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| Posted on Wednesday, July 22 @ 00:03:18 PDT |
After a host of draft and cash investments, are the Packers good enough up front?
Fifth in a series.
GREEN BAY — A first-round pick. A second-round pick. A big-ticket unrestricted free-agent signing. And a pair of in-house players whom they signed to multi-year contract extensions.
The Green Bay Packers have made some significant investments up front. And they’re counting on a big-time return on those investments this season, with their offensive success perhaps hinging on how the group performs.
Let’s go left-to-right.
After two years as a backup and spot starter, 2024 first-round pick Jordan Morgan finally gets to be the team’s left tackle.
Veteran left guard Aaron Banks, signed away from the San Francisco 49ers in March 2025, will have made upwards of $50 million from the Packers by season’s end.
Center Sean Rhyan, once thought to be headed elsewhere in free agency after a midseason benching at right guard, is back on a three-year, $33 million deal.
Right guard Anthony Belton, a second-round pick a year ago, started seven games (including the season-ending playoff loss to the Chicago Bears) and will start the Sept. 13 opener at Minnesota if he can fend off rookie fifth-round pick Jager Burton.
And right tackle Zach Tom, who signed a four-year, $88 million extension just before training camp a year ago, is working his way back from a partially torn patellar tendon in his knee.
Those are some significant expenditures. So why is the Packers’ offensive line among their biggest question marks heading into the 2026 season?
Ask general manager Brian Gutekunst’s that question heading into the first practice of camp next week, and he’ll tell you that your premise is flawed.
In fact, he said just that after the draft, insisting that the team has a strong starting five and sufficient depth with veteran Darian Kinnard and recent draft picks Jacob Monk, Travis Glover, John Williams and Burton.
“I feel really good about it,” Gutekunst said said of the offensive line. “Obviously, we’ve got a couple guys coming off injuries. Zach is coming off an injury, Jacob’s coming off an injury, but I really like our starting five. And I thought Jacob did a really good job in that last game at center, so I feel really good about his ability.
“We’re going to get Glover back as well, [Donovan] Jennings, and we brought Kinnard back. So I feel really good about our whole group and the competition that’s in that room.
“We’re always going to try to add to the offensive line. There’s only so many big guys in the world that can play at a high level, but I feel good about it.”
We shall see if Gutekunst’s confidence is well-placed. But to be fair, all five of his would-be starters come with varyingly significant questions attached as camp approaches.
As a first-round pick, Morgan is obviously expected to be a franchise left tackle. But he couldn’t beat out Rasheed Walker the past two summers in camp. Is he ready to be the team’s new David Bakhtiari or Chad Clifton?
Banks, nagged by injuries dating back to training camp, didn’t play well enough last year — by his own admission. Will he be the player the Packers signed him to be in Year 2?
Rhyan was benched at right guard at midseason, and who knows where he’d be if Pro Bowl left guard-turned-center Elgton Jenkins not suffered a season-ending broken leg. Will he show that he’s a true center, not just a guy playing center?
Belton, despite playing well for a rookie, is expected to battle Burton to keep his starting job. Will he rise to the occasion and elevate his level of play?
And Tom, one of the NFL’s top right tackles, is coming off back-to-back seasons that have been plagued by injuries — a torn pectoral muscle in 2024 that robbed him of his strength, and the knee injury and an early-season abdominal injury last year.
Will he stay healthy and get back to being an elite-level player?
“There were a lot of frustrating moments,” Banks confessed after the season — and while he was speaking only for himself, he just as easily could have been talking about the group as a whole.
“Some of [that] was just frustrated at myself, just looking in the mirror like, ‘Man, just get healthy. We’ve got to go show them who you are and what you can do.’ There’s frustration always when you deal with injuries.
“But I’m excited to come into this season and be healthy, have a year under my belt with the guys, have that camaraderie, build that togetherness amongst the O-line and just keep taking steps forward every day.”
Just how many steps that unit takes could very well decide the trajectory of the Packers’ season.
“Offensive line play is about the fundamentals of blocking people,” line coach Luke Butkus said. “And to get better, the only way I know how to get better is go back to fundamentals, your technique, pad level, talking about playing with leverage.
“There’s a million other things that we’ve got to talk about, but just going back to the fundamentals of the position [is the starting point].
”
Burning Question | Is Morgan going to be the franchise left tackle he’s been waiting — and wanting — to be?
