GREEN BAY — The Green Bay Packers’ 2025 season had been finished for 25 days before general manager Brian Gutekunst held his year-ending press conference on Wednesday.
After 3 1/2 weeks, Gutekunst was still having trouble digesting Green Bay’s 31-27 wild-card loss to Chicago, a game the Packers led 21-3 at halftime before collapsing.
Rob Reischel
“Not well,” Gutekunst said of how he’s dealt with that loss. “But no, I mean … in every season, there’s successes, and there’s failures and there’s disappointments and things like that.
“I was proud of our team in a lot of areas this year, but, you know, finishing games is certainly something that we’ve got to, you know, concentrate on as we head into 2026. And that was one where I thought, certainly we played very, very well in the first half and had a lot of things in front of us. And when you get in situations like that, you expect to win the game.”
Green Bay, which entered the season with the fourth-best odds of winning Super Bowl LX, finished the year 9-8-1 and losers of five straight games.
“We have one goal here, you know, and we never run from it,” Gutekunst said. “We’re here to win championships, and I think this team is capable of that. 2026 will be a different team, but the expectations won’t change. I thought there’s some really good things during the season. There also were some major disappointments.”
Gutekunst addressed several topics during a nearly 40-minute gathering with state reporters. Here’s the “Good, Bad and Ugly” from his season wrapup.
The good
FREE-AGENT FRENZY?: The Packers are approximately $4.35 million over the salary cap. But Gutekunst indicated Wednesday that he expects the Packers to be aggressive once free agency arrives on March 11.
“I feel really good again,” Gutekunst said. “You know, a lot of that will be dependent on the decisions we make with the roster right now and what we do. But I believe we have all the flexibility to do what we need to do.”
Since 2019, Gutekunst has hit it big in free agency with defensive ends Za’Darius Smith and Preston Smith, safeties Adrian Amos and Xavier McKinney, and running back Josh Jacobs. Gutekunst’s two key signings in free agency last year — guard Aaron Banks and cornerback Nate Hobbs — both had tremendously disappointing seasons. The Packers could clear a large amount of salary cap space by releasing players such as guard/center Elgton Jenkins, defensive end Rashan Gary, kicker Brandon McManus and Hobbs.
Chances are Gutekunst will release several of those players between now and the start of free agency, which would help the Packers position themselves to add a player or two.
Green Bay needs to be active in free agency, too, after trading away its 2026 and 2027 first-round draft picks for star defensive end Micah Parsons.
“We have a bunch of young players, really good players that we would like to keep around here for a while, so we’ll work through that,” Gutekunst said. “But I feel good about our flexibility, and, you know, I think the last few years, (executive vice president/director of football operations Russ Ball) has done such a good job of keeping us at a point where, if opportunities present themselves, we’re never not able to do those things. So I feel really good about it.”
MORE JACOBS: Josh Jacobs has 1,840 career carries, turns 28 next week and battled a knee injury the last two months of 2025. That led some to speculate Jacobs might not be back in Green Bay in 2026.
Jacobs also counts $14.5 million against the salary cap next season, but Gutekunst indicated he’s not looking to replace the three-time Pro Bowl running back.
“Josh is a warrior,” Gutekunst said. “Really important part of our football team. Everything that he brings to us on the field, in the locker room, he’s an important part and I think he’s got a lot of good years left.”
GOLDEN TICKET: Wideout Matthew Golden, the Packers’ firstround draft pick in 2025, played just 43% of the snaps in 2025. And one of the greater mysteries of the season is why Green Bay’s coaches used players like Bo Melton ahead of Golden.
On Golden’s 23-yard touchdown in the Packers’ playoff loss to Chicago, though, he displayed the speed and elusiveness that led Gutekunst to select him with the 23rd pick in the 2025 draft. Gutekunst believes big things are in store for Golden in 2026.
“Whenever he got his opportunities, he capitalized on them,” Gutekunst said of Golden. “I thought he did an excellent job. Like all players, when you go through tough times when you’re losing games and maybe you’re not getting as many opportunities as you want, that’s going to be frustrating, but I thought he handled it like a pro and, when his number was called on, he performed. Really excited to see what he can do in Year 2.”
The bad
LINE DANCING: Adapt or die.
While few people enjoy change, modifying your approach when things aren’t working is vital in every walk of life.
When it comes to the Packers, it’s time they adjust their thinking with offensive linemen.
Green Bay loves to draft offensive linemen they believe are versatile, then train them at multiple positions. The result is Green Bay winds up with several players that are mediocre at several spots, but far from special at any of them.
Green Bay’s offensive line in 2025 might have been its poorest since 2005, when that team lost guards Marco Rivera and Mike Wahle in free agency and tried replacing them with Scott Wells and Will Whitticker.
It’s time Gutekunst and Green Bay’s coaches assign their linemen to a certain position and leave them alone to flourish there.
