The Packers may already have their answer at right guard if Anthony Belton takes the step Green Bay is banking on in Year 2.
That matters because the offensive line, while solid on paper, still has a few shaky edges when it comes to keeping Jordan Love clean in 2026. Depth is one issue.
Health is another. And beyond that, the Packers need some of their starters to keep developing.
Belton fits squarely into that group.
A second-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, Belton opened preseason at right tackle before moving inside to right guard. The transition wasn’t seamless. He wasn’t a disaster, but he also didn’t look like a finished product by any stretch.
There were some clear signs of the adjustment period. Belton spent most of his college career at left tackle at North Carolina State, so shifting to right guard came with a learning curve.
In 2025, he did not allow a sack, but he did give up 16 pressures in six starts. By comparison, Elgton Jenkins allowed 14 total pressures across 16 games the year before.
The run game was part of the concern, too. That was supposed to be one of Belton’s strengths coming out of college, but he finished with a 51.9 Pro Football Focus grade as a run blocker, which ranked 66th among 81 qualifying guards.
Even so, the Packers are giving him the runway to sort it out. Belton enters training camp as the starter and doesn’t have major competition breathing down his neck. Rookie Jager Burton could make a push if healthy, but he may be better positioned to challenge Sean Rhyan for the center job.
That leaves Belton with a real opportunity. Burton is not an immediate threat, and Belton also has the benefit of being the veteran in the room.
There’s still plenty of upside here. The Packers used a second-round pick on him for a reason, and one uneven rookie season doesn’t erase that. Moving positions only made the adjustment harder, and now he gets to attack Year 2 with a full season of experience behind him.
Bucky Brooks of NFL.com saw enough to include the 6-foot-6, 336-pound lineman on his All-Breakout Team, pointing to Belton’s grittiness and athleticism as traits that could help him become an elite player.
Of course, the other side of this is obvious: if Belton doesn’t take a step forward, right guard could turn into a problem spot. But for now, the Packers are rolling with him as their Week 1 starter, which says plenty about how they view his ceiling.
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Nixon also cleared up one point that might have fueled the speculation. His absence from the first practice had nothing to do with contract tension, he said, but rather hamstring tightness, and he was back on the field the next day. For the Packers, that keeps the situation in the usual summer holding pattern for now, with Nixon working through camp and the front office left to sort out the rest whenever the time comes. [Read more 🡒]