It’s been an eventful offseason for the Packers. GM Brian Gutekunst broke down all the big roster moves.
This offseason, the Green Bay Packers brought in three free agents, made two trades and watched five key players leave in free agency. Are they a better team now than they were when they trudged off the field following their playoff loss to the Bears? “We haven’t had a practice yet.
There’s a lot of work to be done,” general manager Brian Gutekunst told reporters at the NFL owners meetings on Monday.Gutekunst made it sound like he traded a player who perennially posted 10-sack seasons rather than a player who went the final 10 games of the season without posting even a half-sack. Of course, there would have been no sense in saying “Good riddance” or laughing at the thought of unloading Gary’s contract and getting a fourth-round pick in return from the Cowboys. So, Gutekunst took a politically correct stance when asked if he was surprised he got surprising compensation for a player he might have released to create cap space. “It was tough to part with Rashan because he’s such a good player,” Gutekunst said. “But I think just where we were going as a football team, it made a little bit of sense for us. Quite frankly, I think a guy with 60 pressures, 7 1/2 sacks and a guy you can kind of count on consistently, there’s not a lot of those guys in the National Football League. “He’s still a pretty young player, probably his best football is still ahead of him. Not at all . We weren’t going to move on from him unless we could get something that made sense for us. Again, I think where we’re headed as a football team, it made sense to do the deal with Dallas. But they’re getting a really good player.”Understanding that the contract Quay Walker was going to sign in free agency was more than the Packers were willing to pay, Gutekunst traded 25-year-old defensive tackle Colby Wooden to the Colts for 30-year-old linebacker Zaire Franklin. Gutekunst shared an interesting story about his pursuit of the 2024 second-team All-Pro and NFL tackles leader. “Yeah, we’ve liked Zaire for a while – quite frankly back when he was not starting in Indy in his first few years,” Gutekunst said. “He was a really good special teams player. We kind of tried to acquire him then, so been a really good player for a long time. “Obviously very good leader, as well, captain there, so I think as we kind of went down and we realized it was going to be really tough to get Quay back, I wanted to make sure we had an answer at middle linebacker, particularly one that might have some veteran presence and I think we were excited to accomplish that.”Signing Benjamin St-Juste Last offseason, Gutekunst made a big signing at cornerback with Nate Hobbs. That didn’t get close to working out, so, he released Hobbs and signed St-Juste for a fraction of the cost. St-Juste played mostly off the bench for the Chargers last season but was excellent in 16 games that included two starts. According to Pro Football Focus, of the 101 corners who played at least 350 snaps, he ranked 10th with a 50.0 percent completion rate. “One, he stayed healthy. Earlier in his career, he had a couple things,” Gutekunst explained. “I think he kind of was that third corner and, whenever he got his opportunity to really play, I thought he played a very, very high level. “We liked him a lot coming out of the draft. His size and length on the outside is something we didn’t have a lot of, something we wanted to get. He was kind of a target for us. Took a little longer than I would’ve hoped but nice to finally get that down right as we started on Wednesday.”The Chiefs traded Skyy Moore to the 49ers last year, and he emerged as one of the best returners in the NFL. The Packers, on the other hand, had one of the most feeble return games in the NFL.“Last year was one of the first years he really had an expanded role as a returner and he did an outstanding job,” Gutekunst said. “He was one of the better guys that did both in the league last year and just as we went through that and had an opportunity to get him, that was something last year with our special teams that we needed to kind of add to, so excited to get him and see what he can do for us.The trade of Wooden and the move back to a 3-4 defense cranked up the need to add a defensive tackle. Enter Hargrave, who thrived under new defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon when both were together in Philadelphia and welcomed a reunion. Critically, because Hargrave was a street free agent following his release by the Vikings, his addition did not impact the compensatory-pick ledger,for losing Malik Willis, Romeo Doubs, Quay Walker and Kingsley Enagbare. “Obviously, he’s been an exceptional player in his career,” Gutekunst said. “He’s been one of those guys that’s excelled as a run stopper and a pass rusher. He’s a complete player, and as we’ve lost a few guys in the defensive interior, we just needed to add something. I think particularly because he was released, it was not part of the compensatory formula. He just fit really well.”The Packers’ biggest financial transaction this offseason in terms of total dollars was re-signing center Sean Rhyan, who showed enough in seven starts in place of Elgton Jenkins to merit a three-year, $33 million contract that ranks seventh at the position in annual pay. “I thought each week he got better,” Gutekunst said. “He’s such a stout, powerful man in there. And then the little intricacies of playing center, I thought he got better at each week. He really worked at his craft. “I thought he was a true professional. We knew he could play guard at a high level and, in the second half of the season, we realized he could play center at a very high level. We were really excited to get him back. I think Jordan having that consistency there is going to be important for us to do some of the things we want to do.”Loading recommendations... Please wait while we load personalized content recommendationsBill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.
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