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“Well, you know how I feel about versatility,” Gutekunst said. “To me, they need to be able to play multiple spots, and I don’t really care where they think they may be better at. When they’re in there, they need to perform. All the guys — even the guys that were moving around a little bit — my expectation is that they perform at a high level.”
Right now, that’s not happening. And it’s time the Packers alter their approach.
NOTHING SPECIAL: Wash, rinse, repeat.
This is what the Packers decided to do by bringing back Matt LaFleur, who’s now the NFL’s longest-tenured head coach not to reach a Super Bowl. And it’s what LaFleur has opted to do by bringing back special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia.
Green Bay’s special teams have remained dreadful under Bisaccia, who just wrapped up his fourth season as the Packers’ coordinator.
Under Bisaccia, the Packers have ranked 22nd, 29th, 22nd and 20th in overall special teams rankings the last four seasons. Green Bay had several costly special teams blunders in 2025, including having a late field goal blocked in Week 3 against Cleveland, Romeo Doubs fumbling away an inside kick in a Week 16 loss to Chicago, and Brandon McManus missing three kicks in a playoff loss to the Bears.
But the Packers seem hell bent on running it back with Bisaccia.
“What Rich brings to our culture, this football team … he’s a very impactful coach around here,” Gutekunst said. “Certainly, I thought we’ve been better on teams the last few years than we’ve been in a long time.
“I’ve got a lot of faith in Rich and his staff, what they do around here, not only the Xs and Os, what they bring to the field, but what they bring to this place culturally is really important.”
ZACH TOM: Right tackle Zach Tom, the Packers’ best offensive lineman, had surgery shortly after the season for a partially torn patellar tendon in his knee. Tom’s recovery time is expected to be about six months.
“Really proud of Zach and how hard he fought to get out there and play with what he was dealing with,” Gutekunst said. “He’s going to be on the shelf here for a little while during the offseason, but I wouldn’t really expect it to impact his 2026 season.”
INTERNATIONAL GAMES: The NFL will play nine international games in 2026, and the Packers are likely to play in one of those games.
Green Bay is 0-2 in international games since 2022. The New York Giants defeated the Packers 27-22 in London in 2022, which started Green Bay on a five-game losing streak.
In 2024, Philadelphia defeated Green Bay 34-29 in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
“I think it’s inevitable, so it’s something we have to be really good at,” Gutekunst said of playing internationally. “I think at the beginning, when we went to England for the first time and then obviously Brazil, my thought process — man, this is awful, you know what I mean, and how it’s going to affect our football team moving forward.
“But I think it’s one of those things — it’s on us as an organization to be really, really good at it. And I think part of that is being excited and accepting in that, so I think it’s going to be part of the NFL for a while.”
The ugly
CAN’T FINISH: The Packers’ No. 1 priority this offseason needs to be discovering ways to finish games — and seasons.
Green Bay had a 99% chance to defeat Cleveland in Week 3 with 3:45 remaining and a 99% chance to beat Chicago in Week 16 with just more than two minutes left. The Packers also had a 96% chance of beating the Bears in the wild-card round with 4:55 left.
Amazingly, the Packers lost all three of those games. The odds of that happening were 1 in 250,000.
Green Bay finished this season on a five-game losing streak and ended the 2024 campaign with three straight losses. If the Packers can’t figure out how to finish, they’ll never rise past the No. 7 seed they’ve been stuck at for the last three seasons.
“We’re looking at that from a lot of different angles, you know, to make sure that we’re playing our best football in December and January,” Gutekunst said of Green Bay’s lateseason and late-game collapses. “So I think that hasn’t been the case the last two years, and it’s really imperative that through process and people that we make sure that we take a long look at that.
“Obviously we’ve got to win the games that matter the most, in December or January, right? That’s kind of been the tale of the last couple of years. This team’s ready to do that, and we haven’t done that. So that’s kind of the next step.”
FLAWED POWER STRUCTURE: When Ron Wolf was hired as Green Bay’s general manager in 1991, team president Bob Harlan promised that football decisions would be left to Wolf. Had Harlan opted to meddle, Wolf has said repeatedly he would have never taken the job.
The Packers’ power structure stayed that way for nearly three decades until former president Mark Murphy changed that configuration and gave himself final authority on major football decisions in 2018.
Many believed new team president Ed Policy was going to revert back to the Wolf way after replacing Murphy last summer. But Policy is leaving things as is, meaning he — not Gutekunst — had final say on the recent contract extension for head coach Matt LaFleur.
“That was Ed’s decision,” Gutekunst said of Policy’s choice to extend LaFleur.
Football decisions should be left to football people — not Stanford Law School graduates. The longer the Packers leave this hierarchal system in place, the longer their Super Bowl drought (now 15 seasons) is likely to continue.