On Sunday, November 2nd, the Packers lost 16-13 to the Carolina Panthers. It was a gut wrenching, heart breaking, and all the other tragic descriptors, loss at home, in a game in which the Packers were 13.5 point favorites. That loss is the largest point-based upset of the 2025 season. It left fans and media alike scratching their heads about the direction of the Green Bay Packers, pointing fingers in every direction they can think of.
And even still, that wasn’t the biggest loss of the season.
As confirmed on Monday morning, Tucker Kraft suffered an torn ACL, and is lost for the entire season.
If you’re reading this article, well, you already knew that. I’m not pretending to be reporting any breaking news here. But it’s the second most impactful thing to happen to the 2025 Green Bay Packers. Kraft was the heart and soul of this team. Besides the franchise QB and the defender you just spent two first round picks on, he was the one you just couldn’t lose.
So far this season, Kraft was sixth in the entire league for yards after the catch. Not sixth among tight ends. Sixth among all pass catchers. In the league. He was 26th in receiving yards, tied for fourth in receiving touchdowns, and 34th in explosive receptions. With Kraft on the field, the Packers averaged 0.172 EPA per play, and a 50.2% success rate. Without him, they manage only 0.063 EPA per play, and a 39.1% success rate.
Before his injury, Kraft held a 78.1 overall grade for the season, which was on pace for the highest grade awarded to a Packers tight end since…Jermichael Finley in 2010, whose season was also cut short by injury. Forget about any feelings you have for PFF for a moment, and just think about the gaping hole now left in the Packers offense. Kraft had played 91% of offensive snaps for this team! He was an emerging superstar, one of the “next generation” of stars at the position, alongside Brock Bowers and Tyler Warren.
If the Packers want to keep competing for a Super Bowl Championship without their star TE, they are going to need to figure out how to live in a Kraft-less world. But what does that look like?
The first, and most obvious impact, is what the Packers’ tight end room will look like, moving into the rest of the season.
Currently, the Packers only have two other tight ends on the roster, Luke Musgrave and John FitzPatrick. Third year TE Josh Whyle currently sits on the practice squad, and I’d expect to see him signed to the active squad to fill Kraft’s roster spot, barring any sort of outside move and upon the IR transaction being made by the team. The team had Ben Sims on the practice squad until only a week ago, when he was signed away from the team by the Vikings. Should the Vikings choose to move on from Sims at some point this season, expect the Packers to pounce.
With the trade deadline come and gone, there is no longer any way to improve the tight end room through that avenue. It’s also possible the team could choose to sign a Tight End from another team’s practice squad as well, but it’s hard to imagine any player out there having more of an impact than the two already on the roster. Something I’ve seen floating around online is the possibility of a reunion with vet TE Marcedes Lewis (assuming there is an amicable relationship there, after the team choose to let him walk in free agency, in 2023). No, to me the most likely path forward for the team is an increased snap share for both FitzPatrick and Musgrave.
They are extremely different players, which to me is one of the coolest things about the tight end position in general. They have the longest job description of almost any player on the field, and with that kind of inherent versatility, comes so much variation in play style.
FitzPatrick was a sixth round selection in the 2022 NFL draft by the Atlanta Falcons. After missing his rookie year with an injury, FitzPatrick was buried on the Falcons’ depth chart by the likes of Kyle Pittx, Jonnu Smith, and MyCole Pruitt. In the summer of 2024, he was waived by the team, reclaimed, and signed to the Packers a little over a year ago, and has steadily risen on the Packers’ depth chart ever since.
Musgrave was, of course, taken by the Packers in the same draft class as Tucker Kraft was. Musgrave, a second round pick, was the assumed starter entering the 2023, and was the recipient of most of the preseason hype that year.
Of the two, Fitzpatrick is probably the more “pure” tight end. He’s a bit more well-rounded, especially when it comes to contributing in the blocking game. Musgrave’s game, on the other hand, is to be a vertical stretching option, one that can dominate matchups on linebackers and safeties.
Since the beginning of the 2025 season, Fitzpatrick has created more of a role for himself within the offense, certainly more than a TE3 should. But it’s Musgrave who has played more snaps for this team, in every game except for W8 vs Pittsburg. My expectation is that this trend should continue, with Musgrave becoming the lead tight end, barring most run obvious situations.
Now, the next question we need to ask ourselves is: how does Kraft’s injury affect the way this offense has been structured, and how will Matt LaFleur adjust in his absence?
There’s certainly a tendency to adopt a Chicken Little mentality around the whole thing, and for good reason. However, and this might be risky to say out loud in the current state of the Packers-sphere, LaFleur is a really good coach. Especially when it comes to having to adjust a playbook on the fly. Remember last season, when the Packers were able to totally reinvent themselves for two weeks while Love was out with injury, and the team was left with a backup QB who didn’t know the playbook? This isn’t even an area where the entire playbook needs to be thrown out.
There are a couple of things that the Packers could, and I think will, do in order to mitigate the damage done by Kraft’s absence on the field.
