, I believe Devonte Wyatt could become one of the premier guys on the inside at providing heat on the QB on a snap-to-snap basis. You also see him pull eyes and hands with him slanting across the formation quite a bit, in order to set up lanes for his fellow rushers.

Once again, I don’t know exactly what new DC Jeff Hafley wants this unit to look like schematically. Yet, looking at some of the general structure principles, his defenses as the play-caller at Ohio State and then head coach at Boston College were consistently near the top in their usage of single-high safety looks and almost exclusively even fronts.

That would be a big shift from what they were under Joe Barry, with a lot of more traditional 3-4 principles and 5-0 looks. So, as Devonte Wyatt continues his individual growth, I believe he’ll be asked to further distance himself from the gap-control and control-rush or even gap-exchange stuff he excelled at but wasn’t set up for major production by Georgia.

Being part of a more attacking front does fit his skill sets well and even among critical Packers fans when it comes to all the first-round picks they’ve invested into the defense over the last decade pretty much, they’ll end up being happy with the pick they used on this player. I would not be surprised in the least if Devonte Wyatt became a Pro Bowler in 2024 and someone opposing teams circle on the whiteboard when they prepare for their matchup with the Packers.