For all of the hand-wringing about the Green Bay Packers’ 2026 offseason, one thing is clear: the team was content to move on from several players who were key members of the roster in 2025. The departures of Romeo Doubs, Quay Walker, and Rasheed Walker in free agency, Elgton Jenkins and Nate Hobbs via cut, and Rashan Gary through a release together signify the team’s confidence in its internal replacements and development to replace those players’ contributions.
Although most of those players were
major parts of the roster (when healthy), there are indications that at least some of them were not getting along with the coaching staff at all times, and that their individual and the team’s performance suffered as a result. That is even more clear after head coach Matt LaFleur spoke at the NFL Annual Meeting on Monday.
LaFleur, without naming names, called out a handful of players on the team’s 2025 roster for a lack of buy-in. Specifically, he noted that some players were unhappy with how they were utilized last season:
If I’m being honest about it, there were some guys who were upset about roles last year and I think that took a toll on our football team. So you need guys that bring great energy every day. I think from a coaching standpoint, role clarity is key so we’ve got to obviously do a better job communicating with your players: “Hey, here’s your role, and if you’re unhappy about your role, it’s on you to do something about that to carve out a bigger role on this football team.”
Nearly every veteran player that has departed Green Bay this offseason could be described as “disgruntled” at some point or another in his career, and especially within the last season or two. If any hard feelings remained for any of them, it’s no wonder why the Packers would have been willing to part ways with them.
For example, linebacker Quay Walker took a subtle but clear dig at the Packers in his introductory press conference with the Las Vegas Raiders a few weeks ago. Walker talked about his new linebackers coach, Rob Leonard, saying “I know Rob is going to use us (Walker and Nakobe Dean) in the right way and set us up for success … I’m not going to go into everything, but I know he’s going to use me the right way.”
Elgton Jenkins, meanwhile, skipped voluntary spring practices during the 2025 offseason. Jenkins reportedly wanted an adjustment to his contract after being told he was moving from guard to center; perhaps his concerns were warranted, as he ended up being released after his less-than-impressive start to the season gave way to a season-ending injury after nine games, but there were early signs that the position switch was anything but welcome in his eyes.
Then there’s Nate Hobbs, one of the Packers’ two big free agent signings from last year’s cycle. Hobbs, who had primarily been a slot cornerback for the Raiders before coming to Green Bay, was evidently cast as a potential boundary corner in Green Bay. Once that failed to pan out, playing time back inside was difficult to come by thanks to the emergence of Javon Bullard as a slot defender.
Although Doubs led the Packers in wide receiver snaps last season with 780 (no other wideout cracked 500), he was rarely if ever the team’s #1 option in the passing game. That came on the heels of the 2024 season, when the team suspended him for a game for missing practices and meetings amid his dissatisfaction with the number of opportunities he was receiving in the passing game.
And then there’s Gary. While there has never been any public reporting of dissatisfaction between Gary and the Packers, the team was clearly planning to move on from him one way or another this offseason and then there’s the matter of the supposed “hacking” of his social media when a professional-looking goodbye post appeared there a few days prior to the completion of the trade that sent him to Dallas.
Furthermore, Gary’s reps have been limited ever since his arrival in Green Bay, as he barely played 60 percent of the potential defensive snaps throughout his career. In fact, Gary only ever played 50 or more snaps in a single game four times in his career; all of those instances came in the 2021 season, and he never was on the field for more than 51. In contrast, Micah Parsons played at least 50 defensive snaps in 9 of his 14 games with the Packers, and did so in all but one game that took place after September.
Put this another way: Gary only ever played 80 percent of the team’s defensive snaps in a single game three times in his career, all in 2021 or 2022. Parsons was on the field for at least 80% of the Packers’ defensive snaps eight times in 2025. Surely, the Packers would have loved for Gary to be able to stay on the field much more than he did throughout his Packers career, but for whatever reason, he never did. It’s easy to imagine that causing a rift between the player and the coaching staff, even if neither side ever acknowledged any such rift publicly.
Perhaps the only player among the departed former Packers who never seemed to have a potential issue with his role was Rasheed Walker, the former 7th-round pick and three-year starter at left tackle. Still, it’s notable that the Packers were evidently uninterested in bringing him back even when his free agent market all but vanished, leaving him with a 1-year deal for a base value of $4 million plus incentives.
Were all of these potential rifts unsalvageable? Surely not. Doubs seemed to get his head back on straight after his suspension, for example. And did every departing player in free agency seem to have some sort of disagreement with the coaching staff? Also no — Kingsley Enagbare, for example, always appeared to embrace his role as a rotational player and spot starter.
Furthermore, LaFleur has never, to this writer’s recollection, publicly called out a player in the media, preferring to keep any issues in-house. That means the odds are good that fans will never know for sure who he was discussing on Monday. But looking back at the histories of the players who left town this offseason certainly illustrates that the team was all too happy to break ties with some disgruntled individuals in an effort to solidify the locker room and improve the working relationship between the coaching staff and the players.
