It took a few days after his social media post, but Rashan Gary finally has a new home. The Green Bay Packers have found a trade partner for Gary, sending him to the Dallas Cowboys on Monday morning.
According to Dianna Russini, the Packers will get a late-round draft pick in 2027 in return. Gary will reunite with former teammate Kenny Clark, who was traded to the Cowboys in August as part of the package that brought Micah Parsons to Green Bay, provided that Clark does not get released as a salary
cap casualty this week.
Gary, one of the Packers’ two 2019 first round picks (along with Darnell Savage), was set to count against the Packers cap to the tune of more than $28 million in 2026. By trading him now, the Packers take on a dead cap charge of a little more than $17 million for 2026 but save nearly $11 million on their 2026 cap sheet.
Once one of the most exciting young players on the Packers roster, Gary’s decline over the past few years has been precipitous. After recording a career-high 9.5 sacks in 2021, Gary was on pace for an even better year in 2022, but tore his ACL in Week 9. He returned to action in Week 1 of the 2023 season and was off to a great start, but tailed off down the stretch. However, his return to form was promising enough that the Packers rewarded him with a four-year, $107 million extension in October of that season.
Since then, Gary has been in steady decline. He made the Pro Bowl with a seven-sack season in 2024, but his more advanced numbers have painted a grimmer picture. Never an especially quick pass rusher, Gary’s “quick pressures” have been in significant decline for years, especially after his 2022 ACL injury.
He started 2026 strong, but his 7.5 sacks through eight games were something of a mirage; most were slow-burn cleanup sacks that resulted from pressures created by other pass rushers, usually Micah Parsons. Down the stretch, Gary all but disappeared, although Brian Gutekunst had a much different — and arguably erroneous — assessment of his performance.
The most damning indictment of Rashan Gary might be this: the Packers consistently played him for fewer and fewer snaps throughout the second half of the 2025 season. By percentage, his seven worst games of the season in terms of playing time all came after Week 10. That includes the playoffs, where he played just 56.4% of the defensive snaps.
With the season on the line, Rashan Gary, presumably the Packers’ best pass rusher after Micah Parsons went down, played fewer snaps than Kingsley Enagbare and Lukas Van Ness. You don’t have to point to the box score to call him a non-factor. The Packers already did it for you.
Gary’s exit now puts the Packers in the market for an edge rusher. With Parsons on the mend and Enagbare about to hit free agency, the edge rusher depth chart is looking a bit weak at the moment. Perhaps the Packers will use their newly created cap space to find another one. If they do, the bar for out-producing the now-departed Gary is pretty low.
