GREEN BAY — The reason Brian Gutekunst’s mixed signals about whether edge rusher Rashan Gary will be a member of the Green Bay Packers in 2026 were, in fact, mixed was that he acknowledged the possibility that Gary might not be back. 

“He’s on our roster, and I expect him to play at that level or higher if he’s back next year,” Gutekunst said earlier this week at the annual NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis. “And we’ll see how that goes.”

Gutekunst struck a more positive chord about Gary returning — even though it would require contract finagling to lower his massive $28.02 million salary-cap number — later in his Q&A session at a downtown hotel with Wisconsin-based reporters, but the reality is that his future in Green Bay is up in the air.

And he’s not the only one.

Gutekunst and the Packers face similar decisions on three other players who fall under the same category — under contract, but with an onerous salary-cap number that needs to be addressed before the start of the NFL’s new league year on March 11.

Gary has an $18 million base salary as part of that $28.02 million cap number — the second-highest cap number on the roster behind starting quarterback Jordan Love — and the Packers could create nearly $11 million in cap space if they outright released him and ate the $17 million in dead cap space he’d leave behind. They could free up even more cap space if they designated him a post-June 1 cut and pushed some of those charges into next year.

Given that the Packers are somewhere between $1.5 million and $4 million over the projected salary cap (which will exceed $300 million for the first time in league history), director of football operations Russ Ball, who serves as the team’s salary-cap expert and chief contract negotiator, has work to do in the coming days.

Some of those cap issues can be resolved by releasing or restructuring players, and in addition to Gary, there are four other cap-casualty candidates in play:

• Aaron Banks, left guard — $24.791 million 2026 cap number

Banks’ first season with the Packers after coming over from the San Francisco 49ers — on a four-year, $77 million free-agent deal that included a $27 million guaranteed up-front signing bonus — did not go as planned, with a training-camp back injury curtailing his practice time and other nagging injuries affecting him, too. Set to turn 29 on Sept. 3, he’s due a colossal $9.5 million roster bonus that the Packers could convert to a signing bonus to spread the cap charges out over future years, but his scheduled $7.7 million base salary isn’t exactly small potatoes, either. Moving on from him would create $4.54 million in cap space, but it would also create yet another hole in an offensive line that is set to lose left tackle Rasheed Walker and center/guard Sean Rhyan in unrestricted free agency.

Gutekunst, on bringing Banks back: “He’s under contract. I wouldn’t expect him to go anywhere. … He really hasn’t missed much time in his career. Some of the things he went through were unexpected. I really thought he played well toward the end of the season, once he got healthy.”

• Elgton Jenkins, center — $24.329 million 2026 cap number

Jenkins‘ move to center to accommodate Banks’ signing after he’d been a Pro Bowler at left guard himself couldn’t have gone much worse. Not only did he not get the upgraded contract he was seeking during the offseason, he not play well — by his own admission — at his new position, and he also suffered a season-ending lower leg fracture. Having turned 30 on Dec. 26, he’s an old man by the Packers’ standards, and the $19.529 million in cap space the Packers would create by cutting him is massive.

Gutekunst, when asked what the deciding factor is on Jenkins: “I thought he was playing pretty well. Obviously, the move to center certainly was to help the Packers and to help him as well. [With] him getting hurt, I think we lost a lot of veteran leadership there when he went out, so that was difficult. But at the same time, we’ll kind of see where that goes.”

• Josh Jacobs, running back — $14.543 million 2026 cap number

Jacobs’ production fell precipitously from his first season in Green Bay (1,329 rushing yards, 15 touchdowns) to last season (929 yards, 13 TDs), but the guy toughed it out through a painful left knee injury that severely hampered him during the second half of the season and ran behind an offensive line that did him no favors with its inconsistent blocking. He turned 28 earlier this month, and while releasing him would $8.293 million in cap room, there’s no proven replacement on the roster and no one in the locker room who commands more respect than Jacobs.

Gutekunst, on if Jacobs will be the team’s No. 1 running back in 2026: “Yeah absolutely. Obviously Josh played really well for us last year, major part of our football team. Very durable, tough. Yeah, he’s a very important cog in what we’re trying to do here.”

• Nate Hobbs, cornerback — $12.838 million 2026 cap number

Releasing Hobbs wouldn’t net the Packers much cap space (roughly $838,000), but like Banks, his free-agent signing did not live up to the Packers’ expectations. His season was derailed before it even started by a training-camp knee injury, and he wound up playing in only 11 games (five starts) because of inconsistent play and knee and ankle injuries and finished the year on injured reserve.

Gutekunst, on whether Hobbs will return: “He’d had a little bit of [injury] things [in the past] — certainly not as much as he had this past year. Those are always risks you take whenever you get into the free agency pool. If you’ve played four or five years in the National Football League, you’re going to have some things. You’ve got to have to take some risk on, and we did. It didn’t work out this year, particularly with Hobbs. But we’ll see how it goes in the next year.”

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