Stop Treating Lucas Van Ness Like a Burden — He's a Bargain
Packernet Podcast: Daily Green Bay Packers Podcast
AC Sports
4.7 • 524 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2026
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Green Bay Packers exercised the fifth year option on Lucas Van Ness — and somehow ESPN thinks that's the dumbest move of the offseason. Ryan breaks down the tape, the cap math, and the logic (or lack thereof) behind the wave of criticism coming from multiple ESPN Milwaukee and Madison personalities who seem convinced the Packers just made a catastrophic mistake.
- The $14 million myth: Ryan methodically dismantles the idea that Van Ness' fifth year option is some massive, reckless investment — when the top pass rusher in the NFL is making $50 million a year, this is literally bottom-third money for a legitimate contributor
- The sack obsession: ESPN's analysts lean entirely on Van Ness' three sack total while ignoring his 15% pressure rate, 76 PFF overall grade, and the fact he played only 300 snaps — Ryan does the math they refused to do
- The Rashawn Gary false equivalence: One ESPN host tries to draw a parallel between Gary's contract situation and Van Ness' option — Ryan explains why that comparison falls apart completely when you look at actual dollar figures adjusted for the salary cap
- The "stuck with him" problem: Multiple analysts framed the decision as the Packers being "stuck" with Van Ness — Ryan makes the case that losing him would be far more damaging than any cap concerns at this price point
- What's actually coming next: Why this fifth year option is just the setup for a contract extension that will make more sense structurally, and why Gutekunst was always going to do this
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ladies and gentlemen, welcome once again to the Packernet podcast. |
| 0:13.1 | I am your host and resident panelist. |
| 0:15.6 | As always, Ryan Schlipp, check us out online, packernet.com. |
| 0:20.5 | Find me on Twitter pack underscore dat. Well, apparently |
| 0:25.4 | now, what needs to happen is I need to do the same podcast two days in a row every day. |
| 0:31.6 | Because I do a topic. One of them was ruined, unfortunately, very passionately. and then the next day I kind of just do it again. |
| 0:40.6 | And then yesterday I go off on a tangent that I didn't think would be a tangent. |
| 0:43.8 | I thought it would be five minutes, but I started getting angry and digging and finding things. |
| 0:47.7 | And it was a fun topic for me to discuss. |
| 0:51.1 | Anywho, today I'm poking around. |
| 0:52.7 | You know, it's relatively early in the morning. |
| 0:55.3 | All right, we've got to get some Sal content. |
| 0:57.0 | Let's get it rocking. |
| 0:58.5 | And I'm realizing that the, we shouldn't have signed Van Ness voices are bigger than I thought. |
| 1:07.9 | My assumption was not that I know, but for the most part, |
| 1:15.2 | let's say the content creator community, and I think that this matters, and I'll tell you why in a |
| 1:21.8 | second, I'll be condescending to everyone in a second, they largely are like, this is obvious you |
| 1:27.0 | needed to do this. |
| 1:27.7 | And that's what I was seeing, largely. And so the fan base was kind of split, but I figured they were |
| 1:32.5 | probably whatever. But the reason that I think that it matters is for the reason that Peter |
| 1:38.6 | Bukowski always gets trashed, and that's the whole, I do this for a living thing. And I know that's condescending and whatever, |
| 1:47.1 | but in reality, you know, it matters to me when all the guys that have been doing this for decades |
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