Kenny Clark admits that he was “shocked” by the blockbuster trade that shipped him away from the Green Bay Packers on Thursday, but the veteran defensive tackle sounds as if he is already adjusting to life with the Dallas Cowboys.
Clark said he was with his daughter, Kenali, getting ice cream when news broke that the Packers had traded him and two first-round picks in exchange for superstar pass rusher Micah Parsons. One day later, the two of them were walking into the Cowboys’ facility together with Jerry Jones after taking a short ride on the team owner’s private jet.
While Clark said the trade initially caught him off guard, he expressed gratitude on his first full day with the Cowboys because of how the team had made him feel “wanted.”
“I was shocked,” Clark said Friday about the trade, via the Cowboys’ team website, “but once Jerry and all those guys called me, (Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer) Schotty and everybody, I just felt wanted. It’s a blessing, I’m appreciative of it.”
Clark also didn’t mince words when talking about what he brought to the Packers over his first nine seasons — and what the Cowboys are getting in him in the massive trade.
“No nonsense, you’re going to get a dawg, somebody that’s just all about football,” Clark said. “I’m here to ball. I’m here to be my best self. I feel like when I’m my best self, there’s nobody messing with me. That’s what I bring to the table, I’m here to play my ass off.”
Kenny Clark Gave Packers a Long Stretch of Strong Play
For many years, Clark had been one of the crown jewels of the Packers defense.
The 2016 first-round pick played a rotational role for most of his rookie season, but he seized a permanent starting role as the team’s nose tackle in his sophomore season in 2017 and didn’t relinquish it until his departure, making 126 career starts and tallying 417 tackles, 35 sacks, 51 tackles for loss and 76 quarterback hits over nine seasons.
The Packers also rewarded Clark for his high-quality play, particularly as their most staunch run defender. They signed him to a four-year, $70 million contract extension before the 2020 season, then re-upped with a three-year, $64 million deal last July to keep him as the centerpiece of their defense for Jeff Hafley’s first year as coordinator.
After adjusting to a 4-3 defense in 2024, though, Clark didn’t have the best of seasons.
Despite starting all 17 games, Clark finished with his fewest tackles (37), sacks (1) and quarterback hits (5) in his eight seasons as a full-time starter. According to Pro Football Focus, he also earned a career-low 60.0 overall PFF grade with an ugly 9.3% pass-rush win rate and only a 58.4 PFF run-defense grade, underscoring his apparent decline.
The Packers will still miss Clark as a mainstay for the middle of their defense. But given that he will turn 30 in roughly one month and would have cost more than $20 million against the salary cap in 2026, he became a no-brainer price to pay for Parsons — who is one of the most talented young defensive players in the NFL heading into 2025.
Will Packers’ IDL Step Up Around Micah Parsons?
The Packers now have Parsons, a boss-killing type of defensive weapon, coming off the edge for their defense with former first-round pick Rashan Gary working opposite him. But with a Kenny Clark-shaped hole at defensive tackle, will others step up to fill it?
Devonte Wyatt, a 2022 first-round pick, is now the main man in the middle for the Packers and could be in line for a breakout season with Clark no longer around, but he still needs to make progress and establish more consistency as a run defender. He did, however, record nearly as many defensive stops (16) as Clark during the 2024 season despite playing significantly fewer snaps of run defense (107 vs. 259 snaps) than him.
Alongside Wyatt, the Packers also have Colby Wooden, Karl Brooks and rookies Warren Brinson and Nazir Stackhouse on the roster, looking to carve off bigger roles in 2025. Brooks could see the most work as a pass rusher after tallying 7.5 sacks in his first two seasons, but the run-defense snaps could boil down to a frequent rotation until the Packers see enough consistent production from one player to give him a larger load.
Fortunately, one of the great things about Parsons’ elite talent is that the Packers can get creative with how they deploy him. While he is a game-wrecker off the edge, he can also rush from the middle or fit into other alignments that allow him to attack in different ways. That dominant versatility could allow the Packers to mix and match — and lower the every-down burden placed on the interior linemen to shut things down.
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