After the Green Bay Packers’ three-point loss to the Detroit Lions, the easiest target was obvious. Trey Smack’s kicking has gone from promising to shaky in a hurry, and the rookie has turned into a real worry after a strong opening to the 2026 season.
Smack was perfect through the first two weeks, going 5/5 on field goal tries. Since then, the story has changed fast. He went 6/11 and then 1/3 in the loss to Detroit, a game that only sharpened the concern around a kicking operation that already had the Packers burned a season ago when Brandon McManus collapsed at the worst possible moment and ended their playoff run.
But Tucker Kraft isn’t joining the pile-on. The veteran tight end made clear he wants the conversation centered on what went wrong across the board, not just on the foot at the center of the storm: "Football is a game about responses.
But today's loss... a culmination of errors, that's what gets us beat. You make that many mistakes against a team like that, you lose."
That message fits the way Green Bay actually lost. Penalties added up.
Offensive mistakes kept the Packers from grabbing control early. The kicking issue mattered, but it was part of a messier picture, not the only reason the result went against them.
Kraft’s stance also doubles as a message to the locker room. He’s pushing the idea that the response has to start with a hard look in the mirror, with cleaner football on both sides and fewer self-inflicted errors. From his angle, this is less about assigning blame than about making sure the Packers don’t let one bad week become a habit.
From the fans’ side, though, the anxiety is real. Missing short field goals and stacking inconsistency on top of inconsistency naturally raises questions about whether Green Bay should have found a different answer this offseason.
Even so, Kraft’s point is hard to dismiss. If the offense had played a cleaner game, the Packers may never have needed Smack to decide anything at all.
And despite the kicking worries, this is still a roster that believes it can compete with the league’s best. Kraft is making sure that message stays front and center while the Packers try to clean up the mistakes that cost them against Detroit.
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