Rashan Gary's pressure rate has plummeted despite ample opportunities and a massive contract. The Green Bay Packers need to let him go, even if he is a former first-round pick.
Anybody who knows anything about the 2025 Green Bay Packers had a funny feeling that things were going to start looking very ugly when elite pass-rusher Micah Parsons was lost for the year a few weekends ago with a torn ACL.
Just how bad is it, though?
Well, the Packers have gone 0-3 since Parsons' injury and they very well could back into the playoffs on a four-game losing skid, so there's that.
The Packers have also notched just one sack in the past two games without Parsons. They didn't get a single one against the Chicago Bears in Week 17, and Quay Walker's sack in Week 18 in the loss to the Baltimore Ravens barely counts because it came on a run from quarterback Tyler Huntley. Walker just happened to get him at the line of scrimmage, so it counted as a sack.
That's not the problem here, though. That's splitting hairs about technicalities when the real problem is staring us right in the face wearing No. 52 in green and gold.
That problem would be Rashan Gary, the former No. 12 overall pick of the 2019 NFL Draft.
Gary was a high-upside pick out of Michigan by general manager Brian Gutekunst because he had the athletic profile to be a beast (he's a former No. 1 overall recruit in the country) but he was a raw pass-rusher coming out of a scheme with the Wolverines that asked him to do a lot of gap plugging as a defensive end.
At times in his NFL career, Gary has scratched that potential. He notched 9.5 sacks in 2021 and nine in 2023 coming off an ACL injury.
The issue for the Packers is that Gary notched just 7.5 sacks last season and even with Parsons working alongside him for a majority of this season, he's been stuck on 7.5 for nine games now.
That's right. Gary's last sack came on October 26. Even worse, with Parsons out and the Packers desperately needing someone to step up, the former first-round pick has been on a milk carton.
In fact, Justice Mosqueda over at Acme Packing Company did a deep dive on the numbers, and he found that there's not a pass-rusher in the NFL who gets more opportunities to get after the quarterback but who does less with those opportunities.
In a chart he posted in his breakdown, he revealed that Gary has 337 snaps as a pass-rusher this season, which is amongst the most in the NFL. He's only notched six "quick pressures" in 2025, though. Quick pressures are defined as pressures generated in three seconds or fewer. Since 2018, 206 edge-rushers have played at least 337 snaps in a season, and those 206 players have averaged 24 quick pressures per season.
Again, Gary has produced just six.
That's depressing, but it's even worse when you remember the financial skin the Packers have in the game when it comes to Gary. He signed a four-year, $107 million extension with the Pack in October of 2023, and he's under contract through 2027.
Even worse, his cap hit is $28 million in 2026 and $31 million in 2027.
Gary has been making $24 million a year to basically do nothing. The Packers can save $11 million against the cap this offseason by releasing Gary before June 1, and they'd be smart to do so.
Cutting a former first round pick is never easy, but in this case, you can't lose what you don't have in the first place.