The Green Bay Packers moved quickly on Saturday to shore up a battered offensive line, signing veteran guard Laken Tomlinson off the Dallas Cowboys’ practice squad, per Ian Rapoport of NFL media.
The move comes two days after Green Bay’s front five was overwhelmed in a 35-14 Thursday night loss to Atlanta, a game that left quarterback Jordan Love under constant pressure and the running game stuck in the mud.
At 1-2, the Packers have already started three different players at left guard and are missing starting right tackle Zach Bako-Bewele for the season after a torn patellar tendon in Week 2.
Tomlinson is not a glamorous solution so much as a proven one.
The 34-year-old is a former Pro Bowler who earned that honor with the San Francisco 49ers in 2021, and he has started 162 of 173 career games across stops with the Lions, 49ers, Jets, Seahawks, and Texans.
Detroit drafted him 28th overall out of Duke in 2015, and for years he was one of the league’s more durable interior linemen, including a stretch from 2018 through 2024 in which he started 116 consecutive games.
Nearly all of his work has come at left guard, the same spot where Green Bay has been mixing and matching around injured preferred starter Aaron Banks.
Last season in Houston, the decline was harder to ignore. Tomlinson started seven of 10 games before the Texans shuffled the line and later waived him in December.
He finished the year on Baltimore’s practice squad without being elevated, then spent the summer unsigned before Dallas added him on September 9 as insurance while All-Pro guard Tyler Smith recovered from thumb surgery. He never played a snap for the Cowboys.
That unused depth is now Green Bay’s problem to solve, and Dallas is left one veteran thinner on the interior.
Whether Tomlinson can still play at a starter’s level is the open question. Age and last year’s tape suggest he is closer to a stabilizer than a difference-maker.
What he does offer is experience, size, and a history of showing up every Sunday, qualities the Packers have lacked while Love has been hit 15 times in Week 1 and another 12 times against the Falcons. If he can settle left guard or push first-year right guard Jacob Monk, the signing will have done its job.
If not, it will look like another late patch on a unit that needed more than a practice-squad veteran.
For a team that cannot afford another week of collapse up front, Tomlinson at least gives Green Bay a known quantity to evaluate immediately.
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