#1 Run more 11 personnel
So far through the season, the Packers have run 11 personnel (one tight end) at a 55% rate, and 12 personnel (two tight ends) 37% of the time, the fifth highest rate in the league. That number is going to need to plummet, unfortunately.
One of the perks of having one of the best tight ends in the entire league is that if you put another tight end out there with him, that second tight end doesn't need to be a world beater to be effective. There is so much attention being afforded to Kraft, and the run game in those situations that the odds of those plays being successful (and they were, the Packers had the 6th highest EPA ranking in that formation so far through the season), were so high that the Packers could run the ball to their heart’s content.
Without Kraft in the lineup, the incentive to run those kinds of looks at the defense is reduced considerably, because the defense doesn’t have any reason to be scared of either of those guys. Plus, you’ve just taken a WR off the field for one of those tight ends. Without Kraft, and until Musgrave / Fitzpatrick can put the defense on their back foot , you are just doing your opponents a favor by taking a more effective player off the field.
Instead, expect the Packers to keep more WRs out there, especially with Christian Watson looking great as he has been re-entering the fold.
#2 Find YAC elsewhere
As we mentioned above, Kraft’s superpower as a potential All-Pro tight end was his ability to find yards after the catch. He had just gotten done showcasing this ability on the national stage after all. Now, the Packers don’t need to abandon their mentality of balancing explosive plays with quick, YAC creation concepts. But they will need to re-tune it.
Unfortunately, the biggest piece to that particular puzzle is Jayden Reed, who is still a few weeks away from returning. Though early reports have indicated Reed could be targeting a mid-November return, it’s looking like he may have to wait until after Thanksgiving to do so. In the meantime, where can the Packers turn for that area of production? To me, the spotlight should land on the pair of rookie receivers. Golden and Williams have gotten their opportunities, but remain dreadfully unproductive on their underneath chances.
Could we see an increased role for the running backs in the underneath passing game? LaFleur has turned to the two running back “pony” packages in the past, and that could be an interesting wrinkle to throw at defenses. In addition, I’d love to see an increase in true running back screens, something that the Packers seem to have all but abandoned in 2025. Is it likely? Probably not. Green Bay has run those screens only 12 times in 2025, for a 2.45% rate. Their screen usage has dropped slightly over recent years, from 3.9% in 2022, 2.57% in 2023, and 3.02 % in 2024.
That number might sound surprising, but it’s actually above the league-wide rate for screens. The Packers run the 12th most RB screens in the league (the Dolphins have the most, the Rams run the least). Keep in mind though that the Packers throw to their running backs about 20% of the time, slightly above league average rate. So while it might not come in the form of RB screens, expect the Packers to keep relying on the RBs to help out in the passing game. It’s really a shame that Marshawn Lloyd is still recovering from that preseason hamstring injury, because this is an area in which I think he could really shine. If/when Lloyd returns to the lineup, he might still get his chance.
#3 Change up the blocking
For a team that runs as much as the Packers do (43% of the time, good for sixth most in the league), losing your starting tight end is as much a blow to that part of the offense as the passing attack. Remember, modern running attacks are predicated on the existence of a sixth blocker downfield. While Fitzpatrick is a better blocker than Musgrave to be sure (a low bar, considering their run blocking grades of 54.0 to 42.7 respectively), playing Fitzpatrick only on running plays is sure to tip defenses off to the Packers’ intentions pre-snap.
The Packers will need to get creative in order to preserve production in this area without Kraft, considering Green Bay’s ever-present struggles in run blocking throughout 2025 (20th in yards before contact). Part of me wonders whether LaFleur will begin to use 6 offensive linemen, especially in short yardage situations. While the Packers have used this strategy in the past (i.e. when Marcedes Lewis was injured a few years ago), they remain one of only three teams in the league that haven’t done this so far in 2025. Anthony Belton or Darian Kinnard should be prime candidates to fill this role, which has seen a marked increase in usage this year, up to 3.75% of plays from 2.92% in 2024.
Conclusion
The Packers’ season did not end with Kraft’s injury. Packers fans know better than most that a Super Bowl can still be won without your star tight end (as the eerie similarities to that 2010 season continue to stack up).
However, I do feel a bit bummed out at one of the impacts of this injury: not only will we not get to see what this 2025 Packers offense looks like at 100% health, it’s more than likely we never will. Tucker Kraft, Christian Watson, Romeo Doubs, Jayden Reed, Matthew Golden, and Josh Jacobs will never be able to all take the field together. Of course, that depends on what happens with Romeo Doubs over the offseason, but his return would be extremely unlikely. That’s just such a gut-punch, isn’t it?
The Packers will need to adjust rapidly to Kraft’s absence, with a showdown against the Eagles on Monday. Green Bay blew their Super Bowl window wide open by acquiring Micah Parsons, but if that window is to include 2025 they will need to take a page from Moneyball’s Billy Beane.
“Adapt or die”.