NFL offseason power rankings: No. 7 Green Bay Packers are good, but want greatness

Give the Green Bay Packers this much: They won against every single team they should have beaten last season.

The Packers faced 11 teams that finished outside of the top 10 in Jeff Sagarin’s rankings, and went 10-1. They lost to the Chicago Bears in the season finale as they sat starters in preparation for the playoffs, and it still took the Bears a last-second field goal to win. Winning every game (when giving normal effort) against non-elite teams is not easy. The NFL isn’t college football. Every team is capable. You’re not able to schedule Kent State in the NFL. The Packers beat every team they were expected to beat.

That’s the good part. The bad part is the Packers did not record one quality win all season. They faced the 15-win Lions, 14-win Vikings and Super Bowl champion Eagles six times, including playoffs, and went 0-6. The best win the Packers had all season was against the Rams, who were good by the end of the season but were 1-4 after losing to Green Bay. That Rams team the Packers beat wasn’t good in Week 5.

Beating every mediocre to bad team on the schedule and losing to every good team sums up the Packers’ conundrum. They might have the deepest roster in the NFL after years of good drafts. But when you look at the top of the Packers roster, there’s a glaring lack of true superstars. Among all the major All-Pro teams last season, only two Packers got recognition: right tackle Zach Tom, who just signed a mammoth extension, was a first-team pick only from Pro Football Focus, and safety Xavier McKinney was a consensus first-team selection. In 2023, the only Packers player to get any All-Pro recognition was kick returner Keisean Nixon. Having a stellar safety and kickoff returner is great (Nixon said after the season he doesn’t want to return kicks anymore, though he softened that stance a few months later), but that’s generally not the nucleus of a Super Bowl team.

It’s a very good team, but can it reach greatness without any true superstars?

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“The thing that’s been on my mind as we concluded this season is we need to continue to ramp up our sense of urgency,” Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst said, via the team’s site. “We’ve got a bunch of good guys in that locker room, we’ve got a bunch of talented guys in that locker room, and I think it’s time we started competing for championships, right?”

When you have no real weakness, chasing championships is a realistic goal. The challenge is figuring out a way to elevate after the oddity of a fairly disappointing 11-win season.

The quickest path is if Jordan Love recaptures the form that he had late in the 2023 season, which helped him get a four-year, $220 million contract extension. Love wasn’t bad last season. He just wasn’t better than the previous season, leading to some questions about his true ceiling.

The Packers can also point to their historic youth as a way for the roster to improve. Two years ago, the Packers were the youngest team based on weighted age (which takes into consideration how many games each player appeared in) to win a playoff game since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger. Last season the Packers were again the youngest team in the NFL. None of the Packers’ key players, other than 2024 addition McKinney, are considered to be the best at their position in the NFL, but being really good in your early 20s gives you a chance to be elite in your mid-20s. Maybe natural progression pushes the Packers to being a contender.

But the Packers come into this season in a weird spot. They’re good. Really good. It’s hard to win 11 games in the NFL. But are they Super Bowl good? That’ll probably depend on whether their many good players can graduate to something better.

Offseason grade

The Packers grabbed two high-priced free agents. Guard Aaron Banks got a four-year, $77 million deal to leave the 49ers, and cornerback Nate Hobbs signed a four-year, $48 million deal to come over from the Raiders. The big departure, in terms of name value, was cornerback Jaire Alexander, who was cut after some rocky moments and many missed games in Green Bay the last couple seasons. The draft was interesting because the Packers, whose depth at receiver has been lauded, took a shot on speedy Texas receiver Matthew Golden with the 23rd pick. Perhaps Golden can be the alpha receiver Green Bay needs. The Packers also signed right tackle Zach Tom to a four-year extension at high-end market rate with a record-setting signing bonus. It was going to be hard for the Packers to top last offseason, when they nailed free-agent additions Josh Jacobs and Xavier McKinney, and the additions this year seem unlikely to move the needle much.

Grade: C

Quarterback report

Jordan Love wasn’t bad last season, though some offseason narratives would lead you to believe he was. But he was mostly just OK. His raw numbers fell a bit. Part of that was missing two games due to injury. But numbers like completion percentage, yards per game and interception rate were worse. His touchdown rate was up, as was yards per attempt. Passer rating was barely better, inching from 96.1 to 96.7. It wasn’t a bad season for Love, but a stagnation.

Curiously, the Packers became one of the run-heaviest teams in the NFL. They were 30th in pass rate over expectation (PROE) after being 10th in 2023. Love’s attempts per games fell significantly, from 34.1 to 28.3. Green Bay got a very good season out of running back Josh Jacobs, but the shift was a bit odd for a team that had just paid its quarterback $55 million per year.

This offseason the Packers have been sensitive about the notion that Love regressed.

“What is a step back, is what I’d ask,” Love said. “Everybody has different opinions, things like that. You’ve got to block that stuff out. It’s all about the goals of the team. At the end of the day, I’d say we won more games than we did the year before. So that’s why I ask people, what is a step back?”

