The Packers enter 2026 carrying a warning label, and it comes from a veteran NFL voice who doesn’t sound impressed by the margin for error in Green Bay.
There’s still a belief around the league, and among plenty of die-hard Packers fans, that Matt LaFleur has a Super Bowl roster to work with. But after an offseason that sent significant talent elsewhere, the picture looks a lot less forgiving than the optimism suggests.
Romeo Doubs, the team’s 2025 leading receiver, is gone. So is athletic linebacker Quay Walker.
Veteran edge rusher Rashan Gary was traded to the Dallas Cowboys. And those are only the headline departures from a spring that thinned out the roster in a major way.
With that kind of turnover, proven depth has become a real concern for Green Bay heading into the fall.
That’s where longtime NFL reporter Mike Tanier sees the danger. In his view, the Packers are not built to absorb much of anything if injuries start stacking up.
“Every NFL team is in big trouble if it suffers injuries to major stars,” Tanier writes for the Too Deep Zone. “The Packers, however, are in big trouble if they suffer injuries to any starters.
Especially the ones who are already injured. This is a team that can’t afford to lose rank-and-file players on the offensive line or in the secondary, because the backups are career practice-squadders.
“So stay healthy, Packers. There is no Plan B, because the current roster pretty much is Plan B.”
That’s the reality check. Green Bay is counting on its younger players to step into bigger roles after so many familiar names left the building. But if the injury bug bites again, Tanier’s message is clear: the ceiling drops fast, and the Packers’ margin for success in 2026 could disappear with it.
In Other News...
Former Packers Corner Corey Ballentine Just Got Another NFL Lifeline
Corey Ballentine is getting another shot to stick in the NFL, and for Packers fans, his name still carries a little relevance from his time in Green Bay. The veteran cornerback has bounced around the league for seven seasons, and his most productive stretch came with the Packers, where he logged a career-high workload in 2023 and showed he could handle a meaningful role on defense.
Now the challenge is simply earning a spot in camp all over again. Jacksonville had to make a corresponding roster move to bring him in, and Ballentine enters a crowded cornerback picture with little margin for error, needing to prove he belongs before the Jaguars sort out the rest of the secondary. [Read more 🡒]
Packers Camp Could Be Hinting At A Bigger Linebacker Shakeup
The Packers opened their first public training camp practice ahead of the 2026 season, and the early defensive buzz is already pointing toward a different kind of structure under new coordinator Jonathan Gannon. Zaire Franklin is positioned as the units leader and play-caller, giving Green Bay a clear centerpiece in the middle of a defense that is expected to look and function differently than it did a year ago.
That shift naturally puts Edgerrin Cooper in the spotlight, because the way Franklin handles the communication duties could ripple through the linebacker rotation. The bigger question now is how Green Bay wants to deploy its linebackers in this system, and whether the new setup changes when Cooper is on the field and when the Packers decide they need something else. [Read more 🡒]