The preseason is about to start, which means roster construction talk is about to hit an all-time high. People are often reminded to consider special teams in the equation when they make mock 53-man rosters, but what does that really mean?

To paint the picture of which Green Bay Packers play on special teams, where they play and what the Packers’ identity (at least from a personnel perspective) is, I want to do some deep dives into the third phase of football this summer. We’re going to start with the punt unit.

Obviously, the long snapper is the long snapper and long snaps to the punter, playing punter, who then punts. But what about the other nine players on the field? Let’s go position-by-position, explaining who the Packers use in these spots to try to win the field position battle when their offense falls short.

The first position I want to touch on here is the punt gunners, whose job is to try to get past the “jammer” or “vise” player on the return team as fast as possible to force a fair catch, down a punt or make a tackle quickly after the punt returner fields the ball. They usually line up outside of the numbers in a receiver-like position while the jammer/vise across from them is the cornerback to their receiver spot. Sometimes, you will hear the Packers call this gunner position the “flyer.”

Cornerback: 2,064 snaps (48 percent)Receiver: 1,052 (24 percent)Safety: 1,049 (24 percent)Running Back: 122 (3 percent)Linebacker: 4 (0.1 percent)Tight End: 4 (0.1 percent)

As you can see, this position is mostly filled by defensive backs. League-wide, about 72 percent of these snaps are played by defensive backs, with cornerbacks playing about twice as much as safeties. Considering that cornerbacks usually are faster than safeties, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Remember, the whole reason we measure 40-yard dashes in football, a timed event that only really exists in the context of this sport, is because legendary head coach Paul Brown believed it translated well to the punt gunner position. Wide receivers are the only non-defensive backs who see a significant amount of time at this position, but defensive backs still play about three snaps at punt gunner for every one that receivers line up for.

2024 Packers Player Snap Counts

WR/CB Bo Melton: 52 snapsCB Corey Ballentine: 31CB Robert Rochell: 26CB Carrington Valentine: 5LB Edgerrin Cooper: 1WR Malik Heath: 1S Omar Brown: 1CB Keisean Nixon: 1

2024 Packers Position Breakdown:

CB: 115 (97 percent)LB 1 (0.8 percent)WR: 1 (0.8 percent)S: 1 (0.8 percent)

How you want to treat Bo Melton in this data is up to the reader. Last year, he was a wide receiver. This year, he’s a defensive back. If you count the position that players are listed at in 2025, 97 percent of the Packers’ punt gunner reps came from cornerbacks, about double the league-wide rate. While Green Bay lost Robert Rochell in free agency, they now return all non-Rochell snaps from the unit on their offseason roster following the re-signing of Corey Ballentine.

Interestingly, the Packers were one of the few teams that experimented with playing a fast off-ball linebacker at the punt gunner position by giving rookie Edgerrin Cooper one of those snaps. It’s worth noting that new off-ball linebacker Isaiah Simmons, who has played some defensive back in his career, got looks as a first-team punt gunner opposite of Bo Melton on Family Night.

The next position is our largest unit, making up four players. These are our punt team guards and tackles. They make up the rest of the line of scrimmage players besides the long snapper and punt gunners. Unlike the punt gunners, they aren’t allowed to go downfield until after the punt is kicked, a big difference between the NFL’s special teams rules and the college/high school level.

For the most part, their job is protection first before they clean up the chaos that gunners (hopefully) start.

Linebacker: 5,119 (58 percent)Tight End: 1,908 (22 percent)Edge Defender: 1,628 (18 percent)Fullback: 124 (1.4 percent)Running Back: 48 (0.5 percent)Center: 7 (0.07 percent)Cornerback: 3 (0.03 percent)

By far, this position is filled out by players in the 240- to 250-pound range. In the NFL, linebackers, tight ends and edge defenders make up 98 percent of the snaps played at the tackle and guard positions. Teams vary in which type of players they want to use there, with tight ends being more of the protection focus and linebackers/edge defenders being more of the coverage focus, but tackle and guard are almost always players of a similar body type.

2024 Packers Player Snap Counts

ED Lukas Van Ness: 63ED Kinglsey Enagbare: 63LB Isaiah McDuffie: 58ED Arron Mosby: 57LB Eric Wilson: 8LB Quay Walker: 3

2024 Packers Position Breakdown:

ED: 183 (73 percent)LB: 69 (27 percent)

For the most part, Packers special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia hasn’t used tight ends much at tackle or guard in his three years in Green Bay. The one exception has been Josiah Deguara, the only player at the position who posted more than one snap at the position (out of a possible 736) over those seasons. If there’s any trend here from a Packers perspective, that’s a good start.

Green Bay leaned heavily into the edge defender position last season, but part of that was just how the roster shook out. Both Eric Wilson and Quay Walker have been top-five most-played tackles and guards for Bisaccia over his three years (along with Isaiah McDuffie), but the defense needed to use those players as starters last season — and Wilson had to play other premier spots on the punt unit. I wouldn’t make too much of the edge defender versus linebacker split off of the 2024 data alone, but it is worth mentioning that defensive end Brenton Cox Jr., who is probably fighting for a roster spot with Kingsley Enagbare and Arron Mosby, has never been a contributor in this phase of special teams.

