I haven’t spent a ton of time on Rashan Gary during our preseason content phase. We mentioned expecting big things out of him during our edge rusher preview episode, but beyond that, he hasn’t come up much.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t think about Gary a lot, and when I do, one phrase keeps coming to mind: man, I’m glad he’s on our side.

Heading into his fourth season with the Packers, Gary projects this year as a frightful presence on the Packers’ defense. Still ascending as a player, Gary will be building on a 2021 season that saw him pressuring the quarterback relentlessly, working as a full-time starter for the first time in his career.

The box score stats began to capture his contributions for the first time (he collected 9.5 sacks in 16 regular season games and added two more in the Packers’ playoff loss) but only told a small part of the story. Nearly a dozen sacks is great, but Gary’s pressure rate was even better: he got pressure on the quarterback on more than 17% of his rushes in 2021, and his 81 total pressures were second-best among edge defenders in the entire NFL, according to Pro Football Focus.

His development is nothing short of astonishing. Though he was always a physical marvel, there were real questions about his productivity when the Packers took him 12th overall in 2019. But since he was drafted he’s steadily chipped away at that narrative, and there’s no reason to think he can’t pile up a huge number of sacks and pressures this season en route to a monster contract extension in the near future.

The Packers will tell you this was always the plan, that they always believed he could be a game-wrecking force. That might be true, but I think even Brian Gutekunst would admit that Gary looks even better than expected heading into year four. 

His rise has been a good reminder that the “draft and develop” model includes high draft picks, too. Nobody expects the guy with rare athletic gifts to really develop much as a player; we expect that kind of guy to be a finished product.

But Gary has, and he deserves a ton of credit. He’s made himself into something close to the best version of what the Packers believed he could be, and it’s taken him no small amount of work to get there. It’s one thing to have tremendous athletic talents. It’s another to put in the work necessary to harness them.

Now, he looks ready to take the league by storm. The time of “Rashan Gary, high-potential prospect” is over. It’s Scary Gary season now, and I hope he puts an unholy terror into the rest of the NFL.

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