It was not a major transaction for the Packers, but on Tuesday, the team cut ties with fullback Henry Pearson, who had been with the practice squad last season. Releasing Pearson so early in camp leaves the team, effectively, without a fullback in camp, furthering the notion that coach Matt LaFleur is eliminating the position from the team’s offense.
To be sure, Pearson was something below a bit player in last season’s Packers offense, appearing on the field for just 11 offensive snaps. But he was really the only fullback on the roster for the Packers, who now have six running backs on hand on the updated 90-man roster.
Around the NFL, coaches have increasingly eliminated fullbacks from the game. LaFleur is among them.
At PackersWire.com, they wrote after Pearson’s release, “Is the fullback position going extinct in Green Bay? The Packers let Josiah Deguara walk in free agency, and Pearson — who was entering Year 2 after spending last season on the Packers’ practice squad — is out after just one week of training camp.”
Packers Running Backs Room Has Been Reset
Pearson was an undrafted free-agent signing out of Appalachian State after the 2023 draft, and stuck with the team all through camp last summer, before eventually being moved to the practice squad on the final day of roster cuts.
He had some hope of sticking with the team this year in a running-back room that is being remade following the signing of Raiders star Josh Jacobs as the lead back. But the slots behind Jacobs are still very much up for grabs, and the Packers clearly decided they’d rather pack the room with runners rather than blocking backs like Pearson.
As things stand, rookie third-round draft choice MarShawn Lloyd is likely the No. 2 back behind Jacobs, with veteran AJ Dillon as the No. 3. Veteran Emmanuel Wilson (an undrafted signee who made the roster last summer) is in the mix, too, as is Ellis Merriweather (who finished the year on the Packers practice squad) and undrafted rookie Jarveon Howard.
Jacobs, of course, replaces the departed veteran Aaron Jones, a move that LaFleur earlier admitted came as a surprise to him.
“It kind of caught me off guard, to be honest with you,” LaFleur said at last week’s annual league meetings via the Wisconsin State Journal. “There were some other things in play, obviously with Aaron Jones, and I didn’t quite know how everything was going to go. It just happened really fast on that Monday.”
Henry Pearson’s Fullback Spot All But Eliminated
As for the fullback spot, well, the Packers have been phasing it out pretty much since LaFleur’s arrival. They have had hybrid players in the position before—Ty Montgomery, Dan Vitale—but the use of a full-time Packers fullback has been rare.
In its annual player grading, Pro Football Focus ranked only 10 remaining fullbacks in the league in 2023.
Chiefs coach Andy Reid, on the podcast hosted by Jason and Travis Kelce, said last year that, “the fullback has kind of been eased out of the game a little bit.”
That’s for sure. Increasingly, teams use athletic tight ends in 12-personnel to fill the role of fullbacks, or simply spread the field and operate with single-back sets. The fullback spot is pretty much gone from the NFL, and with Pearson’s release, it’s gone from the Packers training camp roster, too.
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