Eight games into the 2025 season, the Green Bay Packers have proven themselves to be an incredibly difficult team to figure out.
One week, they’re frying NFC contenders like the Detroit Lions and Washington Commanders. In the next, they’re dropping gross punt-a-thons to lousy teams like the Cleveland Browns and Carolina Panthers. Heading into Week 10, they are favored at home against the reigning champion Philadelphia Eagles, against whom they went 0-2 last season.
Oddsmakers clearly believe in the team that Green Bay can be when they’re firing on all cylinders. They have given naysayers ample evidence to criticize their consistency and timely playmaking, but nothing to cast doubt over their week-to-week ceiling.
General manager Brian Gutekunst built this team during a rapid rebuild. The Jordan Love succession plan fell into place, and Gutekunst and the front office hit on enough draft picks on both sides of the ball to build a true NFC contender in short order.
The optimism from Love’s first two seasons at the helm was enough to justify a seismic trade for Micah Parsons, one of the most disruptive players in football. The extent to which the 2025 Packers will surmount or fall short of expectations rests heavily on Love’s shoulders and on what he can do in crucial situations against good teams down the stretch.
Gutekunst has put an outstanding team around him in many position groups, but he’s doing his homework on one position that has been causing problems early. All offseason, fans and media opined about the thin, inexperienced cornerback room. It didn’t make sense to take such a deep, talented roster into a serious run without addressing one of the most important positions in the game.
Many of these takes came in the form of advocating for former star Jaire Alexander to stay. Releasing him has proven to be the correct decision. Alexander played poorly in Baltimore, giving up key passes in Buffalo, and they immediately healthy-scratched him. Ultimately, they traded him to the Eagles for mediocre draft compensation. He looked like a crucial piece of Green Bay’s future, but injury concerns derailed his star potential.
Shockingly, though, Green Bay’s alternative to keeping Alexander was to do not much of anything. Gutekunst confidently went into the season with free-agent signing Nate Hobbs, All-Pro return specialist Keisean Nixon, and 2023 seventh-round pick Carrington Valentine leading the room.
The NFC North is fraught with top receiving talent, from Justin Jefferson to Amon-Ra St. Brown. On Sunday, A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith will be an issue to contend with. The Packers opted not to address the position through the draft, instead taking Matthew Golden, their receiving threat of the future. However, they’ve seldom used the rookie despite attrition in that room.
There were several middle- to high-end guys available on the open market, from Paulson Adebo to Charvarius Ward. The draft class wasn’t too bad either. However, in typical Packers fashion, the front office opted to shore up offensive line depth with their next premium pick. The trade deadline has now passed, a relatively active one around the league, and the options to shore up the struggling cornerback room have only dwindled.
On Thursday, Green Bay hosted former Los Angeles Chargers corner Asante Samuel Jr. on a visit. The son of legendary DB Asante Samuel, he has quite a robust market as one of the only serviceable names on the open market. A reported six teams are vying for his services.
From Green Bay’s point of view, this begs the question of, if they are going to push all their chips into this team, why leave cornerback out of it?
Every team has only so much draft and salary cap space available. Still, a $12 million AAV deal for the often-injured Hobbs was the only attempt to fortify one of the most critical positions on the field. It’s worth noting that the Packers benched Hobbs last week in favor of Valentine due to poor play. Early in the season, Nixon flashed at times and made Gutekunst look like a genius. At other times, eye-popping stat lines from George Pickens, Ja’Marr Chase, and Trey McBride have called into question the aptitude of Jeff Hafley’s coverage unit.
Heading into the back half of the season, the Packers face a challenging battle to obtain the conference’s top seed. With it, they would earn the valuable opportunity to avoid a trip to Philadelphia, where this week’s spread would have pointed multiple points in the other direction.
The microscope will be on the matchup between Brown and Smith and Nixon and Valentine. The reeling Green Bay secondary is a get-right opportunity for an Eagles passing attack that has been lackluster, to say the least. We still don’t know whether Samuel will be joining the fold. Still, either way, Gutekunst and the front office are largely stuck with the mercurial group they gambled on heading into the year.