The Green Bay Packers are playing some inexperienced players at the returner spots, but don’t expect that to change anytime soon. In his Tuesday press conference, Packers head coach Matt LaFleur stated that his young returners, kick returner Savion Williams and punt returner Matthew Golden, “give us the best chance to be successful.”
I don’t think LaFleur is telling the truth here, but we’ll get into that later. When pressed on if LaFleur’s team is simply giving these opportunities to young players
who are taking their lumps, he walked back his previous statement, saying, “I think so. You got to get experience one way or the other. They do a great job in practice. I get it, game’s a little bit different than practice, especially when you’re catching kicks because in practice nobody’s going to blow you up.”
Williams, who was injured during the entire preseason — the only time the Packers had live reps for special teams this summer — hasn’t returned kicks since his true freshman season at TCU back in 2020. Green Bay used Israel Abanikanda and Corey Ballentine, two players who aren’t even on their practice squad in 2025, as their kick returners in the preseason.
So far, Williams’ reps have been rough. Take a look at them yourself:
On 10 attempts, Williams has only broken the 30-yard line, around the NFL average for the play, just once, without the play being flagged. He was tackled by a kicker on the opening kickoff of the season, a play that might have had a chance to be a touchdown if not for a penalty. He also returned the ball from an end zone, which would have given the Packers a 35-yard touchback, and failed to cross the 30-yard line.
Against the Dallas Cowboys, though, Williams’ youth at the position was really exposed. Kicker Brandon Aubrey kicked three balls just short of the end zone, each of which Williams kneeled for a 20-yard touchback, which LaFleur described as equivalent to losses of at least 10 yards in the team’s mind. “We got to field those. We have got to make every attempt to at least catch those in the air,” stated the head coach.
Nowhere to be seen is All-Pro kick returner Keisean Nixon, who earlier this summer stated that he was willing to return kicks for the 2025 team. He frequently worked in at the position for Green Bay in camp, unlike the injured Williams, but the Packers seem hellbent on giving Williams a role on special teams that will justify him being active on the 48-man gameday roster beyond just being a gadget player for LaFleur’s offense.
Now let’s talk about punt returner. Golden hasn’t returned punts since at least high school, as he didn’t record a single rep there during his days at Houston or Texas in college.
Instead of getting Golden reps in the preseason, the Packers only used receivers Mecole Hardman and Will Sheppard as punt returners during live action this summer. Sheppard is a member of Green Bay’s practice squad, while Hardman is currently on the street. As a reminder, Golden was the team’s Week 1 starting punt returner over Jayden Reed, the incumbent at the position who was injured during Week 2’s action and is now on the injured reserve.
On 13 punt return attempts where Golden could have caught the ball in the air this year, only 5 were caught before a bounce (if ever). At the end of games, when the team just needs to catch a ball cleanly, the Packers have used Nixon and receiver Romeo Doubs as returners in place of Golden.
I’m starting to think that the “they give us the best chance at being successful” line about Williams and Golden is a load of crap. So much for ramping up urgency in Green Bay. This team has struggled with the balance between giving even an ounce of a damn about special teams and using special teams as an extension of their draft and development playground for years.
It’s one reason why the team has been so bad on special teams since the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, which came into effect the offseason after the Packers’ last Super Bowl win. Since then, the CBA has limited how much practice time NFL players get during the year, both during the season and during the summer. Still, Green Bay refuses to adjust.
There just isn’t enough reps to go around anymore, during the season or in the summer, to hold players, like Nixon, off special teams and expect to have any decent results in the kicking game. When the Seattle Seahawks were chasing titles, they had no problem with playing All-Pro cornerback Richard Sherman as a punt jammer. Last year, the Philadelphia Eagles won a Super Bowl with All-Rookie defender Cooper DeJean returning punts.
But in Green Bay, special teams is used for development reps for young players, no matter how much special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia is paid. If you don’t want to hear it from me, maybe you’ll listen to former Packers head coach Mike McCarthy, who won a Super Bowl in Green Bay, who spoke on the subject with The Pat McAfee Show leading up to the Packers-Cowboys matchup.
“Historically, for me personally, the teams that I’ve coached, being in charge of a draft and develop program, [I] always had a little more anxiety toward special teams, particularly early in the year. Because being a young team, obviously, your special teams are even younger.”
So Green Bay isn’t going to change returners, and as long as the Packers are going to use special teams to give their offensive and defensive contributors superfluous rest, beyond the norm in the NFL, I don’t think their fortunes on special teams will change either. I shouldn’t be surprised at this point, considering the team’s 13th offensive lineman in the pecking order was the player who gave up a blocked PAT and turned a loss into a tie against Dallas, while Elgton Jenkins watched from the bench.
If the last two weeks haven’t changed the Packers’ personnel strategy on special teams, the team just may never learn the lesson.
