Sometimes I fixate way too intensely on something and let it take over my life. You’re about to experience one of those times.
Just to anticipate a few remarks right off the bat: Yes, I have too much time on my hands. No, I don’t have a life. Yes, this is very much offseason content, maybe even peak offseason content. Yes, it is a slow news day. Yes, this is very stupid. I’m going to write about it anyway because I embrace the answer to all of those previous questions.
With that out of the way — what’s the deal with the listed heights on the Packers’ roster?
I came to this topic because I was initially going to write an equally silly piece about the superlatives on the current Packers roster: who’s the tallest, the shortest, the oldest, the youngest, and so on. But I noticed there are four players who are listed at the exact same height of 6 feet, 7 inches on the roster, which made me wonder if I could figure out who is exactly the tallest.
Offensive linemen Kadeem Telfort and Brent Banks and tight ends Messiah Swinson and John FitzPatrick are the four horsemen of the tallpocalypse in this scenario, so I went hunting for the closest thing to official measurements I could get: combine and pro day heights, as listed on their respective Relative Athletic Score cards or in Dane Brugler’s massive draft tome for each player’s given year. And having done that research, I’m pleased to report that Telfort is the tallest of them all, measuring 6 feet, 7 ½ inches, and eighth of an inch taller than Banks and Swinson, and a half an inch taller than FitzPatrick.
Case closed, right? Well, yes, but actually no. Now I was rolling, and I had to know how the official measured heights of every player on the roster, because that would help me answer one crucial question: is anyone lying about how tall they are?
And the answer to that question is yes. But it goes much deeper than that.
For official roster listings, the NFL has an easily discernible rounding formula: for players measuring a half inch or less above a given inch (Kadeem Telfort at 6-7 ½, for instance), they round their heights down. For players measuring ⅝ of an inch or more above a given inch, they round their heights up. Ben Sims gets a ⅜ inch boost because of this, jumping up from 6-4 ⅝ to 6-5. And let’s be honest, Sims is already telling everybody he’s 6-5 anyway.
Disregarding everybody who falls within those parameters, we find three significant height discrepancies. Micah Robinson, Rasheed Walker, and Arron Mosby are all listed an inch or more above their measured height. Robinson got the biggest boost, jumping from 5-10 ⅞ to an even 6-0. Score one for the short kings out there, Micah. I know you’re six feet tall in your heart, maybe taller. Don’t let anyone, me included, tell you otherwise.
Walker and Mosby, meanwhile, went from 6-5 and 6-3 to 6-6 and 6-4, respectively. I can excuse Walker a bit — he was listed at 6-6 on Penn State’s roster (more on college heights in a second), but Mosby is where it gets weird.
Why? Well, it’d be one thing if guys were consistently getting a boost to their listed heights, but more than a few Packers players actually had their heights reduced on the Packers’ official roster.
Brenton Cox, Mosby’s counterpart at defensive end, was one of the hardest hit, losing ⅞ of an inch from his official measurement. He was 6-3 ⅞ at both the 2023 NFL Combine and his pro day, according to the 2023 edition of Dane Brugler’s “The Beast,” but he’s listed at 6-3 on the Packers’ roster, a full inch shorter than Mosby, who is actually shorter than Cox.
Luke Musgrave also lost ⅞ of an inch on the Packers’ roster sheet, but nobody was hit harder than quarterbacks Taylor Elgersma and Sean Clifford or defensive lineman Nesta Jade Silvera, all of whom are listed a full inch shorter than their actual measurements. Elgersma, a lanky Dutchman like myself, has a bit more height to spare at 6-5, but both Clifford and Silvera dropped from 6-2 to 6-1. What gives?
But the height discrepancies at the pro level are nothing compared to what goes on at the college level. Heights on college rosters are all over the place. Well, not really all over the place. Heights skew pretty much in one direction: taller. While 43 players were under-listed on the Packers roster when compared to their actual heights, college rosters tell a much different story. Just 13 players were listed at a height shorter than they actually measured. It was far, far more common for players to be listed as taller than they actually were, and they got away with a lot more at the college level, too.
16 different Packers players had their height over-listed by more than an inch in college, including diminutive wide receivers Matthew Golden and Jayden Reed, who got an inch and an inch and a quarter added to their actual heights, respectively.
But the worst outliers were linebacker Ty’Ron Hopper and running back Emanuel Wilson. Hopper measured just 6-1 ¾ prior to the 2024 NFL Draft, but was listed at 6-4 at Missouri. Wilson, meanwhile, was listed at 6-1 at Fort Valley State but measured only 5-10 ½ at his pro day — a boost of 2.5 inches.
Why would anybody fudge their height? Well, who wouldn’t want to be taller? Even the tallest of the tall are known to exaggerate, sometimes moving their measurements in different directions depending on who they’re talking to. NBA star Kevin Durant once famously said, “When I’m talking to women, I’m 7 feet. In basketball circles, I’m 6-9.” Hey man, whatever it takes.