Under Matt LaFleur, the Packers have never been afraid to move offensive linemen around.
As we head into his eighth season as head coach, constant shifting up front has become commonplace. Guards become tackles, tackles become guards, anybody can play center at any time, and players flip flop from one side to another and back again at the drop of a hat.
It’s worked in the past. During the early years, in particular, the Packers got the most out of their offensive line talent with flexibility, and LaFleur’s
“best five” mantra rang true. Getting the best five on the field was more important than having a well-defined depth chart of guards, tackles and centers. Positions mattered less than performance.
The “move anybody, anywhere, anytime” approach has also failed in the past, too. The 2021 Divisional Round loss to the 49ers is the peak example. The Packers started Billy Turner at left tackle in that game despite Turner having not played that spot in more than a year, opting to try him at left tackle and itinerant Ricky Wagner at right tackle rather than rolling with Yosh Nijman, who had capably held down the left side most of that season.
It’s also backfired with the Packers’ recent handling of Jordan Morgan. Despite being a dyed-in-the-wool left tackle, the Packers installed Morgan at guard as a rookie and never really let him out of that box until this season, even as Rasheed Walker struggled in 2025. The Packers seem to have rightly identified that Morgan was more versatile than Walker, but I think it was a mistake to get better depth at guard rather than getting stronger at tackle.
Furthermore, the constant movement seems to have stunted Morgan’s development in his first two seasons. LaFleur himself all but admitted this last year, conceding they spread Morgan too thin last year, especially when asking him to play multiple different spots in a single game.
And now that we’re 300-something words into this piece, I have to say I can’t help but wonder if the same thing is playing out with Anthony Belton.
Belton is the latest practitioner — or perhaps victim — of the Packers’ versatility-as-ultimate-goal approach to the offensive line. The Packers haven’t been shy about moving Belton around from tackle to guard and back again over the course of his NFL career to date, and I think there’s reason to believe it’s hurting Belton more than it’s helping the team.
The thinking seems clear: they want Belton to at the very least be their swing tackle in 2026. That would be fine if that’s all they were doing, but they also seem to want him to be their starting right guard.
Or rather, they did, right up until the constant moving around seems to have rattled him badly enough to make playing both guard and tackle an adventure. Now, having Belton at guard or tackle seems like a liability, and his development seems to have been slowed by not really having a job or a home — which is more or less exactly what happened with Jordan Morgan.
To be clear, it’s certainly possible that Belton is just not very good. The Packers are good at drafting offensive lineman, but that doesn’t mean every lineman they pick is an All-Pro in the making. The Packers have missed on offensive linemen before. It happens!
Even accounting for that, it’s hard to give up on Belton at this point. It’s still early, and he’s still a marvel of size and power. Even if there are bumps in the road now, he’s still an enormous and intriguing ball of clay.
But that intriguing ball is never going to shape itself into anything if the Packers can’t find a job for Belton and let him stick with it. They already spent two years making that mistake with Jordan Morgan, but appear to have finally pulled out of the skid. Let’s hope it doesn’t take that long to figure something out with Belton.