BetMGM odds breakdown

From Yahoo’s Ben Fawkes: “The Packers have had a win total between 8.5 and 11.5 in every season since 2010, so an over/under of 9.5 at BetMGM for this season is nothing new. Green Bay is favored in its first eight games (five of them under a field goal, though) and 13 games overall, and is a slight favorite (-135) to make the postseason. The defense loses Jaire Alexander, but adds Nate Hobbs at corner, and has five projected starters who were first-round picks. Green Bay has gone over its win total in five of the past six seasons.”

Yahoo’s fantasy take

From Yahoo’s Scott Pianowski: “There is always talent in the Green Bay receiver room. But do the Packers want to lean into a featured receiver? That hasn’t been the case in recent years. No Green Bay pass-catcher has gone past 100 targets since Davante Adams left town. Until I see usage changes from Matt LaFleur — a play-designer I do respect, by the way — I can’t draft any of these wideouts proactively, though I don’t mind the current market price on splash-play tight end Tucker Kraft.”

Stat to remember

The Packers signed Josh Jacobs to a four-year, $48 million deal last offseason, and it was a bit of a risk. Jacobs was awesome in 2022 as he got All-Pro honors for the Raiders, but plummeted in 2023 after a long contract standoff. The Packers were right. Jacobs had 1,329 rushing yards and became the focal point of Green Bay’s offense. The advanced stats loved him too. His Pro Football Focus grade was third best among running backs. He had 1,113 yards after contact via PFF, behind only Saquon Barkley and Derrick Henry. He was fifth in rush yards over expectation, via Next Gen Stats. Jacobs, who also had 15 rushing touchdowns, was fantastic. Jacobs is 27 years old and while running backs can hit the wall at any time, there’s no good reason to believe he’s about to slow down. The Packers should be able to rely on him for at least another season.

Burning question

Will the Packers defense maintain the momentum?

Fans aren’t always right when they yell about firing a coach. But the Packers fans seemed to have been spot on about wanting to move on from defensive coordinator Joe Barry after the 2023 season. Many wanted him gone after 2022 too. The Packers finally changed defensive coordinators last year, luring Jeff Hafley from his job as head coach at Boston College to run their defense. And the Packers’ defense had a significant improvement under Hafley, finishing in the NFL’s top six in points and yards allowed. In Barry’s final two seasons with Green Bay, a defense with a lot of first-round talent was 17th each season in yards allowed and was generally unimpressive. The Packers were 27th in defensive DVOA in 2023 and seventh last season.

There isn’t a good reason to believe the Packers defense will regress much. There’s only one new projected starter and that’s expensive free-agent addition Nate Hobbs. He’ll replace Jaire Alexander, who was undoubtedly talented but missed a lot of games and had turned into a distraction. The Packers’ projected starting defensive lineup has five first-round picks, three second-round picks and had a nice improvement last season. It should be in the top 10 again.

Best case scenario

Jordan Love suffered a sprained MCL in his left knee late in the Packers’ opener. It’s fair to wonder if that injury, and a midseason groin injury, affected his play all season. Over the last half of the 2023 season, Love looked like a future star. That’s why the Packers made him, at the time, the highest-paid player in NFL history. Love hasn’t had a long stretch of elite play, but he has shown it. Maybe Love, with Matthew Golden added to a pass-catching unit that includes Jayden Reed, Romeo Doubs and Tucker Kraft, stays healthy and plays to that elite level he flashed two seasons ago. The Packers won 11 games with Love being good but not great last season. That’s how Green Bay could overcome the Lions and everyone else in the NFC North to win the NFL’s best division. And if the Packers are good enough to win the NFC North, they’d be good enough to make the Super Bowl.

Nightmare scenario

It’s not impossible to win a championship without an elite player. The 2007 Giants had just one Pro Bowler, defensive end Osi Umenyiora, though it also had Hall of Famer Michael Strahan. It was also an outlier champion that wasn’t dominant in any particular area. The 2020 Buccaneers had just one Pro Bowl player, which was defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, but also multiple future Hall of Famers including Tom Brady (that’s right, JPP made the Pro Bowl while Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Tristan Wirfs, Ndamukong Suh, Lavonte David, Antoine Winfield Jr., Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and Antonio Brown didn’t … OK, back to the Packers preview). Usually Super Bowl champions have a few dominant players and most have at least one future Hall of Famer. It’s hard to see any Packers ascending to an All-Pro level other than safety Xavier McKinney repeating (linebackers Quay Walker or Edgerrin Cooper maybe? Offensive lineman Elgton Jenkins finally making it?), but there’s also no weakness on the roster. The Packers are probably going to win double-digit games again. Their floor is extremely high. But would another playoff season without any quality wins satisfy anyone?

The crystal ball says

The Packers are a team that is the sum of its parts. It’s hard to say that a team with as many above-average starters as the Packers have isn’t a Super Bowl contender, and if everything goes right — including Jordan Love playing like he did to end 2023 — Green Bay can win a championship. But something has to change from last season, when the Packers were very good but didn’t record one quality win. Until that happens, it feels like the Packers will remain stuck in a tier below the true Super Bowl contenders. It’s not the worst spot to be, but it might be difficult to figure out a way to move up one more level.

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