1) Introduction: The freezer broke onto the scene in during the Packers post-season run to the Super Bowl in 2010 and at that point it looked as if the Packers had another star in the making. 2011 however was a significant down year for Raji, who was hampered by an ankle injury for most of the season. Fans were hoping to see the re-emergence of the Freezer in 2012.
2) Profile:
Busari J. Raji Jr.
- Age: 26
- Born: 07/11/1986, in Washington Township, NJ
- Height: 6’2″
- Weight: 337
- College: Boston College
- Rookie Year: 2009
- NFL Experience: 4 years
3) Expectations coming into the season: Many fans wrote off the 2011 season for Raji due to his injuries and were hoping that he would regain his old form and provide pressure and collapse the pocket from the nose tackle position
4) Player’s highlights/low-lights: Raji’s best game of 2012 was against the Titans in week 16, where he posted 3 quarterback hurries, a blocked pass, a tackle and an offensive negative play. However, Raji never managed to figure out how to beat the San Francisco 49ers offensive line, which would come back to haunt the.
5) Player’s contribution to the overall team success: Raji spent more time as a defensive end than a nose tackle and ironically played better as a defense end than as a nose tackle. As a defensive end, Raji often had great success against the run with marginal success at rushing the passer.
6) Player’s contributions in the playoffs: While he did record 2 quarterback hurries against the Vikings, Raji was part of the defensive front 7 that could not contain Colin Kaepernick in the divisional playoffs which ultimately knocked the Packers out of the Super Bowl race.
Season Report Card:
(C) Level of expectations met during the season
(C+) Contributions to team’s overall success.
(C) Contributions to team during the playoffs
Overall Grade: C+
——————Thomas Hobbes is a staff writer for Jersey Al’s AllGreenBayPackers.com.
——————
OUCH!
I hate how Raji always seems to get twisted around during plays.
Raji or Jennings. I know who I would take for the next 4 years and it isn’t Raji. Pay Jennings and let Raji go after next year.
A very solid player that could be an impact player on a better defense. He is playing next to an aging vet (Pickett), a one dimensional player on the opposite side (Wilson – run stopper only) and a set of LB’s not including Mathews that should not be starting on any other teams and virtually no backup off the bench. The result is too much responsibility and too many snaps even at his young age, this was evident when he played below his normal level in the playoffs. To give him a grade just a tick over Crosby’s C grade indicates that the author of these grades needs to find another line of work, this is riduculous, time to take this web site out of my list.
It’s OK for you to disagree on specific grades, but there are over 50 of these to go. I suggest you base your opinion on the whole body of work…
Raji had games when he was an A, and he had games when he was a D-. I might have been a tiny bit more generous and given him a B-, but overall, against the better offensive lines, he got knocked around a lot.
A B- for what? Constantly being driven out of the middle? Very little pass rush? Raji is a below average nose tackle. He cannot hold the point of attack, cannot rush the passer. The best score he could get would be a D.
Raji is average.
raji showed some burst and you have to give him credit for it. good grade, hopefully he improves because he is on our dl for better or worse. good grade
If Raji is going to play more at defensive end then I believe he should lose 15-20 lbs,which would hopefully make him quicker into the back field,and thus more tackles for loss and QB sacks!
I hope TT doesn’t over pay Raji like he did hawk…raji is truly an average DL latley.. he had a decent 2010 campaign, but has been not much since. Raji started to come to life in the 4th qt of this season, against average lines, with a feature contact in Site.
What Raji has going in his favor is we don’t have much else going on the D line