For more than a decade, the Green Bay Packers offensive line was one the strongest pillars of what drove their success. Now, it is completely broken.
As late as 2024, the Packers were PFF's third highest graded pass-blocking unit. After three games in 2026 they are 32nd by a distance with an embarrassing 41.7 grade. Since 2006, no team has ever graded lower than 43.4 across an entire season.
So how did it all fall apart?
The truth is it is not just one thing, but a series of unfortunate events and mistakes, with plenty of blame to be shared, much of it difficult to correctly assign.
For the sake of this discussion, let’s focus on pass blocking, as that has always been Green Bay’s bread and butter more so than run blocking.
In 2024, Green Bay had
three players with a PFF pass block grade of 80 or higher: Elgton Jenkins, Zach Bako-Bewele and Rasheed Walker. Sean Rhyan and Josh Myers had grades of 65.6 and 63.9 respectively, and first-round rookie Jordan Morgan wasn’t even required to start.
There were personnel differences in 2025, as Myers, their worst starter from the year before, left in free agency, with the Packers deciding to move Jenkins to center and signing Aaron Banks to a four-year, $77 million contract to play guard. They also drafted Anthony Belton in the second round.
It was not a huge amount of change, yet their collective ranking fell all the way to 22nd. Walker fell off a cliff, Jenkins’ transition to center did not go as well as the Packers hoped, Banks was arguably no better than Myers, and most notably, injuries played a big factor.
Jenkins went down midseason, while Banks and Bako-Bewele were banged up all year. Mostly due to these injury issues, it was reasonable to think 2025 was a blip.
Instead, the O-line has been far worse in the early stages of this season, and it is hard to divorce the many contributing factors from one another. Let’s explore the possible explanations.
Offensive line coach Luke Butkus has drawn a lot of criticism, with plenty of fans wanting him fired at the end of last year. By extension, head coach Matt LaFleur and offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich have been under fire as well.
Green Bay’s failures in the basics of executing their assignment or blocking who they are supposed to certainly do not reflect well on coaching.
It cannot be that simple though, and the idea that the Packers offensive line instantly declined once he was promoted from his assistant role is not backed up by the facts. In his first three years as the O-line coach from 2022 to 2024, they ranked third, 10th and third in PFF's pass block grades.
Stenavich was the previous coach and did an excellent job before moving up to offensive coordinator, is still on the staff and likely has a big role with the O-line to this day. It is hard to believe Stenavich and Butkus both simply forgot how to coach.
Attention then turns to general manager Brian Gutekunst, who has certainly had some missteps. Whatever the problem may be, it is not a case of him failing to invest enough in the offensive line.
Entering training camp, the presumed starters were a first-round pick in Morgan, a $77 million free agent signing in Banks, a third rounder on a second contract in Rhyan, a second-round pick in Belton and a highly-paid second-contract player in Bako-Bewele.
He has been criticised for not being more aggressive in trying to improve the O-line this offseason, but from his perspective, it is understandable that he would look at the coaching staff and say: “I’ve spent the resources. Over to you."
Is the problem that he simply made bets on the wrong players? There is certainly more validity to that argument.
In signing Banks, he made the common but problematic free agency mistake of handing an elite contract to a non-elite player.
Belton was a curious pick in the second round when it was made, and perhaps one of Gutekunst’s bigger errors was assuming Belton, Jacob Monk and Jager Burton was enough competition for what was supposed to be just one available guard spot entering camp.
Admittedly, he probably did not imagine all three having to start by Week 3, with Belton back at tackle where it seemed his future did not lie a few months ago, but none of the three look close to good enough.
Going back to 2025, Gutekunst has to take some of the blame for the failed Jenkins experiment at center. At the time though, few people on the outside were criticizing the decision to move him back to his college position, and he is now playing center again for the Browns.
There is similar revisionism happening with Rasheed Walker as he looks solid for the Panthers, yet no one disagreed with the decision to let him go at the end of last season, especially coming off a poor campaign, and Morgan seems to be finding his feet week by week.
Is it fair to have expected Morgan to be better than Walker out of the gate in his first season starting at left tackle? Surely his two-year ramp up period was designed to cut out some of these teething problems, but then again, he did not play left tackle during that time.
That last part speaks to another criticism during the O-line struggles. Has the Packers’ cross-training of their players and penchant for moving them around gone too far? Potentially, but again, that strategy worked just fine before 2025.
Perhaps the most underdiscussed potential problem with the current group could be a lack of experience on the actual line itself, not just individually, but in terms of banked reps together, especially with Bako-Bewele and Banks out injured.
That is not necessarily an excuse though. In this instance, it is potentially an indictment of the organization’s steadfast belief in their ability to develop linemen, plug anyone into the lineup or set up and effectively implement succession plans, and not recognizing the importance of experience.
Look at the Chicago Bears after Ben Johnson arrived as head coach. They spent endless resources finding sure things on the O-line, even if that meant trading draft picks for high-priced veterans like Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson.
The Browns just rebuilt their entire offensive line in one offseason, mostly with vets like former Packer Jenkins. After finishing 32nd in PFF's pass block grading last year, they are fifth early in 2026.
Fans are looking for the smoking gun, but for the Packers to be this bad on the offensive line, it cannot be just one person’s fault. It is a collective problem, and that means right now, making a personnel change or firing someone is unlikely to change anything.
That is not comforting news, as it means no one really knows if this can be fixed, or how. Doing so this season will be very difficult, although surely they can play better than the truly disastrous performances from the first few weeks.
Beyond 2026, it will be incumbent on the front office and the coaching staff to dig deep into what has gone wrong and commit wholeheartedly to finding solutions moving forward, because this year’s O-line is threatening to sink the season before it can even get going.
This article originally appeared on Packers Wire: The Packers offensive line is broken, how did we get here?
