A week ago,t he Packers were in the playoffs. Today, their attention is on the 2026 season.
Who’s going to be a part of that 2026 team? Not everyone from 2025 can or will come back, and a few of the Packers’ biggest names are in the danger zone due to their high cap numbers for next season. Over the next week or so, I’m going to take a look at a few of the potential cap casualties in Green Bay, starting with edge rusher Rashan Gary.
The Packers selected Rashan Gary with the 12th overall pick in the 2019
NFL Draft, stashing him behind newly acquired free agents Za’Darius Smith and Preston Smith as the world’s most highly drafted developmental prospect.
The Packers’ patience eventually paid off, as Gary blossomed into a productive and reliable pass rusher. By 2022, he was the team’s unquestioned top edge, and looked poised for a long and productive career. But he tore his ACL midway through the 2022 season, and although he came back strong at the start of 2023, on balance he has never really been the same post-injury. Nevertheless, he signed a lucrative extension in 2023, and his cap hit for 2026 stands at just over $28 million.
Will he be back with the Packers in 2026? Here’s the case for and against Rashan Gary.
The case for Rashan Gary
The best argument for Gary comes down to counting stats, both traditional and semi-advanced. A look at the raw numbers suggests a player that was doing the work in 2025.
Gary logged 7.5 sacks, tied for the third-highest mark of his career and equal to the total that got him to the Pro Bowl in 2024. His 20 quarterback hits were also the third-highest mark of his career.
Gary was also solid in the run game. Previously, that had been a weakness in his game, but he’s fashioned it into something resembling a strength over the past few seasons. According to Pro Football Focus, Gary recorded 17 “stops” in run defense in 2025 (a stop being the defensive counterpart to offensive success rate, explained here; when a player prevents the offense from running an analytically “successful” play, he gets credit for a stop), third best among defensive lineman or edge rushers on the Packers behind Colby Wooden (23 stops) and Kingsley Enagbare (18).
Essentially, from a raw numbers perspective, Gary is doing the work. Maybe it’s not quite at the level of production you’d like from a player getting paid like he is, but his numbers are at least respectable.
The case against Rashan Gary
Or are they? At a surface level, Gary’s production looks good, though certainly not great. But digging beyond just the very most basic level, you’ll see the statistical profile of a player in decline.
For starters, although Gary recorded 7.5 sacks in 2025, he finished the season on a two-month sackless streak. He sacked Aaron Rodgers twice just before Halloween, but it was goose eggs from that point on.
It gets worse from there. Gary recorded just 8 “quick” pressures in 2025 on 387 pass rushes, according to NFL Pro data. A quick pressure, explored by our Justis Mosqueda here in some depth, is one that happens in three seconds or less. Gary managed to get to the quarterback in under three seconds just eight times in 2025.
He’s been trending toward this kind of statistical profile for some time. The same data from NFL Pro indicates his time to sack and time to pressure rates have been in decline for years now; Gary is, in short, only getting slower.
This is reflected in his overall grades from Pro Football Focus. The graders at PFF awarded Gary an elite 89.8 overall grade in 2021, but his overall grade has declined every year since, bottoming out at a 68.9 in 2025, easily the lowest number since Gary became a full-time player.
For that profile, Gary will count more than $28 million against the Packers’ cap next season. If contracts are about future performance, how confident are you that Gary’s performance will match that figure in 2026?
Based on the effort we saw in 2025, I don’t think you should be confident at all. You could fill a pretty lengthy lowlight reel with video of plays that Gary failed to finish last season. Far be it from me, a habitual couch dweller, to do the talk radio “he’s just not trying hard enough!” take; that’s not my intention here. But there is example after example after example of Gary jogging out the end of a play as his teammates put the pedal to the metal trying to chase down the opposing ballcarrier.
Bottom line: Rashan Gary looks like a no-brainer cut
The juice is just not worth the squeeze at this point. Between his statistical decline, his inflated cap number, and his lackluster effort relative to his teammates, Gary should not be back in 2026. The Packers should move on, putting the cap space they clear toward getting their books in order for the coming season. Gary’s time has passed.
