GREEN BAY — Anyone questioning how important it is that the Green Bay Packers have a reliable veteran kicker have clearly forgotten what life was like before Brandon McManus’ midseason arrival last year.

Whether it was Anders Carlson punctuating his rollercoaster rookie season in 2023 with a critical fourth-quarter miss on a 41-yard attempt with the Packers leading the San Francisco 49ers in their NFC divisional round playoff matchup, or waiver-wire claim Brayden Narveson leading the NFL in missed field-goal attempts during the first 1/3 of last season, the kicking game was frustratingly unpredictable before McManus was signed in mid-October.

All McManus did upon arrival was kick a game-winning walk-off 45-yarder to beat the Houston Texans on Oct. 20 and a 24-yard game-winner against the Jacksonville Jaguars seven days later.

McManus also made a go-ahead 55-yarder with 58 seconds left in the Packers’ regular-season finale against Chicago, only to see Bears kicker Cairo Santos’ hit a 51-yarder as time expired to deny him his third game-winner on the season.

All told, McManus went 21 for 23 on field-goal tries and 31 for 31 on extra points in his 12 games with the team (including playoffs).

His only two misses were on a 46-yarder in a rainy Nov. 3 loss to Detroit at Lambeau Field, and a 38-yarder in the team’s season-ending playoff loss to Philadelphia on Jan. 12.

All of which explains why the Packers were happy to re-sign McManus to a three-year, $15.3 million deal that included a guaranteed $5 million signing bonus.

“Keeping him, we think, is significant for us [because of] his consistency that he had last year, the leadership that he started to bring to us the more he was in our locker room,” assistant head coach/special-teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia said earlier this offseason. “It’s good to know we have our kicker coming back in this year.”

McManus, who turns 34 on July 25, the third day of training camp, is the oldest player on what has been the NFL’s youngest roster each of the past two seasons. While the Packers have gone young time and time again at other positions, clearly they learned their lesson about inexperienced kickers by seeing Carlson and Narveson’s inconsistency firsthand.

In McManus, they have a 12-year NFL vet who booted three field goals in the Denver Broncos’ Super Bowl 50 victory in February 2016.

For his part, McManus understands he’s an old man on a young man’s team, and he got a reminder when the young staffers on the Packers social media crew asked him which app he used most.

“They’re all like, ‘TikTok [or] Snapchat?’ That didn’t exist [when I came into the league],” McManus said with a laugh. “I didn’t even know what that is. But it’s great. They keep me young.

“This will be my 13th training camp. A lot of these guys were in grade school or middle school when I was playing for Denver. The NFL, it’s a brutal business here, and you have this youthfulness and joyfulness. That’s what I loved about this place. They really have a great culture here. [And] obviously I had what I thought was a pretty good year.”

About our “Most Important Packers of 2025” Series: When the Packers kick off their seventh training camp under head coach Matt LaFleur on July 23, they’ll do so with a host of players facing pivotal seasons. LaFleur clearly believes he has ample talent to be a Super Bowl contender — even if he didn’t want to say so as the offseason program came to a close — but turning that belief into reality will require many of those players to produce at higher levels than they have in the past. This series, which began in 2010 on ESPNWisconsin.com, examines each of those players and how the team’s success hinges on their contributions. The list is compiled with input from team observers, former players and NFL sources.

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