Cheesehead TV landed Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst for a one-on-one interview this week, and one of the big things he addressed in the conversation was the selection of kicker Trey Smack in the sixth round of the 2026 draft. As a reminder, the Packers send two seventh-round picks to add Smack to the team and then released veteran Brandon McManus, who they already paid a $1 million roster bonus for in 2026, and later Lucas Havrisik, who set the franchise record for the made longest
field goal as an injury replacement for McManus in 2025.
Gutekunst claimed that he believed a player of Smack’s talent usually would have been drafted in the bottom of the fourth round or the beginning of the fifth round. For a point of reference, only 7 of the 21 kickers drafted sicne 2017 have been drafted by the mid-way point of the fifth round or higher, so it seems like the Packers didn’t just think of Smack as a draftable kicker, but in the top-third of draftable kickers in the last decade.
Due to Green Bay’s limited amount of draft selections, Gutekunst claimed that he “didn’t foresee picking a kicker” doing into April’s draft. In his own words: “The way the board was, he was sticking out to us. It was like, ‘Okay, let’s take a shot here,’ because we believed in the player and the guy.”
New Packers special teams coordinator Cam Achord co-signed the selection, per the general manager. “He fell a little bit further than we expected,” added Gutekunst. “At the time, we had two guys that we felt good about taking and we were many picks away. I don’t feel like either guy would be there by the time we got there,” was his explaination on why Green Bay moved up.
Worth mentioning here: The Chicago Bears took defensive lineman Jordan van den Berg, who the Packers had on a pre-draft visit, just three picks ahead of Smack’s selection. Shortly after Smack was picked, the Dallas Cowboys drafted receiver Anthony Smith (two slots later), and both offensive lineman Ethan Onianwa (Atlanta Falcons) and quarterback Behren Morton (New England Patriots) were also picked before what would have been Green Bay’s first seventh-round pick. Smith, Onianwa and Morton were all Packers pre-draft visitors, a group of players who are generally much more likely to be selected by Green Bay on draft day.
You can watch the fill video below:
