The 2025 NFL season is now officially in the past, with the Seattle Seahawks being named champions. To get where the Seahawks are standing now, the Green Bay Packers, who are fifth in the pecking order
for Super Bowl LXI odds, will need to 1) finish healthier than they were to end the 2025 season and 2) make some improvements on their roster. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the team’s 2026 free agents, players the team will either need to re-sign or replace in the coming offseason.
As a refresher, unrestricted free agents (UFAs) are true free agents who are allowed to sign with any team beginning with the new league year. Restricted free agents (RFAs) have the option to be tendered, at a minimum cost of around $3.3 million. If they are not tendered by their original team, they become a UFA. Exclusive rights free agents (ERFAs) are always tendered, as they can be re-signed to league-minimum deals.
Packers pending free agents 2026
- LT Rasheed Walker – UFA (1,064 snaps)
- LB Quay Walker – UFA (958)
- C Sean Rhyan – UFA (884)
- WR Romeo Doubs – UFA (818)
- DE Kingsley Enagbare – UFA (618)
- RB Chris Brooks – RFA (433)
- TE John FitzPatrick – UFA (375)
- OL Darian Kinnard – RFA (361)
- RB Emanuel Wilson – RFA (351)
- CB Bo Melton – ERFA (281)
- DE Arron Mosby – RFA (238)
- S Zayne Anderson – UFA (228)
- TE Josh Whyle – RFA (227)
- LB Nick Niemann – UFA (114)
- DE Brenton Cox Jr. – RFA (103)
- CB Kamal Hadden – ERFA (103)
- QB Malik Willis – UFA (98)
- LB Kristian Welch – UFA (89)
- DT Jonathan Ford – UFA (30)
- OL Donovan Jennings – ERFA (13)
With the starting left tackle market rate recently ballooning to north of $20 million per year, for even below-average starters, it seems like Rasheed Walker will likely sign with another team this offseason and net the Packers a fourth-round compensatory draft pick in 2027, so long as they don’t offset his loss by signing an outside free agent. His replacement will likely be 2024 first-round pick Jordan Morgan, whom general manager Brian Gutekunst admitted did enough to win the starting job last summer. Morgan looked much better at right tackle this year than he did playing guard, which was the position the team forced him into for his first year and a half in the league.
Receiver Romeo Doubs is another player who it makes sense for the Packers to move on from, considering that 2025 first-round pick Matthew Golden is waiting in the wings. Doubs almost certainly will net what Khalil Shakir, who signed for $13.3 million per year, received last offseason. That number would earn Green Bay a fifth-round compensatory draft choice in 2027, if Doubs leaves and Green Bay doesn’t offset the loss in free agency.
Where things get tricky is at center (Sean Rhyan) and linebacker (Quay Walker), as the team doesn’t have strong internal options to tap into at those positions. Rhyan came into the year as Elgton Jenkins’ backup at the position, but Jenkins put up back-to-back poor seasons and ended the year on the injured reserve with a fractured fibula and ligament damage. Jenkins will almost certainly be released for $20 million in cap relief, which Green Bay will desperately need. On paper, the next man up at center is probably Jacob Monk, a 2024 fifth-round pick who only played six career offensive snaps before Week 18’s junior varsity game against the Minnesota Vikings.
Without Walker, the Packers will probably move Isaiah McDuffie, who is pretty limited athletically, into the starting Mike linebacker role. He’s received every opportunity to start there over both Edgerrin Cooper and Ty’Ron Hopper over the last two seasons, whenever Walker has been out of the lineup. Hopper looked like he turned the corner in 2025, after a shaky 2024 preseason, but then ended the season with a performance against the Vikings where he looked physically out-matched at the point of attack. Currently, he’s listed at 228 pounds by the Packers.
From there, the rest of Green Bay’s free agents are rotational players. The ERFAs will come back. It’s unlikely that the team will tag the RFAs, outside of maybe swing tackle Darian Kinnard. For the RFAs (who will become UFAs) and UFAs, what other teams are going to be willing to pay is going to be the primary factor in whether they will be coming back to the Packers in 2026 or not. Almost certainly, these players will all be allowed to test the open market.
