Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst saw a team that improved throughout the season.
However, he also knows losing in the opening round of the playoffs isn’t good enough for a team with high expectations.
So although Gutekunst believes the organization is headed in the right direction, he also issued a challenge to a team that lost all six games it played this season against the Detroit Lions, Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings — the NFC’s top-tier clubs.
“We need to continue to ramp up our sense of urgency,” Gutekunst said during a season-ending news conference Thursday afternoon. “The life of a player in the National Football League is not very long. We’ve got a bunch of good guys in that locker room, we’ve got a bunch of talented guys in that locker room, and I think it’s time we started competing for championships.
“I think they’re ready.”
Green Bay’s 22-10 loss to the Eagles in the NFC wild-card round was the bookend to the Packers’ 34-29 loss to them in the regular-season opener in São Paulo, Brazil. In between, the Packers lost twice to the Lions and twice to the Vikings, finishing third in the NFC North and earning the seventh and final playoff berth in the conference.
Through six seasons as head coach, Matt LaFleur has led the Packers to a 67-33 overall record (3-5 in the postseason) and berths in the 2019 and 2020 NFC championship games.
But Green Bay’s most recent Super Bowl appearance was in the 2010 season, when the Packers won it all with Mike McCarthy as the head coach and Aaron Rodgers as the starting quarterback.
“I think everybody’s gutted,” LaFleur said during his season wrap-up with reporters earlier in the week. “If you go out there and you play at your best and you come up short, there’s a different feeling.”
The Packers head into the offseason with 11 players set to become unrestricted free agents, including three starters: center Josh Myers, linebacker Isaiah McDuffie and defensive tackle T.J. Slaton.
They could part ways with two-time Pro Bowl cornerback Jaire Alexander, who has missed 10 games in each of the past two seasons with injuries and served a one-game suspension in 2023.
Alexander didn’t speak with reporters during Monday’s locker clean-out day, saying that he didn’t “have anything good to say.”
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Asked Thursday if there is a disconnect between the organization and the player, Gutekunst said, “No, no, no. I mean, there’s frustration, I think, on both sides, from the fact that he can’t get out there. I feel for him, because he wants to be out there and he wants to play. But no disconnect.”
The Packers can clear roughly $6 million in salary cap space if they move on from Alexander, which would give them $57 million in projected cap room (not counting the cost of signing their draft class) heading into the offseason.
After the signings of All-Pro safety Xavier McKinney and Pro Bowl running back Josh Jacobs last year, Gutekunst will have the fiscal wherewithal to take more free-agent swings if he chooses to do so.
Combined with the growth of a roster that was the youngest in the NFL for the second straight year, and Gutekunst believes his team is well positioned for next season.
“The decisions we’ve made over the past few years have put us in the situation where we’re in pretty good shape,” Gutekunst said. “I feel really good about our ability to go do what we need to do to field a championship-level team.
“The opportunities that are going to be out there are unknown right now. We’ll see how that goes. But we’re in a better situation than we have been.”
NOTES:
- Gutekunst said the team would like to bring back veteran kicker Brandon McManus, who was signed in October after the team employed rookie kickers in 2023 and for the first six games of this season.
- Gutekunst said wide receiver Christian Watson, who tore the ACL in his right knee in the regular-season finale against Chicago, has not yet undergone surgery.
- Gutekunst was thrilled with the defense’s first year under new coordinator Jeff Hafley, whose unit finished No. 5 in total defense (314.5 yards per game), No. 6 in scoring defense (19.9 points per game) and No. 4 in takeaways (31). “I thought Jeff Hafley did an amazing job coming in here in Year 1,” Gutekunst said. “I thought we were playing our best football on defense at the end of the year. (I’m) really excited about where the defense is right now.”
Reporting by The Associated Press.
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