Very little of Keisean Nixon’s time in Green Bay has gone according to plan.
When Nixon was signed in 2022, he wasn’t supposed to be the Packers’ top cornerback. He wasn’t supposed to be a regular contributor as a slot defender. He wasn’t even supposed to be a kick returner.
He was supposed to be a special teams coverage maven and defensive back depth. That was about it, and if not for his connection to Rich Bisaccia, who had spent time with Nixon on the Raiders’ coaching staff the previous three seasons,
it’s a good bet that he wouldn’t have ended up in Green Bay at all. But Bisaccia wanted familiar faces as he took over as the Packers’ special teams coordinator, so Nixon landed in Green Bay.
Not that he made a particularly big impact on landing. According to reporting from the Packers’ in-house media guys, Nixon was no better than fourth on the cornerback depth chart at the end of the offseason program, and with Amari Rodgers still on the roster, opportunities in the return game were going to be hard to come by.
But how quickly things change. By the end of his first season with the Packers, Nixon was not only a regular contributor on defense (he played a career high 289 snaps on defense that year), but was also an All-Pro kickoff returner. The latter is especially startling considering that prior to arriving in Green Bay, Nixon had recorded a grand total of nine kickoff returns in his career — including the three he’d returned in college.
Nixon’s role only grew from there. He played 809 snaps on defense in 2023 (and earned a second All-Pro bid as a returner), then 1,020 in 2024, before finally ascending to the Packers’ top cornerback job this season.
This was not the plan. Nixon was never supposed to be this important to the Packers. But here we are, watching a Packers team with Super Bowl aspirations. And there Nixon is, firing off every bit of ammunition he’s got every week.
Is Nixon a great cornerback? No, but his limitless self belief frequently makes him a good one. It’s true that Nixon’s bottomless confidence can get him into trouble. He can bite off more than he (or virtually anyone, for that matter) can chew, and his willingness to throw down over the tiniest of perceived slights can have a big impact, too. His personal foul on Luther Burden is a perfect case in point, though it’s hard to fault Nixon too much for standing up for himself after Burden’s instigation.
The Bears game really was the full Nixon experience. There was Nixon, getting flagged for a personal foul on a drive that led to Chicago points. There was Nixon, the point man on a Chicago touchdown after giving up a completion in which he went all out and failed to make a pick on an incredibly well-thrown ball that Nixon nonetheless had a shot at catching. And there was Nixon at the end of it all, breaking off his own coverage to shore up a failure elsewhere in the secondary, collecting the game-sealing interception in the process.
“I do this [stuff] for me,” Nixon said postgame, fully in character. “I am who I say I am and I always tell myself that. And I come on the field and play like that, but that’s just a play, I’ve gotta keep making them.”
I wouldn’t have him any other way. Irrational, misguided, baseless, wonderful confidence is part and parcel of the life of a defensive back, and Nixon’s confidence is never in short supply. Nobody may have expected Nixon to make the game-ending interception other than Nixon himself. But that’s been the story of his entire run in Green Bay. When things aren’t going to plan, there’s Keisean Nixon, ready to make a play.
