Packer Central

Packers Add Two Familiar Faces to Practice Squad

The Packers brought back linebacker Chris Russell, who had an impressive preseason, and added safety Omar Brown to their practice squad on Thursday.

Bill Huber

General view of Lambeau Field during the fourth quarter of the game between the Baltimore Ravens and Green Bay Packers.
General view of Lambeau Field during the fourth quarter of the game between the Baltimore Ravens and Green Bay Packers. / Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports
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GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers continued filling out their 17-player practice squad on Thursday by signing linebacker Chris Russell and safety Omar Brown.

Both players are no strangers to Green Bay.

Russell spent the second half of training camp with the Packers. An undrafted free agent out of Texas A&M, he tied for sixth on the team with eight tackles in the preseason even while not with the team for the Cleveland game. In the preseason finale against the Ravens, his five tackles included one tackle for loss and a fourth-and-1 stop.

Russell was college teammates with second-round pick Edgerrin Cooper.

Cooper called Russell a “hard-working person, a person that’s been waiting for the opportunity to come and compete.”

It was a long wait. Russell not only went undrafted but unsigned. He had tryouts with the Packers and Titans but was not signed.

What kept him going?

“You’ve got to have superior confidence in yourself,” he said. “Talk to God, just leave it up to Him. Just have faith – unseeable faith – in your future. That’s all I could do in that moment. Now I’m here, so I’m just going to take care of the opportunities that I have and see what God has planned for me.”

Brown had a predraft visit with the Packers after starting 37 games at Northern Iowa (2019 through 2021) and Nebraska (2022 and 2023).

Brown spent training camp with the Broncos. His six tackles in three preseason games included two against the Packers.

In his college career, he had 196 tackles, nine interceptions, 25 passes defensed and three forced fumbles. Most of his snaps came at cornerback, and he saw extensive action in the slot and safety.

“I’m an athlete,” he told The Draft Network’s Justin Melo. “I played wide receiver in high school. I’m very comfortable catching the ball. When I arrived at Northern Iowa, I felt like being a defensive back with great ball skills was my specialty. 

“I love playing the ball in the air. When it’s in my vicinity, I’m coming down with it. That’s the type of player I am. I love being around the ball. I love making big-time plays. That’s just what I do.”

With that, the Packers have filled 15 of their 17 spots on the practice squad.

The Packers also made official the addition of kicker Brayden Narveson, who was signed off waivers from the Titans.

“We kind of did a deep dive into him coming out from N.C. State, because we liked him,” special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia said on Thursday. “I know he’d been to a bunch of different schools and we kind of went all the way back to Western (Kentucky) and kind of saw what he did there.

“He’s got a great body, he’s strong and he had a really good preseason over there at Tennessee. So, we’ve been following him along with others throughout the preseason. But we did a lot of work on him coming out.

Part of that “really good preseason” came in Tennessee’s victory over Seattle in which Narveson made a 59-yard field goal and the game-winning 46-yarder as time expired.

“He knows he’s going to make the field goal,” Narveson’s longtime kicking coach, Adam Tanalski of Hammer Kicking, told Packers On SI on Thursday. “He wants the 59(-yarder). He wants the game-winner. He wants to be that person who’s out there when it matters. Between the ears, he’s pretty outstanding.”

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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.