Matt LaFleur became the Green Bay Packers’ head coach in 2019, and since then, he’s put together quite the historical resume. LaFleur currently ranks 16th all-time in regular-season win percentage in pro football history (.654), which is a pretty nice place to be. Outside of the 2022 season, the franchise has never missed the postseason when he’s been the head coach, and no NFC team has more regular-season wins since 2019 than Green Bay’s 76; only the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills have more overall,
and Green Bay is tied with the Baltimore Ravens for third overall.
Of course, doing all that stuff in the regular season without a Super Bowl to show for it can get complicated after a while. Ask Sean McDermott and John Harbaugh, whose Bills and Ravens let them walk this offseason in part because the postseason records weren’t making anybody happy. Not that LaFleur should keep his head on a swivel per se, but a 3-6 postseason record says what it says, and Wild Card exits over the last two seasons tend to amplify that story.
Last season’s 31-27 loss to the Chicago Bears after holding a 21-3 halftime lead was particularly galling.
“We’ve got to look at it,” LaFleur said after that particular disaster. “We’ve got to talk. There’s a lot of pieces. All you’re trying to do in the moment is, when mistakes are made, you’re correcting them. There’s not long discussions on the sideline. It’s just, you correct the mistakes and you try to keep it moving. And I felt like just our team got a little bit disheveled in the second half.”
The organization signed LaFleur, general manager Brian Gutekunst, and Executive Vice President/Director of Football Operations Russ Ball to multi-year contract extensions in January, and team President Ed Policy expressed all the faith needed.
“While we are all disappointed with the way this season ended, we remain aligned in purpose and have spent considerable time over the past weeks collaborating on a path forward,” Policy said. “I am exceedingly confident we have the right people to achieve our goal. The entire Packers organization looks forward to supporting every effort to bring our community and fans another championship that they very much deserve.”
Well, if that’s going to happen in 2026 — if the Packers are to run through the brutally competitive NFC North and bring another title to Titletown — it will require everybody’s best. Not just coaches and executives, and not just the star players, but also the guys whose names you may not know if you’re not an ardent Packers fan.
To that end, I’ve identified three Hidden Gems for the new season. Generally, we go with one underrated veteran, one underrated free agent, and one underrated draft pick. We’re bending the rules a bit here, but when you look at this roster overall, it’s easy to get encouraged… to a point.
Now, it’s time for the ghosts to go away.
Underrated veteran: CB Keisean Nixon
Back in 2022, Keisean Nixon was an angry young man.
The 2019 undrafted free agent from South Carolina spent his first three NFL seasons with the Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders, and came to Green Bay in 2022 for his first season with the Packers. At that point, Nixon was more of an afterthought as both a cornerback and as a return man, but with his new team, things started to turn around.
Not that Nixon was having any of it at first.
“I did not wanna come here,” Nixon said last October when recalling his early time in Green Bay. “I hated it here when I first got here and I used to just be kind of miserable, just wasn’t comfortable, just trying to get to know guys, and stuff like that,” and
It was Green Bay’s starting quarterback at the time — some dude named Aaron Rodgers — who got under Nixon’s skin in a good way.
“Aaron used to always be like, ‘Why you so mad and angry?'” Nixon recalled.
“When Kei first came, he carried himself like a No. 1 corner,” Rodgers said last year. “I always loved his confidence, and just everything he was about. He was a little bit angry sometimes, so I’d just always try to find him, give him a big ol’ hug and tell him I loved him. He was one of my favorite guys over the years, for sure.
“I’m happy for Kei, the way he’s playing.”
Nixon had his breakthrough as a return man, making First-Team All-Pro as a kick returner in both 2022 and 2023. Then, the path opened for his acceleration in development as a cornerback. He jumped from 169 to 633 coverage snaps in 2023, and he’s had at least that many in every season since. In 2025, he made the Pro Bowl as a defender for the first time.
