Packers Finish Toward Bottom of NFL Special Teams Rankings

It was another terrible season on special teams for the Green Bay Packers, though they weren’t too far off from being pretty good.

Bill Huber | Jan 29, 2025

Green Bay Packers place kicker Brandon McManus (17) gets set to kick a field goal against the Philadelphia Eagles. / Bill Streicher-Imagn Images

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Green Bay Packers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Death, taxes and lousy special teams.

Those are the three certainties in life for the Green Bay Packers.

Even with a two-time All-Pro kick returner and a veteran coordinator, it was the same old story on special teams for the Packers.

The Packers tied for 22nd in our special teams rankings, which include five categories. The first four are based on field percentage and the fifth is field-goal percentage.

However, the Packers were pretty close to being pretty good. More on that in a moment. Here’s the five-category breakdown.

Packers On SI's NFL special teams rankings. / Bill Huber/Packers On SI

Net punting: The Packers finished 27th in net punting average, even though Daniel Whelan’s 40.2-yard net average ranked third in franchise history. How big is one play? Chicago’s punt-return touchdown against Green Bay in Week 18 resulted in his net moving from 42.1 yards, which ranked 12th, to 40.2.

On the bright side, only 35.7 percent of his punts were returned, fourth-best in the league, according to Pro Football Focus.

Opponent net punting: The Packers ranked 26th in opponent net punting average. Opponents punted 64 times. The Packers returned 19 of them for an 8.3-yard average, which ranked 23rd. Keisean Nixon’s 39-yard return against Arizona was their only return of longer than 16.

Kickoff return: The strength of Green Bay’s special teams the past two years disappeared as the Packers never quite figured out how to unleash Nixon under the new kickoff-return rules. They finished 19th in starting field position after a kickoff with an average start of the 29.5-yard line.

By drive start, Dallas was No. 1 at the 31.3-yard line and Carolina was No. 32 at the 28.8-yard line. That means first place and last place were separated by a mere 2.5 yards.

Kickoff coverage: Opponents started at the 28.8-yard line after a Green Bay kickoff, which was the second-best mark in the NFL. Green Bay’s coverage was excellent, as kickers Brayden Narveson and Brandon McManus combined for a touchback rate of 47.3 percent, third-lowest in the league and well below the league average of 66.1 percent.

Like with kickoff return, there wasn’t much that separated good from bad. The league average was the 29.8-yard line, so Green Bay’s great ranking was only 1 yard better.

Field-goal percentage: Overall, the Packers finished 18th in field-goal percentage. Obviously, this was a tale of two kickers.

Brayden Narveson made 12-of-17 field-goal attempts. His 70.6 percent success rate while with the Packers was second-worst in the league. Brandon McManus replaced him beginning in Game 7 and made 20-of-21 attempts. His 95.2 percent accuracy was second-best in the league.

Not part of our rankings but they combined to make all 46 extra points.

Also not part of the rankings are penalties, which are reflected in the field-position stats. The Packers were guilty of 16 penalties (11th-most) for 138 yards (12th-most).

Overall, it’s the same old, same old for the Packers. Longtime NFL writer Rick Gosselin, formerly of The Dallas Morning News, put together a much more extensive special-teams rankings based on 22 kicking-game categories for more than two decades.

With Gosselin enjoying retirement, last year was the final year of his rankings. Under Bisaccia, the Packers were 29th in 2023 and 22nd in 2022. Before Bisaccia but under coach Matt LaFleur, they were 32nd in 2021, 29th in 2020 and 26th in 2019.

In the 20 seasons from 2005 through 2024, the Packers had one top-10 finish (2007) and four last-place finishes (2018, 2014, 2006 and 2005).

Bisaccia will be back in 2025. Will McManus be back? After providing incredible stability at a position filled with turmoil throughout 2023 and the start of 2024, he will be a free agent.

“We would” like him back, general manager Brian Gutekunst said. “Had a good conversation with him before he left and, obviously, and how he solidified that journey we were going on. Obviously, he’s a veteran guy. I think the thing that was so neat about being around him is not only his confidence but his ability to adjust no matter where we were.”

And who will return kicks? Nixon said he didn’t want to do it anymore; LaFleur wasn’t so sure.

“That was interesting,” LaFleur said of Nixon’s comments.

Regardless, to take Nixon off kickoff return (and punt return, duties he shared with Jayen Reed) will require the Packers to find a suitable replacement.

“I’m kind of over it,” Nixon said. “I don’t really want to do it no more. There’s going to be talks with the coaching staff and stuff like that, but I think it’s over with for me.”

Why?

“I want to be CB1. CB1 is not doing kick returns. That’s just what it is.”

While the Packers finished 22nd in our rankings, they were one Bears punt-return touchdown from finishing 14th. If McManus had been the kicker all season and Green Bay had finished a respectable 10th in field-goal accuracy, the Packers would have moved from that hypothetical 14th to 10th.

The Detroit Lions were the runway winners. They finished in the top 11 in all five categories. The Las Vegas Raiders, Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos and Jacksonville Jaguars rounded out the top five, with the Bears at No. 6.

The Super Bowl teams, the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles, finished 21st and 26th, respectively.

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BILL HUBER

Bill 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.