Skip to main content
Packer Central

Play of Day And Shocking Player of Day at Practice 4 of Packers Training Camp

The Player of the Day on Sunday at Packers training camp wasn’t on anyone’s radar to earn a roster spot. That’s clearly changed.
Bill Huber|
Green Bay Packers receiver Bo Melton (16) catches a pass at training camp.
Green Bay Packers receiver Bo Melton (16) catches a pass at training camp. | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

In this story:

Green Bay Packers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The fourth practice of Green Bay Packers training camp is complete, and so is the first phase of the march toward Week 1.

Starting Monday, when the players will practice in full pads for the first time, things will get real.

Here are the Play of the Day and Player of the Day from Sunday, the fourth practice of Packers training camp. The Player of the Day selection is the most coming-from-out-of-nowhere player imaginable.

Player of the Day

The Packers’ wide-open battle for roster spots on the defensive line has taken an unexpected turn.

To exaggerate to make a point, nobody considered Anthony Campbell a legit contender to earn a roster spot on Green Bay’s deep but undistinguished defensive line. Actually, there might be no exaggeration at all.

In four years of Division I football at Louisiana-Monroe in 2021 and 2022 and Miami in 2023 and 2024, he played 321 defensive snaps. At Miami, Campbell played eight snaps in one game in 2023 – he called that “depressing” – and 48 snaps in eight games in 2024. As a sixth-year senior, he recorded one tackle.

Not an average of one tackle. One tackle, period.

So, it’s little wonder why Campbell went undrafted last year. He battled for a roster spot with the Seahawks but was released at the end of camp and served a brief stint on their practice squad. With an excellent size-speed package, he joined Green Bay’s practice squad at the end of the season.

On a defensive line that includes standout Devonte Wyatt, offseason additions Javon Hargrave and Chris McClellan, and returning players Karl Brooks, Warren Brinson, Nazir Stackhouse and Jonathan Ford, Campbell was practically an afterthought entering camp.

Instead, he batted down two passes at practice on Sunday, giving him at least three this summer.

“Just putting my hands up,” he said after practice. “I’m a tall dude. I’m 6-6, 300 pounds. So, I got to do what I got to do to do my job

Those aren’t just fluke plays. He’s played well enough overall to earn some first-team snaps.

Of course, Wyatt has been limited to individual drills as he returns from last year’s season-ending injury and Hargrave is on the PUP list. Those realities are impacting everyone’s role. Still, Campbell has been good enough to warrant opportunities even when everyone is healthy.

“Man, it’s a great process,” Campbell said. “I love the coaches here. They trust me and I trust them. I’m doing whatever they want me to know and it’s trusting the process to being here.”

Campbell called it a “wonderful” defense that he fits.

“It’s for guys my size and everybody pretty much,” he said. “It’s for everybody that’s here. We got the skills for it and it’s for everybody in the defensive line room.

Play of the Day

In the 1981 AFC playoffs, the Miami Dolphins pulled off one of the most memorable plays in NFL history with their hook-and-lateral touchdown in the final moments of the first half against the Chargers. Don Strock completed the pass to receiver Duriel Harris, who lateraled to running back Tony Nathan for the touchdown.

The stakes were infinitely lower on Sunday but the result was the same. The offense was given the ball on the defense’s 20 with 19 seconds remaining and no timeouts. No. 2 quarterback Tyrod Taylor completed a pass to receiver Bo Melton, who lateraled to running back Pierre Strong for what probably was a touchdown. He was ruled down at the 3 for the good of the drill, though, and Taylor threw a touchdown pass on the next play.

“Yeah, that was kind of a unique play,” Melton said. “We were in a situation at the end of the half – a 19-second situation. We had to score and we had no timeouts. So, Coach LaFleur, he’s a mastermind, so he drew that up, and I thought we scored. They called him down but it was a great play. We practiced that play a couple times.”

The key to it all is Melton’s focus. He had to focus on catching the ball without worrying about Strong and the location of the defenders. Only after the catch was secured could the next phase of the play begin.

“It’s a feel thing, but we ran that in college,” the former Rutgers star said. “We ran a couple of those in college, so it’s really a feel thing. You want to feel the area. How is the defense playing? Is it man coverage or is it zone?

“You kind of want to lull them asleep. It was zone, so I lulled them to sleep a little bit, caught it like I was going to do a move, and seen Pierre there and tossed it. So, it’s lulling the defense asleep, like, ‘Oh, this is nothing’ and then, ‘Oh!’ If you run hard, they’re running after you and stuff. It’s kind of like they fall into the play. So, you’ve got to lull them asleep.”

Melton is a frontrunner to land one of the backup spots at receiver while Strong has taken advantage of Chris Brooks’ absence in the race to be one of the backup running backs behind Josh Jacobs.

Strong is off to a, well, strong start in that endeavor. Speed is a big part of his game, and he’s hit multiple cutback runs for big gains.

Beginning on Monday, the challenge will be ramped up.

“That’s real football,” he said. “All the tackles you say you can miss and all the tackles you say you can make, it's time to show it. So, I'm looking forward to it.”

SIGN UP FOR OUR FREE DAILY PACKERS NEWSLETTER

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Loading recommendations... Please wait while we load personalized content recommendations

Published
Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.