The Green Bay Packers haven’t had the splashiest offseason, but it’s been effective. The loss of Malik Willis, Romeo Doubs, and Quay Walker has been offset by a treasure chest of compensatory draft picks for the 2027 draft, and the Packers also invested their trust in a young core that appeared Super Bowl-bound before injuries got in the way.
The most notable free agent victories, however, occurred on special teams. The makeover got off to a good start when Rich Bisaccia resigned in February, and the Packers continued to stack wins together, bringing back key special teamers Kristian Welch and Nick Niemann on one-year deals and striking another one-year pact with kick returner Skyy Moore.
While these moves should improve a special teams unit that ranked 20th in the special teams ranking compiled by SI’s Bill Huber, Brandon McManus remains the elephant in the room. After struggling last season, the Packers had a chance to move on and potentially upgrade at the position. But instead, they have cast a black cloud over a successful offseason.
Packers Miss Free Agent Opportunities After Sticking with Brandon McManus
McManus’s first year in Green Bay, where he made 20-of-21 (95.2 percent) field goals and all 30 extra points, earned him a three-year, $15.3 million contract in free agency last offseason. But it only took one year to make that look like a mistake. While a quad injury was partially to blame, McManus only made 24-of-30 (80.0 percent) field goals and made 32-of-33 (97.0 percent) extra points during the regular season and shanked two more field goals and an extra point in a Wild Card loss to the Chicago Bears.
The Packers set up McManus’s contract so they could get out of it after one year, eating $4.3 million in dead money and saving roughly $945,000 in cap space if they cut him before June 1, according to Over The Cap. But the Packers let McManus earn a $1 million roster bonus on the third day of the new league year, likely clinging to the adage of “Who else are you going to get?”
Sure enough, some options popped up in free agency. Nick Folk has been the NFL’s most accurate kicker over the past three years with a 96.3 percent conversion rate on field goals, and announced that he was intending to kick next year just before McManus was set to collect his roster bonus. While he’ll turn 42 next November, he wound up signing a two-year, $9 million contract with the Atlanta Falcons, perhaps indicating he isn’t planning on retiring soon.
If the Packers wanted a younger option, they could have found one in Daniel Carlson. Packers fans may be skittish considering Carlson performed just as well as McManus did last season, making 22-of-27 (81.5 percent) field goals and 21-of-22 (95.5 percent) extra points. They may also remember Carlson’s meltdown at Lambeau Field in 2018 when he missed three field goals, leading to his release from the Minnesota Vikings after two games.
But outside of a 2019 season where he made just 73.1 percent of his kicks, Carlson has been reliable, converting the NFL’s second-highest field goal conversion rate at 90.3 percent (min. 100 attempts) from 2020 to 2024, per Stathead.
The Packers may have looked at both options and saw it as an $8 million move, combining McManus’s dead money with a prospective free agent. But even if the plan is to add a younger kicker as competition during or after the upcoming draft, it’s a reach to think McManus or any future competitor would be as safe an option as Folk or Carlson.
It feels like a halfway approach to clean up a special teams unit that had serious work to do this offseason. While they’ve made some moves to address it, McManus’s continued stay on the roster remains a concern until the Packers finally kick him out of Green Bay.