GREEN BAY − Three years from now, there’s no telling what the Green Bay Packers’ 2026 draft will have accomplished, or failed to accomplish, for that matter.
But coming off draft weekend, two things stand out: one, general manager Brian Gutekunst zeroed in on defensive needs; and two, he made a move that shows just how important he thinks kicker is for a team he expects will be competing for the Super Bowl the next few years.
Gutekunst’s trade up for Florida kicker Trey Smack was his move that jumped out most on Day 3 of the draft, even though he was Gutekunst’s final pick in the sixth round.
The GM swapped his two seventh-round selections to take Smack with the final pick of the sixth. That’s an uncommon price to pay for a specialist.
Gutekust now has made noteworthy investments in two kickers this offseason: The $1 million roster bonus he paid incumbent Brandon McManus in March, and the two draft picks spent on Smack. That comes on the heels of McManus leaving seven huge points on the field (two missed field goals and a missed extra point) in the Packers’ 31-27 loss at Chicago in the wild-card round of the playoffs in January.
At the end of training camp this year, either McManus will get cut and his $1 million bonus will walk out the door with him, or Smack will get cut at the cost of not one, but two seventh-round picks.
Gutekunst said he wanted to “make sure we come out of this thing with a guy that can go out and win us games. Brandon’s been excellent in his time with us with the exception of that last game, we all recognize. But I feel it’s important we address that and have a guy that can go win us games.”
Smack was the first kicker off the board, so he was the Packers’ highest-rated kicker in this draft. He was Florida’s placekicker the last three years and for his career made 82.8 percent of his field goals (53-for-64), including going 10-for-13 (76.9 percent) from 50 yards-plus and a career-long of 56 yards.
Gutekunst traded his second seventh-rounder (No. 255) to move up 30 spots from No. 236 to select Smack.
“We obviously liked him quite a bit and think he has a good chance to be a good kicker in the National Football League,” Gutekunst said. “But the way the board was falling, where we were sitting in the seventh round I didn’t feel great about what we were going to have to select during those two picks and didn’t feel great he’d be there then, so we made the decision to do that.”
The move sets up what will be a scrutinized competition between Smack and McManus this offseason and in training camp. The Packers have a third kicker on the roster as well in Lucas Havrisik. For what it’s worth, Gutekunst left open the door to keeping all three through camp.
“Unless we have more injuries than I want to have, I think we’ll be fine to do that,” Gutekunst said, though whether he’d actually carry three that long is another matter.
McManus opened the door to the drafting of Smack by having a tough 2025 in which he struggled while trying to kick through a quad injury in midseason. When he finally got healthy he closed the regular season making 32 straight field goals and extra points combined. But then on a windy night at Soldier Field in the playoffs he missed two field goals and an extra point in the Packers’ four-point loss to the Bears, whereas Bears kicker Cairo Santos made three field goals and two extra points without a miss.
With the Packers looking to win now rather than looking to develop a kicker, there’s good reason to think the job will go to whoever kicks better in camp rather than just be handed to a rookie Gutekunst traded up for.
Smack will be on a cheap late-sixth-round contract, which won’t hurt his cause. McManus will cost more if he makes the team, but with the $1 million bonus paid, the remaining $2.7 million on his ‘26 contract is hardly prohibitive.
“In some ways we’ve always had a little bit of an advantage because we don’t have an owner, we’re not trying to prove something to an owner,” Gutekunst said. “We can let the best players win the job. That’s how we’ll approach it.”
The Packers’ other noteworthy pick on Day 3 was edge defender Dani Dennis-Sutton of Penn State. After the second day of the draft, Gutekunst said he’d tried to trade into the late third round but couldn’t find a palatable deal. He confirmed after the final rounds that the player he’d been aiming for was Dennis-Sutton.
Dennis-Sutton lasted until the Packers picked him in the fourth round at No. 120. He has the large frame (6-5⅝, 256) Gutekunst covets in edge defenders, as well as the athleticism (39½-inch vertical, 4.63 40). He wasn’t a sack machine but had 8½ in each of his final two seasons.
He along with third-round defensive tackle Chris McClellan (6-3¾, 313) add two players to the Packers’ front seven who have good size for their positions in new defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon’s 3-4 scheme. That is not a coincidence, because Gutekunst regularly espouses his thinking that football is a big man’s game, especially when you play in Wisconsin in the winter.
“I’m feeling pretty good about our size right now,” Gutekunst said.
Gutekunst spent two of his eight picks on trades up, so in drafting only six players he left several positions unaddressed. That included running back, where he doesn’t have an established No. 2 behind Josh Jacobs, and tight end, where he doesn’t have a true blocker.
The season is still 4½ months away, so there is time to add players to the roster via signings and trades. But Gutekunst and coach Matt LaFleur appear for now to be rolling the dice in a big way on third-year running back MarShawn Lloyd’s health.
Lloyd has essentially been injured his entire first two seasons with the team, mostly with an assortment of recurring soft-tissue issues. He’s played in only one game, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that was the only time he’s been healthy for a full week since he hit the field for training camp in 2024.
He’s flashed quickness and acceleration in the few instances when he’s practiced. And perhaps his injury issues are behind him now that he’s had time to implement a training program from his visit to a movement clinic late last season to get to the source of his problems.
But running back is a high-attrition position, and by letting Emanuel Wilson walk in free agency in the offseason the Packers have a big hole at backup. If Jacobs has to miss time because of an injury, the running game that’s crucial to LaFleur’s offense could take a huge hit.
Lloyd appears talented, but assuming he’ll stay healthy is a huge leap. The Packers seem to really like Chris Brooks as their No. 3, but he has more value on special teams, and he’s most certainly not a threat to defenses with the ball in his hands, either as a runner or receiver.
For now, the Packers will have to hope they hit on a viable running back in undrafted free agency as a hedge on Lloyd’s health.
“(Lloyd) looks like he’s in great shape,” LaFleur said. “We’re hopeful he can put his best stuff out there, certainly talent has never been an issue for him. We’ve got some other guys we feel good about as well. I think that’s going to be one we monitor throughout the course of the offseason.”
Gutekunst said he would have liked to draft a blocking tight end. The Packers also don’t have a backup swing tackle. Darrian Kinnard might be that in name, but the Packers’ best option if either of their starting tackles (Zach Tom and Jordan Morgan) gets hurt might be moving second-year pro Anthony Belton from right guard to tackle, and replacing him with the top guard off the bench.
Still, you can’t fill every hole in a draft, and the truth is, just because you draft a player at a position doesn’t mean the hole is filled.
But Gutekunst saw this as an unusual draft because he went in with only eight picks and came out with only six, which ties the franchise low for picks in a draft. He’d averaged 10 selections in his previous eight drafts as GM.
He had major needs at cornerback, defensive tackle and edge defender he was hoping to fill, and he made that happen. He spent two picks on a kicker to create a big competition at that crucial position. That didn’t leave much room for anything else.
“I think we go into this always taking the best player available and letting the needs subconsciously help build our board,” Gutekunst said. “I kinda feel that’s what happened.”
This article originally appeared on Packers News: Big move at kicker highlights Packers draft on Day 3 | Dougherty
Reporting by Pete Dougherty, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Packers News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
