Packers guard Aaron Banks was a limited participant in practice on Thursday, the second time this week he’s practiced on a limited basis.
“Limited participant” is a pretty good description of Banks’ season to this point. He was out of much of training camp with a knee injury, which also cost him an appearance in the Packers’ Week 1 loss to the Vikings. Then, a toe injury knocked him out of the Packers’ Week 2 game against the Jets after just 22 snaps and he hasn’t been seen since.
Now, with Banks on
the way back, the natural question is if and when he gets his left guard job back.
Asked about that possibility this week, head coach Matt LaFleur was diplomatic.
“[The offensive line situation] is going to be pretty fluid,” he said. “We have to see where [Banks] is at. He hasn’t practiced in a long time, and those other guys have come in and done a really good job.”
But I’m free to say what LaFleur wouldn’t. There’s no reason to put Banks back in the lineup, and the Packers should functionally move on from their 2025 free agent signing.
For starters, replacement left guard Laken Tomlinson has been perfectly adequate. Nabbed from the Cowboys’ practice squad after extended auditions for Donovan Jennings and Jager Burton yielded little, he’s played every snap of the last two games. Nobody on the Packers’ line has been much help in the ground game, but Tomlinson has more than held up his end of the bargain as a pass rusher, allowing just two pressures over the Packers’ last two games.
Tomlinson’s performance is, I think, a big reason we’ve seen Sean Rhyan improve over the past couple of weeks, too. With Donovan Jennings, Jager Burton, and Jacob Monk at the guard spots next to him during the Packers’ first three games, Rhyan looked constantly frazzled, careening from disaster to disaster as the pass protection crumbled around him. He could barely shift his attention to helping one beleaguered backup before the other would find himself in a terrible mess. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Rhyan’s best two graded games of the year, per Pro Football Focus, have come with Tomlinson to his left and the surprisingly solid Travis Glover to his right.
Furthermore, inserting Banks back into the lineup would just be repeating the same mistake that got the Packers into this mess. Banks’ limited reliability is a big reason the Packers found themselves in a pit of offensive line despair early this year. That shouldn’t have been a surprise. Banks was consistently injured for the 49ers and was consistently injured in 2025. That he would be battling the injury bug again this year is only a shock if you haven’t been paying attention.
The Packers should resign themselves to Banks playing out the role of an expensive backup. That’s certainly not ideal, but it seems like the best way forward. They’ve found stability on the offensive line and there’s no reason to tinker with it. Laken Tomlinson has put in admirable work at left guard, as has Travis Glover at right guard, and he’s about to yield his role to Kevin Zeitler. A Morgan-Tomlinson-Rhyan-Zeitler-Belton offensive line is more than good enough to get the job done going forward.
There’s no doubt that the finances would sting. Banks counts more than $12 million against the Packers cap this year. The Packers’ projected starting lineup without him only counts about $14.7 million against the cap. Those are some bad optics, financially! It’s never good to have a big chunk of salary cap riding the pine. But optics don’t win games, and it’s hard to make a compelling case that Banks will help the Packers do that at this point.
The Packers should move forward with a non-Banks offensive line. Unless and until they need him in the lineup, they’ll be more than fine doing what they can with what they have.
