Football is — or has become — a game by, about, and for quarterbacks. If you’ve got a good one, you’re a contender pretty much no matter how good (or bad!) the rest of your roster may be. If you don’t, well, good luck hitting the quarterback lottery in next year’s draft. You’re going to need it!
In the 2025 season, the Packers face a pretty varied crop of quarterbacks. Here’s an absolutely definitive and in no way subjective ranking of those quarterbacks. And of course, it’s May, so there’s no way that injuries or other personnel moves could affect this list. Absolutely airtight ranking.
Tier 1 - The Elite Elites
Members: Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow
Analysis: Quarterbacks in this tier should be able to wreck any team all by themselves, and I think both Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow fit that description. Fortunately for the Packers, they don’t play too many truly elite quarterbacks this year. If they can split with this tier of quarterbacks, they should have a quarterback advantage for most of the rest of the season.
Tier 2 - Hall of Very Good
Members: Jalen Hurts, Jared Goff, Jayden Daniels
Analysis: The Pro Football Researchers Association annually elects new members to what it calls the “Hall of Very Good.” Members of the HOVG are players that are not among the all-time greats, but are too good to merely be forgotten. In Packers’ specific terms, think about guys like Clay Matthews and Jordy Nelson. Both were certainly excellent players and surefire members of the Packers’ own Hall of Fame someday, but I doubt either one will get a call from Canton.
This tier is those kinds of guys, more or less. Maybe you think Jalen Hurts deserves to be in the elite tier; I don’t, but I wouldn’t argue with you. I think we can agree that he is at least “very good,” and if the Packers aren’t on their game, he could wreck them.
Jared Goff is in the perfect spot as the trigger man for the Lions’ elite offense, but how elite will they be without Ben Johnson? There’s no way of knowing, but it seems like he’ll be good enough to get the job done with the weapons he has around him.
The Packers will face last year’s rookie wunderkind, Jayden Daniels, for the first time this season. What he’ll become long term is a mystery, but calling him “very good” for now seems fair enough.
Tier 3 - It’s Not Who You Play, It’s When You Play Them
Members: Aaron Rodgers*, Kyler Murray, Dak Prescott, Bryce Young, Bo Nix, Caleb Williams, Russell Wilson*
Analysis: This is the “high variance” tier. If you get them at the wrong time, they might drop 300 yards and three touchdowns on you. But catch them on the right week and you’ll wonder how they hold down an NFL job.
That’s even true of Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson, both of whom get asterisks here. Rodgers isn’t currently a member of the Steelers, but I’m tentatively considering him one for the purposes of this exercise. Wilson is currently ahead of second-round pick Jaxson Dart on the New York Giants’ depth chart, but who knows how long that could last.
Beyond that, Caleb Williams had some promising moments last season (including a game-winning drive against the Packers and a would-be game-winning drive that ended with a blocked field goal), and he figures to improve under the tutelage of Ben Johnson. But it’s still too early to tell, and there are bound to be some growing pains.
Kyler Murray, Dak Prescott, Bryce Young, and Bo Nix all rank as some of the quarterbacks of all time.
Tier 4 - Too New to Know
Members: Jaxon Dart*, J.J. McCarthy
Analysis: It’s truly too early to know anything about either of these guys, and Dart may not even be on the field when the Packers play the Giants. There are rumors aplenty about J.J. McCarthy’s football readiness, and he’ll be a first-year starter regardless. This tier represents the true mysteries of the Packers’ quarterback opponents. Are they any good? Who knows!
Tier 5 - Carousel of Sadness
Members: Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers
Analysis: At some positions, you can overcome quality with quantity. Don’t have one great wide receiver? Well, what if you had five pretty good ones? That works, right? The same is true at running back and linebacker and even most of the defensive backfield.
Quarterback is not one of those positions, though. No matter what some college programs are doing, you can really only get one on the field at a time — but nobody seems to have told the Cleveland Browns or Pittsburgh Steelers that.
I’ll give the Steelers a bit of a pass (more on them in a second), but the Browns seem to be committed to having as many quarterbacks as they can. They already made a bad choice backing up the truck for DeShaun Watson, then handed Joe Flacco a decent contract in an attempt to sidestep their reliance on Watson. They also traded for Kenny Pickett and drafted two more quarterbacks, including Shedeur Sanders, all but assuring a media carnival for their training camp and setting up a whole season’s worth of questions along the lines of “Shedeur Sanders starting quarterback when?” The Browns are going to spin their carousel of quarterbacks this season, and wherever they land will make them sad.
And then there’s Pittsburgh. I wrote about Aaron Rodgers above assuming that he’s going to end up with the Steelers, but if he doesn’t, then things get sad again quickly. Sans Rodgers, the Steelers currently have a quarterback room made up of Mason Rudolph, Skylar Thompson, and Will Howard. That’s not as funny a room as the Browns, but it’s nearly as inept, and whichever horse from that carousel the Steelers choose, he’s only going to deliver disappointment. At least he’ll have D.K. Metcalf to throw to!