Packers Sign Former First-Round Pick to Help at Offensive Tackle

Andre Dillard, a first-round pick in 2019, started 10 games for the Tennessee Titans last season. The Packers hope he can improve the nonexistent depth behind Zach Tom and Rasheed Walker.

Author:
Bill Huber
Apr 18, 2024

In this story:

Green Bay Packers

TEnnessee Titans

Andre Dillard

Zach Tom

Yosh Nijman

GREEN BAY, Wis. – With a glaring lack of depth at offensive tackle, the Green Bay Packers signed former first-round pick Andre Dillard on Thursday.

The 22nd pick of the 2019 NFL Draft by the Philadelphia Eagles, started nine games in three seasons in Philadelphia. He missed the entire 2020 season with a torn biceps, started five games in 2021 and worked as a backup in 2022.

In 2023, he signed a three-year deal worth $29 million ($10 million guaranteed) with the Tennessee Titans in free agency and started 10 of 16 games. All of those starts were at left tackle.

He struggled throughout, though. According to Pro Football Focus, 64 offensive tackles participated in at least 330 passing plays. Dillard was last in PFF’s pass-blocking efficiency, which measures sacks, hits and hurries allowed per pass-protecting snap.

For sake of comparison, Dillard was charged with a league-worst 12 sacks. Rasheed Walker gave up six and Zach Tom gave up two.

The Titans released him this offseason.

With the 2024 NFL Draft a week away, the Packers have a massive hole at offensive tackle. Even if they have full belief in Tom and Walker as the starting duo – Tom is one of the best young linemen in the NFL and Walker improved as the year went on – the lone backups on the roster are Caleb Jones and Luke Tenuta. They played a combined one snap last year; Jones on special teams.

The top backup last year, Yosh Nijman, signed with the Carolina Panthers in free agency. Can Dillard replace Nijman as the swing tackle? His career snap count, according to PFF: 1,179 at left tackle, 22 at left guard, 11 at right guard and 34 at right tackle.

Dillard's path to the NFL almost never happened.

“At first I hated (football). The first two years – in eighth and ninth grade – I hated football because I was just so bad at it,” Dillard said at the 2019 Senior Bowl. “People would tell me I was terrible. I knew it too.”

He continued the story at the Scouting Combine a month later.

“When I first started, I was kind of a wuss. I wanted to try football just to say I tried it, and I thought it would make me cooler at school. The first two years, it sucked really bad. I was terrible. But something inside of me said to just keep going, and switch flipped in me and things started looking up from there.”

The better he got, the more he liked football. The more he liked football, the more he worked to hone his craft.

“I was getting these feelings of strong satisfaction from doing those things,” he said at the Scouting Combine. “Usually when we start to understand things for what they are, they tend to grow on us. So, that’s kind of what happened, and just learning more and more about the game and what it can bring to a life just made me love it even more.”

His father, Mitch was an offensive lineman for the Cougars in the late 1980s. Still, basketball was his first love. That love translated to football.

“From what I recall, I think I’ve always been pretty quick,” he said at the Combine. “I’ve always been a basketball player since I was a little kid through my junior year of high school. I think that’s contributed a lot to the whole footwork thing. I honestly didn’t focus so much on getting my feet better, it just kind of happened through basketball, so I really think that can be a good tool on my belt for the next level.”

Dillard is an elite athlete for the position. At the 2019 Combine, he measured 6-foot-5 and 315 pounds with 33 1/2-inch arms. He ran his 40 in 4.96 seconds and ran his 20-yard shuttle in 4.40 seconds.

Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst has said draft grades follow a player throughout his career. That no doubt is the case with Dillard. The Packers needed help at talent and see Dillard as a low-risk, huge-upside addition.

Dillard according to PFF allowed only one sack in 250 passing plays with the Eagles in 2021 and two in 183 passing plays as a rookie in 2019, so it's not as if he has struggled throughout his career.