Kenny Clark and Rashan Gary spent a combined 16 seasons with the Green Bay Packers, six of them as teammates on the same defensive line. On Sunday night they walk out of the visiting tunnel at Lambeau Field for the first time, wearing Dallas Cowboys colors, and both said Wednesday that the trip means more than a normal road game.
“It’s going to be awesome,” Clark said in the Cowboys locker room. “Get to go back to Lambeau, play a game and go up there to go get a win. I’m really excited.”
“I became a man there”
Clark was a 20-year-old first-round pick out of UCLA when Green Bay drafted him in 2016, and he stayed nine seasons before the Packers sent him to Dallas in the August 2025 trade for Micah Parsons. He said California was all he knew before Wisconsin.
“I was there nine years. It’s one of my homes,” Clark said. “I got drafted at 20 years old, so I became a man there. I had my daughter when I was out there. So it definitely has a place in my heart. It’s a great spot.”
He said he has nothing but respect for the coaches and players he left behind, but he wants the win. He also has a ticket problem. Clark said he still has friends in Green Bay asking for seats on top of his own family, and that his count will be “10 plus for sure.” His only complaint was the travel: “The flight’s expensive, though. It’s hard to get in Green Bay.”
Clark already faced the Packers last season, in the 40-40 tie at AT&T Stadium a month after the trade. Sunday is the first time he plays them in their building.
Gary: “Just another opponent”
Gary came to Dallas this March, when the Cowboys sent Green Bay a 2027 fourth-round pick for him. The Packers took him 12th overall out of Michigan in 2019, and he spent seven seasons there, with 7.5 sacks in each of the last two. He sounded more measured than Clark about the return.
“It’s a great honor, a great privilege to have another Sunday to be able to strap up and play this game. That’s all I wanted to do since a kid,” Gary said. “Good to go back to Green Bay, but it’s another opponent, another team that’s in the way of where we’re trying to go.”
He did admit the fan base still matters to him. “Being able to go back to a fan base that started with me, watched me grow, watched me excel, do big things there,” he said. “It’s going to be good.” Asked about the visiting bus and the visiting tunnel, he said he was only thinking about whether the Packers line up in the gun or under center.
Gary also gave a scouting report on his old quarterback. He described Jordan Love as a player with “swagger, confidence, his poise,” who understands protections and coverages and “will scramble” if a lane opens. “Just a true winner,” Gary said.
A familiar coach in the building
The return comes in the same week the Cowboys brought Mike Pettine out of retirement as a senior defensive assistant to work with first-year coordinator Christian Parker. Pettine ran the Packers’ defense from 2018 to 2020, so he coached Clark for three seasons and was on the staff that drafted Gary.
“He’s a great coach,” Clark said. “He’s going to pressure guys, get us in different fronts. He does a lot of stuff manipulating with the coverage and all that kind of stuff. So, excited to have Pettine.” Clark said he had not seen Pettine yet on Wednesday, and he called him “just another guy” Parker can bounce ideas off and lean on.
Gary called Pettine “a smart guy” and “a front seven master” who understands “how offenses want to attack certain schemes” and how to put playmakers in position. “It’s going to be a great addition,” he said.
What has to change for Dallas
Both players were blunt about the defense. Dallas is 2-3, its defense has not intercepted a pass in five games, and Tampa Bay ran for 241 yards against it in last Thursday’s 24-16 loss. Clark, one of the team’s captains, said Monday’s players-only meeting helped. “It was huge, just to get on the same page,” he said. “Iron some stuff out that we need to iron out.”
Clark said the problem in the run game is not toughness but consistency: penalties that kept drives alive, losing gap discipline after a big play and not bouncing back once the third quarter started. He pointed to three penalties on Tampa Bay’s first drive alone. “We the Dallas Cowboys. We always going to be under the spotlight, and you should want that,” he said. “At the end of the day, we got to be better. You got no excuse for it.”
Green Bay ranks last in the league in rushing yards per game, and Clark said that is where Sunday starts. “Stop the run. They haven’t been running the ball well this year,” he said. “That’s the number one key, and when we get in pass situations, getting hits on the quarterback, getting sacks on the quarterback.” Gary expects the Packers to try anyway. “Everything goes off the run with them,” he said.
The 3-2 Packers host the Cowboys on Sunday, October 18, at 8:20 p.m. EDT. Micah Parsons, the player at the center of the trade that sent Clark to Dallas, will not play. He remains on the physically unable to perform list.
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