The 2024 first-round draft pick spent his first two NFL seasons playing virtually everywhere except his preferred position — at least until last year’s meaningless regular-season finale in Minnesota.
It wasn’t easy.
“I got in here expecting myself to play left tackle. But, like I’ve said a lot of times before, Im a team player. Wherever they needed me to be and to play, Im going to try to do my best at it,” Morgan said last month.
“Playing those other positions for the first time in my life — and I’ve got to play at a professional level — its just I mean, when youre not good at it, its hard on you mentally, obviously. And when you want to be good and you want to be a perfectionist, its really hard.
“So, those first two years, it was a struggle for me — for sure.”
Now, he says he’s ready to show he’s where he belongs.
“Im excited about him being over there,” said Packers offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich, a former offensive line coach. “I thought last year he showed flashes of being able to be a good left tackle in this league when we had him out there, so Im excited to get him out there [and] just get him comfortable playing on the edge, protecting the blindside.
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On the rise | Rhyan.
Rhyan’s journey to his three-year extension was a turbulent one that included playing only one snap on special teams as a rookie third-round pick in 2022 (and drawing a six-game suspension for violating the NFL’s policy on performance-enhancing substances), not making a single start in 2023, and starting all 18 games (including playoffs) in 2024 at right guard only to lose his starting gig early last season.
Now, it’s time for him to take his nine starts of experience at center last season and parlay it into having command of the offensive line.
“Man, if you told me that I would be here with a second contract about a year ago,” Rhyan said with a grin, “I would have said, ‘You must have some crystal ball that I dont know about.’”
Player to watch | Banks.
Having received a $27 million guaranteed signing bonus when he came over from the San Francisco 49ers on a four-year, $77 million free-agent deal in March 2025, plus another $2.3 million in salary and bonuses last season, Banks pocketed nearly $30 million during his first year in Green Bay.
Then, the Packers created salary-cap space by converting nearly $16 million in salary and roster bonus money into a guaranteed signing bonus this past offseason.
Banks sounded motivated this offseason to prove that’s money well spent after his uneven first year in Green Bay.
“I mean, [we saw] flashes, and I think he’ll tell you the same,” Butkus said of Banks’ play last year. “He will never make an excuse — I’m not making an excuse for him either — [but] he was banged up, he was in a new system. But he’ll be the first one to tell you, it doesn’t matter.
“He’s going to come to work. Did we see some really good things? Absolutely. And then there’s some things we need to clean up, and that’s our job as coaches [and] his as a player — to have a vision of what he needs to do to get better. But coming back for the second year, I think he’s a guy that’s going to be really good for us, and really good for the younger guys in the room.”
Key competition | Belton vs. Burton.
While the Packers coaches liked what they got out of Belton as a rookie last season, they also liked what they saw from Burton during the offseason program, with head coach Matt LaFleur saying last month that Burton is “definitely going to be in the mix to compete for playing time this year,” despite being a rookie.
Whether Burton can prove to be a better option despite having none of the NFL experience Belton has remains to be seen, but with 47 career college starts at Kentucky — 23 at left guard, 15 at center and nine at right guard — the 6-foot-4, 312-pound Burton is, as his head coach put it, in the mix.
“Jager has a lot of really good qualities that youre looking for in an offensive lineman in the NFL,” Stenavich said. “Ill just leave it at that.”
Bold prediction | For the first time in forever, the starting five will stay healthy together all season long.
Among the myriad of reasons why the Packers’ gut-wrenching 2014 NFC Championship Game meltdown in Seattle still elicits the “Too soon!” reaction from some fans is that the team got to the postseason with virtually all of its starting lineup intact — including on the offensive line, which never happens.
That year, the Packers’ starting five — David Bakhtiari at left tackle, Josh Sitton at left guard, Corey Linsley at center, T.J. Lang at right guard and Bryan Bulaga at right tackle — started every game together except one: In Week 2, Bulaga missed the game with a knee injury, but returned to the starting lineup the next game.
You can’t put a price tag on that type of offensive line continuity.
By comparison, the 2025 Packers started eight different offensive line combinations in 17 games.
“[It’s about] building that chemistry,” Rhyan said. “If we miss a call, we can react and still block it right because we know that we all know that, ‘If this happens, we have to do this.
’ Were trying to get to where we want to be as fast as possible.”
Next: Defensive line.
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