“The night is always gets darkest before dawn”. That’s what they say at least, but If that’s true then these next two weeks are sure to be the darkest period of the entire NFL calendar.
We are currently nine short (or long) days away from the Packers’ training camp beginning, the official start of the 2026-27 NFL season for the players. They won’t stop until after they win the Super Bowl on February 13th, which means 28 straight weeks of football for the players, coaches, and staff of your Green Bay Packers.
Training camp begins a little early for the Panthers and the Cardinals, who play the Hall of Fame game on August 6th. For the rest of the league, teams will slowly trickle in to begin their regiments. Some start on the 24th or 25th, but the vast majority (including the Packers) begin on the 28th. At that point, things kick into hyperdrive. The aforementioned Hall of Fame game is only nine days after the Packers report. The Packers’ famous “Family Night” is the day after that, and then Green Bay kicks off against the Pittsburgh Steelers six days later, in a game that really should have been scheduled to be played in Green Bay, but isn’t.
At that point, football is back, baby. Preseason football at least. And yes, we’ll quickly forget the long grind of the offseason, and the feeling of football withdrawal that we all currently suffer from. But until then, that’s the date we all have circled
But what to do in the meantime? Do we simply go into hibernation? Unless your life literally revolves around the Packers, probably not an option, no. If you are a masochist, I’d suggest re-watching a couple of select games from last season’s selections. Particularly, the games played on November 2nd, December 14th, December 20th, and January 10th. For the rest of us who prefer something that goes down a little smoother, I would offer the season opener against the Lions, or the re-match against Aaron Rodgers in Pittsburg.
Meanwhile, we also find ourselves in the middle of peak “list-making” season. Whether it’s come from the media giants, like the NFL’s top 100 list, or ESPN’s position rankings, or from smaller content creators, if you look too hard into the NFL-sphere right now, you’d be positively drowning in lists. Top fantasy target lists. MVP watchlists. Breakout players. The unfortunate gambling odds lists.
And to be clear, I’ve made my fair share of lists myself. I’ve personally tried to shy away from the list making on the written side of things. Lord knows I’ve made enough in some of my podcast appearances, which is a genre that particularly thrives, in my opinion, on that form of content. Heck, I’ve got a draft podcast that is literally nothing but lists, as we make our way through summer scouting for the upcoming college football season.
There does come a point, however, where it all starts to feel a little disingenuous, doesn’t it? Making predictive content for the 2026 season based on the 2025 season, when the whole point is that last season has no bearing on next season. It’s one of the biggest factors for making football a popular sport in the first place! In a league that changes at a hyperspeed pace like the NFL does, there are coaches and players out there working right now to ensure that their team will be the least similar version to last year’s team they can reasonably conjure.
Of course, I realize that there are constant through-lines in every single team, especially a team like the Packers who have doubled down on their pre-existing leadership: Brian Gutekunst and Matt LaFleur. Particularly for the latter, that change is seemingly demanded of him from the fanbase that has grown a bit… antsy to say the least. Despite years of offensive success, the overall results have been lacking, so where does the change come from? His offensive staff has largely stayed intact over the course of the offseason, so change will have to come in a different way. LaFleur has already given us a hint. When asked about this topic, he said: “I think you’re always evaluating and making decisions that are best for the football team… You always look at ways to improve, and I thought the best way for us to move forward is we just got to strip everything down and start like it’s Year 1 all over again.”
Meanwhile on the defensive side, we’ve got lots of turnover in staff and scheme, with incoming defensive coordinator Johnathan Gannon, professional “hider of what my scheme is”. Gannon’s career long tendencies as a play caller give us a couple hints as to what the defense might look like (base 3-4, lots of dime and quarters coverage , but we probably won’t really know until the Packers have played a couple of real games. We got another hint to this recently, however. On new defensive coordinator Johnathan Gannon: "He's great. He definitely brings a lot to the table," McDuffie said. "Him being a head coach and having the head-coaching experience brings a lot of leadership. ... He definitely brings that juice, and we're having a lot of fun. We're going to do some cool things. I don't want to get too much into it. It's gonna look a little different, but it's going to be fun to watch us, I'll say that."
Exciting words from McDuffie, that both lend a lot of confidence to how the locker room perceives their new DC, and represent the changes made on the defensive side of the ball for next season. Changes that we should all keep an eye out for, when training camp finally does begin, and we get our little snippets of information from beat reporters on the scene.
But in the meantime? How exactly does one survive this portion of the offseason? Personally, it's a combination of excitement and the slow burn of building optimism. This isn't the time to find the things that could go wrong. For the Packers, there's no time like the present, and this is a team that is built to win now. This is going to be such an exciting season in Green Bay, and as we can finally see the first bits of light gathering on horizon, I hope that is what we'll all cling to!
Co-Owner of the thirteen time world champion Green Bay Packers. Sometimes I write about them. Follow me on Twitter at https://x.com/kjones_in_co and on Substack for film breakdowns!