The new league year is upon us, and soon a flurry of activity will take over the NFL news cycle. It has already started for the Green Bay Packers after they traded for Zaire Franklin in exchange for Colby Wooden this weekend and re-signed guard-turned-center Sean Rhyan. The latter move will help shore up Green Bay’s offensive line and fill a key need for this Packers team.
Before re-signing Rhyan, it looked like the Packers might have to rely on a couple of young offensive linemen, all of whom are entering their third seasons in Green Bay. Even still, all three are entering make-or-break seasons for their careers.
The Packers recently drafted Jacob Monk and Travis Glover. They drafted Monk in the fifth round out of Duke, and Glover a round later out of Georgia State. They also picked up Donovan Jennings as a priority undrafted free agent immediately after the draft.
Green Bay gave Jennings a $10,000 signing bonus and a guaranteed $100,000 salary to sign, indicating that the Packers believe in his potential. Unfortunately, the Packers haven’t gotten much in return for two draft picks and a large undrafted free-agent contract over the two seasons since.
Monk, Glover, and Jennings have combined for 26 NFL appearances, with Monk accounting for most of those with 17. Glover lost all of the 2025 season due to a shoulder injury he suffered early in camp, and Jennings also spent time on IR last year with a throat injury. It seemed that Glover would have had an inside track to be the team’s swing tackle in 2025, but the injury instead forced them to trade for Darian Kinnard.
Kinnard is a pending free agent this offseason. If the Packers don’t bring him back, it shows they have faith in Glover being able to reassume that role on their line. If they do re-sign Kinnard, then the avenue to playing time – or even making the roster – becomes that much harder for Glover without a standout performance this summer.
Glover has cross-trained at guard and even played there during the 2024 Wild Card game against the Philadelphia Eagles after Elgton Jenkins went down, but the Packers replaced him due to performance. He’s likely strictly a tackle in Green Bay’s eyes at this point.
Jennings’s only real opportunity is at guard. He played left tackle at the University of South Florida, but, as the Packers typically do, they turned a college tackle into a professional guard. After spending all of 2024 on the practice squad, Jennings made the 53-man roster out of training camp last season. However, he only played six total snaps on offense in two games before they placed him on injured reserve towards the end of the season.
After two full years in the organization, Jennings remains a virtually unknown commodity. Clearly, the Packers liked what they saw in him enough for him to make the roster out of camp and carry him on the active roster all season. They could have jettisoned him during a roster crunch, but never did. Instead, he’d play the weekly cut and re-sign to the practice squad game with players such as Kristian Welch.
However, this offensive line was bad for most of 2025, and the Packers didn’t give Jennings a chance to show if he could bring some stability. Assuming his throat injury has fully healed, they will likely give him a chance to win the backup guard job. Still, Green Bay will want to see more to justify keeping him around for a third season.
Monk has appeared in the most games of these three with 17 career regular-season appearances. The former Duke center also has probably the best chance of the three to win a job and stick around for the 2026 season due to his ability to play both center and guard. With Rhyan’s extension blocking his path to a starting job, Monk could still be the first player off the bench at all three interior positions.
He also played well in his lone career start in Green Bay’s Week 18 game against the Minnesota Vikings when he played center. Monk earned a 76-overall Pro Football Focus grade and the team’s top run-block grade in that game with a 77.5. This year’s center market is already proving to be shallow with multiple retirements and a weak college crop in the draft. Green Bay probably will give Monk every chance to stick around due to a lack of better options, but he will still need to earn his roster spot in camp.
Next month’s draft further complicates matters for this trio. Green Bay is expected to be active in selecting offensive linemen to help improve the 27th-ranked O-line from a year ago. Also, 2025 draft pick John Williams will hopefully join the competition after redshirting this past season. If they draft two or even three players along the line, that’s going to ramp up the level of competition in the room, and the Packers don’t like to move on from draft picks early.
It wouldn’t be a surprise to see a guard and tackle drafted and have them cross-trained at multiple positions, as Green Bay often does. That would give them the ultimate roster flexibility that they tend to crave along the offensive line. Monk, Jennings, and Glover are really going to have to show significant improvement if they are going to be kept around for 2026 and make it impossible for the Packers to move on from them.