Packers’ Kenny Clark explains how defense will look different in 2024

Packers lineman Kenny Clark noticed the biggest thing about the change with Green Bay’s defensive scheme from a 3-4 to the 4-3. The meetings feature more players.

With the switch, the edge rushers now hang out with the interior defensive linemen like Clark, the former noseguard and the longest-tenured Packers defender. He’s been around Green Bay for eight seasons. This is his first time playing the 4-3 since he was back at UCLA.

“When we do drills, I’m like, ‘Damn.’ We’ve got like a big group of defensive linemen now,” Clark told reporters as the Packers started OTAs last week. “It’s going to be a lot different, but with this system, you’ve got to play like that.”

There’s another notable difference. But it’s a personal one for Clark. He’s now at his thinnest since high school. It’s all by design. Clark wants to play the 4-3, which requires its linemen to be more aggressive, at lighter than 300 pounds. He thrived in the 3-4, notching 34 quarterback sacks in his Packers career. It’s the most for a Green Bay interior lineman in more than four decades. He lost weight to get to 305 last season. Now, he’s under 300.

He trained in the offseason with 49ers defensive tackles Arik Armstead and DeForest Buckner. Both play tackle at lighter than 300.

“I would check up with them and see what it’s like playing in that,” Clark said of Armstead and Buckner. “I always wondered what it was like, but now that I’m in it, I see how they made so many TFLs and all those plays they were always making. It all makes sense. They were really just cutting it loose that whole time.”

The Packers are installing the 4-3 under new defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley. He most recently was head coach at Boston College. Before that, he was the co-defensive coordinator at Ohio State. But he does have NFL experience, coaching defensive backs at Tampa Bay, Cleveland and San Francisco.

Jason Rebrovich is the new defensive line coach. He’s been with the Packers for the past two seasons, most recently working with the pass-rushing specialists.

Clark is loving the new change in style. In the Packers’ previous 3-4, defensive linemen read the offense and then reacted to it. The linemen were more passive in this system. In Hafley’s 4-3, the linemen force the issue and then react.

“It’s one of things where all my career I’ve been kind of been playing this way, but in more of a controlled way,” Clark said.

“Now this is giving us a chance to shut all that other stuff off … just use your ability, go up the field and be disruptive. I just think with my get-off and how I am, I think it’s going to suit me well.”