On Family Night, the first-team tackles were linebacker Ty’Ron Hopper, who has never played the position in the regular season before, and McDuffie, with Van Ness and Enagbare playing guard. It will be interesting to see if the Packers really do start Van Ness at this spot and full-time defensive end in 2025.

The penultimate position we’re going to talk about is the backfield/wing spot. The center player in the backfield, the personal protector, is a very premier position on special teams, so we’re going to talk about him separately. For the most part, two backfield/wing players line up two yards behind the line of scrimmage, but they can be walked up to a wing (think off-ball tight end) position if they need to block an immediate threat at the line of scrimmage. These are sort of the chess piece players, if you want to run two gunners to the same side of the formation, too. Along with the personal protector, they are the last line of defense against a blocked kick. They are also usually the “safety” players in coverage who are the last stop before a returner is one-on-one with the punter.

Running Back: 999 (23 percent)Tight End: 961 (22 percent)Linebacker: 898 (20 percent)Safety: 771 (18 percent)Fullback: 272 (6.2 percent)Edge Defender: 241 (5.5 percent)Receiver: 176 (4.0 percent)Cornerback: 75 (1.7 percent)

From a personnel standpoint, most teams treat the position similarly to tackle and guard, with tight end and linebacker taking up a significant amount of snaps, but blocking backs (be it a tailback or fullback) are also mixed in. Some teams will use smaller players like safeties, receivers or cornerbacks (23.3 percent of total snaps) at the position, but that’s never been something Bisaccia has done. For perspective, no players at those positions have ever played more than two total career snaps at backfield/wing under his time in Green Bay. In short, Bisaccia uses bigger backfield players on the punt team.

2024 Packers Player Snap Counts

LB Eric Wilson: 46TE Tucker Kraft: 36RB Chris Brooks: 25TE John FitzPatrick: 7FB Andrew Beck: 4CB Corey Ballentine: 2TE Ben Sims: 2CB Robert Rochell: 2TE Luke Musgrave: 1S Zayne Anderson: 1

2024 Packers Position Breakdown:

LB: 46 (37 percent)TE: 46 (37 percent)RB: 25 (20 percent)CB: 4 (3.2 percent)FB: 4 (3.2 percent)S: 1 (0.8 percent)

One thing I want to bring up here is that this data is not super clean, and this particular unit on the punt team went through a lot of change last year. For example, the third-, fourth- and fifth-most-played players at these positions in 2024 weren’t on the roster for the full season (RB Chris Brooks, TE John FitzPatrick and FB Andrew Beck). The Packers also worked tight end Tucker Kraft off the field due to his obvious contributions on the offensive side of the ball. I don’t think he’s going to be hanging around very long on special teams. Linebacker Eric Wilson also split time between the backfield/wing, the line of scrimmage and personal protector last year.

Historically, this position has been dominated by tight ends and running backs, who have made up 85 percent of the snaps played at the backfield/wing positions since Bisaccia took over in Green Bay. Besides 2024 Eric Wilson, only one other off-ball linebacker (Krys Barnes, one snap) has ever gotten an opportunity at the position under Bisaccia.

With that all being said, it’s also a particular type of running back who gets these looks. It’s not the smaller backs that the Packers actually give the football to on offense. It’s always been their bigger blocking backs: Patrick Taylor (80 snaps), Chris Brooks (25 snaps) and A.J. Dillon (5 snaps). This is probably a big win for Brooks when it comes to making the 53.

The best way to think about this position is one for tight ends and blocking backs, unless the team has an ace special teams linebacker who can really execute on that last line of defense. On Family Night, the “starters” here were Brooks and sixth linebacker Kristian Welch. Maybe Welch can be an outlier at the position for Bisaccia, like Wilson was.

Last but not least is the personal protector, arguably the most important position we’ve talked about so far. The deepest man in the protection also plays the middle of the field, giving him the best vantage point of any non-punter on the grass. He’s the absolute last line of defense and also sets the protection for the unit. If he’s not the quarterback of the punt team, he’s at least the middle linebacker.

Safety: 1,376 (61 percent)Running Back: 468 (21 percent)Linebacker: 159 (7.0 percent)Tight End: 145 (6.4 percent)Fullback: 78 (3.4 percent)Cornerback: 45 (2.0 percent)

This is the one position on special teams that generally leans toward the safety position. Between safety and running back (including fullback), that makes up 84.6 percent of the reps at this spot. If you ever wonder why the Packers are keeping that extra safety on the roster, it’s probably because they’re planning on playing him at this position.

2024 Packers Player Snap Counts

S Zayne Anderson: 54LB Eric Wilson: 7S Evan Williams: 2

Since taking over the job in 2023, Bisaccia has almost always had an ace special teams safety playing this position. Before Zanye Anderson, it was Dallin Leavitt (101 career snaps). Jonathan Owens (20 snaps) also spelled here. The only other players who have gotten looks in three years are Eric Wilson and Evan Williams. I don’t really care about the position here as much as the individuals. You need a DUDE (at least from a special teams perspective) in this spot. For what it’s worth, Williams’ reps both came against the Philadelphia Eagles — once in Week 1 and once in the playoffs.

Unsurprisingly, Anderson was the personal protector with the first-team unit on Family Night. This is his job.