What areas of improvement would be move valuable to the Packers in 2023?

Not all moves are created equal. Adding good players is good and adding players at positions of need is also good. But how can a team maximize those moves? More specifically, where can the Packers tweak this roster that makes them better in ways they must improve while also taking into account how that player can improve the team the most overall?

To go through this exercise may land us in familiar territory, with needs on which most can agree, but using data we can not only stack those needs but identify the players who can best help.

To figure out what position would maximally improve the roster, we first have to figure out where the team is deficient. The easiest answer: run defense. And since the team doesn’t seem interested in making a change at defensive coordinator and the linebacker position is accounted for with a promising rookie and an expensive former All-Pro, that leaves safety and defensive line.

Let’s take the latter first because the Packers have made some investment there. Kenny Clark remains one of the top two-way nose tackles in football, able to rush the passer and eat up double teams. But we saw this defense play its best when other defensive linemen involved themselves in the action, whether it was Jarran Reed in the Cowboys win or T.J. Slaton against the Vikings.

But how much value can a defensive lineman truly bring and what is that upgrade worth? Let’s take Chris Jones this season. He was a sack machine, posting 15.5 sacks, and they weren’t cheapies either. He was double-teamed at the highest rate in the NFL but was top five in pass-rush productivity. According to Sports Info and Solutions’ Total Points metric—which takes every play and assigns a historical EPA value to it—Jones saved 32 points for the Chiefs last season, the same net value add as Rams tight end Tyler Higbee.

It’s not that there isn’t value in players like that. There are. But even on the high end, there just aren’t that many defensive linemen that truly matter. Green Bay has Clark, Wyatt, and Slaton under contract and definitely coming back. Dean Lowry looks toast, but a Reed return makes some sense. The Packers, just by pure bodies, need to bring back some heft here, but it can be done in late-wave free agency—much like Reed—or in the middle rounds of the draft unless they view a prospect in the draft as having elite pass rush upside.

The better solution to the run defense problem overlaps beautifully with what is already a personnel need at safety. Adrian Amos may not be back, Darnell Savage no longer looks like a safety, and the Packers had to unbench Savage late in the year to bench Rudy Ford, leaving the team without many options. Even if Amos returns on a one-year deal, that’s likely all it will be and Savage has no contract beyond 2023.

Moving Rasul Douglas to safety makes sense because of the log jam at corner. With Savage poised to play more in the slot, Douglas is one player on a team that played its best with three safeties on the field last year.

The Total Points model agrees with the safety value as well. In fact, 27 safeties saved more points than the most valuable interior defensive lineman last year. Part of that is they more consistently affect the passing game as well as the run game and the ability to directly impact big plays down the field only adds to their value. But guess what? Value is value.

Safety tops the list for the moment.