Five Most Important Storylines Entering Packers Training Camp

The start of Green Bay Packers training camp is just days away.

After three consecutive seventh-seed playoff appearances, the Packers have significant issues to address in order to win the NFC North and potentially launch a championship run.

Here are the five biggest storylines of camp, starting with how they’ll handle the absence of superstar Micah Parsons.

1. The Pass Rush

This is the No. 1 issue entering training camp. Micah Parsons had 12.5 sacks last season and Rashan Gary had 7.5. That’s 20 of the team’s 36 sacks. Who’s going to pick up the slack?

Parsons, one of the best players in the league, is going to miss most of the first half of the season. No one person can replace Parsons, obviously, but someone has to be the lead dog. Gary, flawed as he was, still had almost as many sacks last season as Lukas Van Ness has in his career.

Parsons had 12.5 sacks in 14 games last season. Van Ness (8.5 sacks in three seasons), Brenton Cox (five sacks in three seasons), Barryn Sorrell (1.5 sacks in one season), Collin Oliver (zero sacks in one season) and Dani Dennis-Sutton (rookie) have a combined 15 sacks in their careers.

It’s not just sacks. Pro Football Focus credited Parsons with 79 pressures last season. Parsons, Gary and Kingsley Enagbare combined for 155 pressures. Van Ness and the rest of the remaining edge rushers combined for 38. Van Ness in three seasons has 61 pressures, with a career-high 23 in his abbreviated 2025 season.

Can the Packers’ edge group combine to provide enough pass rush to get Green Bay’s defense through the first half of the season? Will it be up to Jonathan Gannon to conjure up a reliable pass rush through smoke, mirrors and scheme?

Or will Green Bay’s defense get torched?

2. Receiver Depth Chart

The Packers will enter the season with Christian Watson, Matthew Golden and Jayden Reed as their primary receivers. There’s reason to be optimistic about all three having big seasons. Watson, in particular, could be ready to launch after an excellent 10-game run last season.

What might Christian Watson's numbers look like if he plays in all 17 games and takes advantage of the extra targets in the Packers' slimmed-down receiver corps? ⬇️https://t.co/TQH9lsmneS
— Bill Huber (@BillHuberNFL) July 24, 2026

But they can’t do it alone. Receivers need breathers. Receivers get hurt. Remember, neither Watson, Reed nor Golden have played 50 percent of the snaps over the entirety of their careers; Reed’s 63.2 percent in 2024 is the highest individual season. All three will be asked to play more this season.

So, when one of the so-called Big Three is on the sideline, who will make that key third-down catch in the first half? Who will make a big play in a do-or-die 2-minute drill at the end of the game?

Dontayvion Wicks essentially was Green Bay’s No. 4 receiver the past three seasons. He caught 108 passes for 1,328 yards and 11 touchdowns. That’s 36 catches for 443 yards and about four touchdowns per season.

Contrast that to Green Bay’s other candidates, who combined for 19 catches last season.

Drafted in 2022, Bo Melton has 28 catches for 416 yards and two touchdowns in his career. He caught 4-of-13 targets last season, when his practice time was mostly spent at cornerback. Savion Williams had 10 mostly irrelevant catches as a rookie third-round pick last year. Skyy Moore had five catches in 23 games the past two seasons (all last season). Nobody else on the roster has caught a pass in the NFL.

As important as it’s going to be for Jordan Love to build chemistry with Watson, Golden and Reed, he’s going to have to get a lot of work alongside everyone else to determine who else can contribute.

Green Bay Packers wide receiver Savion Williams carries the ball during the win against the Bengals. | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

3. Figuring Out Starting Cornerbacks

Keisean Nixon, Carrington Valentine and Nate Hobbs, to state the obvious, were not good enough last season. Combined, they gave up 14 touchdowns with only one interception, according to Pro Football Focus. All three were charged with passer ratings allowed of at least 105.

General manager Brian Gutekunst went to work to right his wrongs from last offseason, when he signed Hobbs to a four-year, $48 million contract and didn’t draft a cornerback until the seventh round. This offseason, he released Hobbs, signed veteran Benjamin St-Juste – a superior player at a fraction of the price – and drafted Brandon Cisse in the second round and Domani Jackson in the sixth round.

Nixon almost certainly will start. That means it will be Valentine vs. St-Juste vs Cisse for the other spot. Valentine has covered pretty well in his career. The playmaking disappeared, though, and he remained a bad tackler. St-Juste will be starting from scratch after missing the offseason practices due to injury. Cisse is going to have to survive a trial-by-fire training camp.

Especially with the questions with the pass rush, Green Bay’s going to need better play from its cornerbacks in terms of limiting completions and making plays.

4. Is Trey Smack the Answer?

The Packers in 2023 drafted Anders Carlson in the sixth round to replace Mason Crosby. He had a bad rookie season, culminated by a key miss in the playoff loss to the 49ers. In the 2025 playoffs, Brandon McManus missed two field goals and an extra point in the loss to the Bears.

This year, the Packers drafted Trey Smack in the sixth round. They’d no doubt love to hand him the job and enjoy a Crosby-style run of long-term kicking success. The offseason practices, however, showed that’s far from a certainty. In what should have been a relatively stress-free transition to the NFL, Smack missed far too many kicks – including too many easy kicks.

Maybe Smack will get into a groove and be on his way. But if a kicker is missing kicks with no fans in the stands in May and June, how’s he going to handle a potential game-winning kick at the Vikings in Week 1?

This will be a huge training camp, to state the obvious. Coach Matt LaFleur and special teams coordinator Cam Achord must do everything possible to give Smack as many big kicks to see if he’ll be ready for primetime. The talent is there. Now, it’s time to split the uprights.

5. Improving the Running Game

The offseason focus on Josh Jacobs took away the focus from the big question about the Packers’ run game.

What went wrong last year, and how can it be fixed for this year?

The Packers in 2024, which was Jacobs’ debut season with the team, ranked sixth with 4.75 yards per carry. The Packers in 2025 ranked 24th with 4.14 yards per carry. That’s a 0.61-yard downturn.

So, it wasn’t just that Jacobs’ rushing total took a 400-yard nosedive last year. It was a team-wide problem, and Jacobs was the least of the issues. Jacobs went from 4.4 yards per carry to 4.0 and Emanuel Wilson went from 4.9 to 4.0 and Chris Brooks went from 5.1 to 3.9.

Packers coach Matt LaFleur wants to run the football to set up the rest of the offense. Thus, to set up the offense as a whole for success, the run game must get back on track.

Maybe it’s better scheme and less predictability. Maybe it’s better play from an offensive line with Jordan Morgan at left tackle and Sean Rhyan in Year 2 at center and Anthony Belton in Year 2 at right guard (and Year 2, period). Maybe it’s the addition of MarShawn Lloyd after two seasons lost to injuries.

Whatever the formula, the Packers need a consistently strong running game to unleash everything they want to do on offense.

The debut of the Packers Roster Lock-O-Meter. ⬇️https://t.co/7Rby0Ce8YL
— Bill Huber (@BillHuberNFL) July 26, 2026

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