It’s a great story, and if Nixon can get a handle on the nuances of the position, he could make it even better. Right now, as is the case with a lot of less experienced cornerbacks, there’s a ton of boom-or-bust in his game. Last season, he allowed 55 catches on 88 targets for 623 yards, 117 yards after the catch, seven touchdowns, one interception, 17 pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 105.4. Nixon also had 11 penalties last season, so yeah… there is some work to be done. But if Nixon can turn some of those deflections into picks, and manage the St. Anger side of his play in a penalty sense, the sky is the limit.
If Aaron Rodgers can spot it, that’s a pretty good sign.
Underrated free agent traded player: LB Zaire Franklin
Sometimes, I like to cheat with these things. When I saw that the Packers had traded defensive lineman Colby Wooden to the Indianapolis Colts for veteran linebacker Zaire Franklin in March, that certainly caught my attention. So, he’s not a free agent, but Franklin could do a lot for his new defense, despite the fact that he’s rarely discussed when the league’s most versatile linebackers comes up.
The 6’0”, 235-pound Franklin, a seventh-round pick by the Colts in 2018, can do just about everything at a pretty high level. Last season for the Colts, he had three sacks, 19 pressures, 80 solo tackles, 39 stops, seven tackles for loss, and one forced fumble.
In coverage, Franklin allowed 58 catches on 75 targets for 610 yards, 337 yards after the catch, two touchdowns, no interceptions, three pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 109.3. He also had 21 missed tackles last season, one of the highest totals for any linebacker in the NFL, but there are mitigating factors here. As far as the coverage stuff, the extent to which the Colts asked Franklin to cover the whole field was a bit much sometimes.
Regarding the missed tackles… yeah, he can clean that up a bit. Franklin has had more than 20 missed tackles in each of the last four seasons, so it is a thing. But it’s also part of a breakneck style that has served Franklin well more often than not. And again, when you ask a linebacker to play with this much range, there are going to be physical blunders. Not everybody can be Bobby Wagner in his prime.
Another reason the Packers moved quickly to acquire Franklin once word got out that he was on the block for salary cap reasons is that the current linebacker group could use some veteran seasoning. Especially Edgerrin Cooper, whose ceiling is still undefined as he heads into his third NFL season.
“I just feel like every moment that I’ve had in my career has prepared me for this moment,” Franklin said in late July. “I truly feel like God placed me here. I feel like this is just a divine timing. I’m just blessed to be on a team and organization that’s ready; that’s got everything we need. The building’s got everything we need. The organization’s got everything we need.
“I’m just trying to come here and do my part.”
Underrated draft pick: DL Chris McClellan
Now when it comes to Missouri’s Chris McClellan, who the Packers selected with the 77th pick in the third round, there are no real qualifiers in my mind. The 6’4”, 323-pound McClellan had tape that stood out right away when I started watching it, and I never lost hold of that positive impression.
Put simply, this dude lives to disrupt. And he’s really freakin’ good at it.
Last season for the Tigers, McClellan had five sacks, 21 pressures, 28 solo tackles, 27 stops, and three tackles for loss. Four of his sacks and 11 of his pressures came as a nose tackle, so this isn’t just a big guy soaking up double teams. Since three of his sacks and 10 of his pressures came against double teams, per Pro Football Focus, it could be said that putting two guys on McClellan was just as destined for failure as just the one guy. With his upper-body strength, movement skills, and elevated technique, he’s one to watch as he continues to refine his game.
It also helps that McClellan has a new mentor in Javon Hargrave, the veteran D-lineman who signed a two-year, $23 million contract with the Packers this offseason. The rookie, and defensive line coach Vince Oghobaase, have been studying Hargrave’s reps for a while now.
“Coach Oghobaase and I watched his Pittsburgh, his San Fran and his Eagles tape almost every day to get that nose position down,” McClellan recently said. “He’s been a really good player for a long time, so we watched his tape all the time, [and] I got familiar with his game.
“Just seeing him walk around the building, it’s like, ‘Man, you realize who you are? It’s definitely cool. It’s just a big-bro type of feel. Anytime I can think of something, I’m like [to Hargrave], ‘Hey, what do you think about this, or how should I do this? How should I approach this?’ He’s always coming around and trying to help me as much as he can and give me the best answer possible.”
McClellan’s skills and Hargrave’s veteran savvy? It looks like an estimable combination.
