Rankings Show Incredible Challenge Facing Packers This Offseason

GREEN BAY, Wis. – NFL free agency will begin with the opening of the negotiating window on Monday. Unfortunately for the Green Bay Packers, they don’t have a lot of money to spend.

The NFL Draft will begin on April 23. Unfortunately for the Packers, they won’t be on the clock in the first round.

The Packers during the Jordan Love era rank a mediocre 13th in the NFL in wins. They’ve made the playoffs each season but as the lowly seventh seed, meaning a near-impossible quest to get to the Super Bowl.

The roster constructed by general manager Brian Gutekunst has been good but not good enough. The lack of money to spend in free agency and the lack of a first-round pick in the draft is going to make it difficult for Gutekunst to fill the holes necessary to complete a championship roster.

NFL.com ranked each team’s offseason resources. The methodology is simple.

First, Zak Koeppel examined cap space via OverTheCap.com for every team, with the team with the most cap space (the Chargers) getting one point and the team with the least cap space (the Vikings) getting 32 points. Then, he did the same with each team’s draft slotting, with the team with most draft capital (the Jets) getting one point and the team with the least draft capital (the Falcons) getting 32 points.

Added together, only two teams had less offseason capital than Green Bay when Koeppel ran the numbers on Thursday.

Packers Don’t Have Much Cap Space

By Thursday evening, those numbers already were obsolete because the Packers restructured safety Xavier McKinney’s contract, which moved Green Bay from 25th to 22nd in cap space.

Regardless, there’s no running away from the fact that Gutekunst is going to have limited financial flexibility to attack free agency.

While there are copious amounts of cap space to be gained from the potential releases of Elgton Jenkins and Rashan Gary, Gutekunst also is going to have to budget for Tucker Kraft’s contract extension and stay ahead of the soaring contracts of Jordan Love and Micah Parsons, whose cap charges will be about $15.56 million more in 2027 than in 2026.

While more money can be gained with additional contract restructures, other teams can do the same cap gymnastics, and the creation of salary-cap flexibility for 2026 will mean additional salary-cap pain down the road.

Packers Don’t Have Much Draft Capital, Either

The lack of a first-round pick will be an issue, too – not that Gutekunst regrets trading a pair of first-round picks for Parsons. The Packers won’t be on the clock until No. 52 overall of the second round, and half of their eight draft picks will be at No. 201 and later. They are 28th in draft capital.

“I think all you’ve got to look at is our history and the history of the National Football League,” Gutekunst said at the Scouting Combine. “There’s going to be really good players available to us where we pick, whether that’s where we’re picking right now in the second round or somewhere else.

“It’s our job to find them and make sure we make good selections. We’re going to add a good player to our football team, and it’s important that we go through this process and don’t skip any of the steps to make sure we can do that.”

Packers Near Bottom of Offseason Rankings

Here’s where the NFC playoff teams and the NFC North squads rank in NFL.com’s offseason resources rankings.

2025 Playoff Teams

Seahawks: Tie, 20th.

Bears: Tie 16th.

Eagles: 11th.

Panthers: 24th.

Rams: Tie, 20th.

49ers: Tie, 14th.

Packers: Tie, 28th.

Rest of NFC North

Vikings: 27th.

Lions: Tie, 20th.

The Bears improved 12 spots from the first run of NFL.com’s rankings due in part to trading receiver D.J. Moore for a second-round pick and the resulting cap savings.

The Rams plunged 15 spots after trading the 29th overall pick, among other assets, for cornerback Trent McDuffie. That trade makes them co-Super Bowl favorites with Seattle at FanDuel Sportsbook. Green Bay, by the way, has the fifth-shortest odds.

The Vikings are 27th in NFL.com’s rankings because they are about $51.7 million over the cap. They are expected to release defensive linemen Javon Hargrave and Jonathan Allen and running back Aaron Jones to get in the black.

“I think we have really good core players coming back,” Gutekunst said. “I feel really good about our core. The guys we’re going to bring in, whether it’s the draft or free agency, we’re going to expect them to play and contribute.

“But I don’t think it’s one of those overhaul-type situations where we feel we’ve got to overhaul the roster, but there’s some significant issues that we’ve got to make sure that we fix before we get into next season.”

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