GREEN BAY — With June 1 having come and gone on the NFL calendar on Monday, veteran kicker Brandon McManus is officially off the Green Bay Packers’ salary-cap books. 

Whether releasing him turns out to be the right call remains to be seen, and exactly why general manager Brian Gutekunst and head coach Matt LaFleur decided it was the right call remains a bit murky.

Nevertheless, the Packers returned to work for their second week of organized team activity practices on Monday with only two kickers on the roster — presumptive starter Trey Smack, a rookie sixth-round pick from Florida whom the Packers traded up to select, and Lucas Havrisik, who filled in for an injured McManus last season and booted a franchise-record 61-yard field goal.

By cutting McManus — with two years left on a contract that called for him to earn a $2.1 million base salary in 2026, along with $500,000 in per-game roster bonuses — with the post-June 1 designation, the Packers saved $2.61 million on this year’s cap (but pushed that amount onto the 2027 cap).

But by moving on from him on May 8 — less than two weeks after picking Smack — it also meant there’d be no meaningful competition for Smark in training camp.

Asked at last week’s open-to-the-media OTA practice why the team chose to release McManus when it did, LaFleur replied, “Gutey and I talked quite a bit, and I think it was only fair to Brandon and to our football team to make the move now.”

But in the immediate draft aftermath, Gutekunst had insisted that Smack, whom the team traded two seventh-round picks to select, would not merely be handed the kicking job.

It seems likely that the McManus, reading the large-font writing on the wall that the Packers weren’t going to invest a sixth-round pick in a kicker and then keep a soon-to-be 35-year-old veteran, asked to be released so he’d be free to find a team with a more open competition at kicker.

Pressed on why, if competition is the bedrock of what he’s done during his tenure in Green Bay, he wouldn’t want Smack to compete with McManus in training camp, LaFleur replied, “We were just trying to put Trey in the best position possible moving forward, and he’s going to get the bulk of [the work in camp].”

For his part, Smack said upon arriving at the post-draft rookie minicamp — a week before McManus was released — that he was going to focus on competing with himself rather than with McManus or Havrisik.

“It’s you versus you,” Smack said. “I don’t really pay attention to anybody else but myself because I’m the one that’s got to put it through the uprights.”

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