The Green Bay Packers spent 2025 proving they belong in the conversation, then spent this offseason losing a lot of the pieces that got them there. With a new defensive coordinator, a thinner roster on both lines, and a division that isn’t getting any easier, 2026 is a season where our team sees real questions about whether Green Bay can hold its ground.
2025 Season Recap
Green Bay finished 2025 at 9-7-1, good for second in the NFC North and the No. 7 seed in the NFC. The season had real momentum for a stretch — the Packers sat at 9-3-1 before dropping their final four games to close the regular season, then went out in the Wild Card round with a 31-27 loss to the Bears after blowing a 21-3 halftime lead. It was Green Bay’s third straight playoff loss.
The bigger storylines came off the field. Green Bay sent Kenny Clark to Dallas in a trade for All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons, released longtime cornerback Jaire Alexander, and used its first first-round pick on a wide receiver since 2002 in Matthew Golden. Injuries hit hard down the stretch, with tight end Tucker Kraft (torn ACL, Week 9) and Parsons himself (torn ACL, Week 15) both lost for the year. Jordan Love still threw for 3,381 yards and 23 touchdowns, and Josh Jacobs ran for 929 yards and 13 scores, but a defense that ranked 12th overall and an offense that ranked 15th were more “solid” than “dominant” — a fair summary of the whole season.
Offseason Moves
The most notable change came on the coaching staff: Green Bay hired Jonathan Gannon, fired by Arizona after three losing seasons as Cardinals head coach, as its new defensive coordinator, replacing Jeff Hafley. Gannon inherits a defense that was solid in 2025 but now has to replace real production, and his track record designing aggressive fronts will be worth watching early in camp.
Free agency was more subtraction than addition. Green Bay lost tackle Rasheed Walker to Carolina, receiver Romeo Doubs to New England on a four-year, roughly $70 million deal, backup quarterback Malik Willis to Miami, linebacker Quay Walker to Las Vegas, and traded Rashan Gary — one of the defense’s most productive edge rushers — to Dallas for a 2027 fourth-round pick. Center Elgton Jenkins and cornerback Nate Hobbs were both released. In total, the roster lost more than 100 combined starts worth of experience across both sides of the ball. The additions were more modest by comparison: defensive tackle Javon Hargrave on a two-year deal from Minnesota, cornerback Benjamin St-Juste from the Chargers, linebacker Zaire Franklin acquired in a trade with Indianapolis, and center Sean Rhyan re-signed to keep the offensive line’s identity intact.
With no first-round pick — that selection went to Dallas as part of the Parsons trade — Green Bay used its draft to address the holes free agency opened up. The Packers took cornerback Brandon Cisse in the second round out of South Carolina, defensive tackle Chris McClellan in the third out of Missouri, and edge rusher Dani Dennis-Sutton in the fourth out of Penn State, a class squarely aimed at restocking the secondary and the defensive front.
2026 Season Outlook
Green Bay’s schedule grades out as middle-of-the-pack in difficulty — ranked around 17th league-wide — but “middle of the pack” still means a steady diet of competitive football, with the NFC North remaining one of the league’s toughest divisions. Green Bay will see the Bears and Lions twice each, both teams we’ve already broken down earlier in this series, and neither figures to be an easy two games. There’s no single brutal stretch that jumps off the page, but there’s also little margin for the kind of late-season fade that ended 2025 — four losses to close last year is exactly the kind of pattern a thinner roster could repeat if health becomes an issue again.
Our Team’s Projection
We’re projecting Green Bay at 9-8 for 2026. The Packers’ season win total opened at 10.5 in June and has since come down to 9.5, with the over priced at -130 and the under at +110 — a real signal that the market has soured somewhat on this roster’s offseason. Our projection of 9-8 leans toward the under.
The case for the under starts with the math: Green Bay lost over 100 combined starts of experience, including a proven edge rusher in Gary and a highly productive receiver in Doubs, and replaced them with players who are mostly complementary pieces rather than direct upgrades. A new defensive coordinator installing a new system in Year 1 also tends to come with some early bumps. The over case holds up as well — Jordan Love and Josh Jacobs give this offense a proven floor, Micah Parsons returning healthy from his ACL tear would be a major boost to a defense trying to replace Gary’s production, and this coaching staff has a track record of getting the most out of a flawed roster. Line movement like this — a full point down since June — is exactly the kind of signal worth digging into before you bet a number, and we walk through how to read it in our Bet Smarter breakdown on how season win totals actually work.
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