1) Introduction: It’s time to start considering Nick Perry a bust when it comes to first round draft picks. Taken in 2012, he was hoped to be the answer across from Clay Matthews. Unfortunately, that has yet to pan out, and injuries continue to hamper his growth.
2) Profile: Nick Perry
- Age: 24
- Born: 04/12/1990 in Detroit, MI
- Height: 6’3″
- Weight: 265
- College: USC
- Rookie Year: 2012
- NFL Experience: 3 years
3) Expectations coming into the season: With Julius Peppers coming onto the defense as an OLB, Nick Perry seemed to take an automatic demotion. Still, he was expected to be a solid fill in who could spell Peppers when necessary or add some strength to the front seven.
4) Player’s highlights/low-lights: Nick Perry actually made some strides out of his limited snaps this season. Unfortunately, a low snap count means those opportunities and flashes came few and far between. He notched five sacks on the season and did generate a decent number of stops, though he once again was limited for a span with a shoulder injury.
5) Player’s contribution to the overall team success: At this point, Perry is “just a guy.” He’s not living up to his first round potential at all, and he only played in a third of the defense’s snaps all season.
6) Player’s contributions in the playoffs: He made two of his five sacks on the year against Tony Romo, but otherwise he was mostly invisible.
7) Intangibles: Nick Perry is good against the run, but barely passable as a pass rusher. He’s being outplayed at this point by Mike Neal on the outside.
Season Report Card (Player Grades):
(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
——————Chad Toporski, a Wisconsin native and current Pittsburgh resident, is a writer for AllGreenBayPackers.com. You can follow Chad on twitter at @ChadToporski
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You pretty much summed it up. We are still waiting for Nick Perry to show. It would be a real bonus to discover that with his size and speed, he could play inside linebacker. Otherwise, as you phrased it, “he is just another guy”.
2 sacks in the playoff’s is now considered only “passable” as a pass defender…..hmmmm. 2 sacks makes him “mostly invisible”…..interesting. I think the grade is fair, but the language vexes me. I’m vexed. GoPack!
as long as you’re not convexed
I agree with the grade. He is a disappointment, not a bust. I can’t make the stats back up the notion that Neal outplayed Perry, but since Neal played 642 (58% of Def. Snaps) and Perry only 360 (32.9%), clearly the coaches wanted Neal on the field more, as I don’t think Perry’s injuries and reduced snaps for a few games accounts for the disparity in snaps. Perry played in 15 regular season games.
I note that Perry had a sack every 72 snaps, and a tackle every 15.6 snaps and 1 run stuff. Neal had a sack every 128 snaps and a tackle every 19.45 snaps and 4 run stuffs. Subjectively, I thought Perry often got decent pressure with that bull rush even when he did not get a sack or a QB hit while maintaining the edge. I do remember reading late in the regular season that PFF gave the same run defense grade to both Neal and Perry. Frankly, I think both Perry and Neal are JAGs, but adequate. As far as the stats go, the production is too low for these players for the stats to be significant in comparing them – i.e. one more sack or even half a sack greatly changes the sacks per snap, for example.
3 regular season sacks and 2 post season sacks for a back up player exceeded the expectation I had for Nick in 2015. We new coming in that we would be a backup. How much production do you need from a BACKUP for them to be valuable to the team? If Peppers wouldn’t have been there, Nick gets a lot more playing time and maybe he doubles his production. 8-10 sacks would be a phenomenal year for Nick if he was a full time starter. So with him only playing 1/3 of the time I would say 5 sacks is doing a very well. Did we expect him to beat out Peppers or Matthews this year?
The way I view it is Perry and Neal are like a half a player each, and are used together to form a duo. If you combine the two players, they had 7.5 sacks this season, which is not bad. I thought Perry played pretty well this year considering his limited snaps. He is one of the better players when it comes to setting the edge to stop the run, and I feel like most of the time Perry was on the field this year was for run defense. I would give him a C for the year.