NFL.com Picks Packers’ Biggest Challenge for 2024

NFL.com picked the biggest challenge for every team entering the upcoming season. For the Packers, it’s fixing their chronically disappointing defense.

Bill Huber | Jul 25, 2024

Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley / Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In this story:

Green Bay Packers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Coming off a hot finish to last season and an unexpected playoff berth, the Green Bay Packers are among the challengers to win this year’s Super Bowl.

Any contender will have to navigate its way through challenges. For the Packers, according to NFL.com’s Eric Edholm, it will be elevating a perennially underachieving defense.

New defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley “faces a lot of pressure to improve” the defense, Edholm said.

The run defense has been terrible for years. With Mike Pettine running the defense in 2019 and 2020 and Joe Barry running the show the past three years, the Packers during the totality of coach Matt LaFleur’s tenure are last in the NFL with 4.66 yards allowed per carry.

The pass defense, which had mostly been a strength, was a failure last year, too. The Packers ranked 20th in yards allowed per passing attempt, 25th in opponent passer rating and next-to-last in interceptions.

Once again, just like so many years with Aaron Rodgers under contract, the Packers are trying to build a winning defense around an excellent quarterback.

After LaFleur hired Hafley, general manager Brian Gutekunst went to work by signing safety Xavier McKinney in free agency and adding safety Javon Bullard and linebacker Edgerrin Cooper with second-round picks.

Hafley, McKinney, Bullard and Cooper will be cornerstones of the new defense.

“The Packers could end up starting a defense almost entirely composed of former early draft picks and notable free-agent additions,” Edholm wrote. “Expectations should be high for a reason, yet there are unanswered questions remaining, especially in the secondary.”

The defense is off to a hot start in training camp, with the obvious asterisk of quarterback Jordan Love not practicing as he awaits a contract extension.

“I was talking to Keisean (Nixon) about it today,” McKinney said on Tuesday. “I said, ‘Man, our D-line is crazy and we have a lot of depth, too.’ Not only just from the first group, but even the second group, the third group. You can see these guys are attacking the ball, they’re getting after it and they’re making our jobs a lot easier.

“It’s always fun when you got a great D-line in front of you. Obviously, you’re able to do different things and work around them and they lead the way. They control the paint for us and they make our jobs a lot easier, so it’s been fun.”

Indeed, Green Bay’s attacking defensive front has gotten the better of the offensive line, with the obvious asterisk of right tackle Zach Tom working his way back from a torn pectoral.

With the defensive line cranking up the heat, cornerback Eric Stokes had two interceptions on Wednesday and rookie safety Evan Williams had one interception on Tuesday and another on Wednesday.

With high expectations for the Love-led offense and high hopes on a revamped defense, the Packers are thinking big.

“I think it’s pretty simple and not that hard when you got a locker room full of guys that all are chasing one goal and we all understand what we want to do and what we want to get accomplished, where we want to go, so it makes it pretty easy for everything else to kind of fall along,” McKinney said.

“And with the coaches, we’re all on the same page, so it’s been fun, man. Just knowing that, it’s been easy to be able to get a message across and get everybody to follow along because we all know what we want to accomplish.”

In the NFC North, where only the Vikings are viewed as a real long shot at FanDuel Sportsbook, Edholm’s biggest challenges relate to the rookies. For the Bears, it’s dealing with the outsized expectations for Caleb Williams. For the Lions, it’s fixing the secondary. For the Vikings, it’s handling the quarterback battle between Sam Darnold and J.J. McCarthy.

“There’s no question that if Aaron Glenn’s D is going to get better, it will require some of those new DBs – including at least one rookie – stepping up in a big way,” Edholm said of a Lions pass defense that gave up a league-high 69 completions of 20-plus yards.

More Green Bay Packers Training Camp News

At #Packers training camp yesterday, Jayden Reed was back:https://t.co/3YWlinVDIg
And there was a rather big change on the offensive line. Here's that story ... and his story.https://t.co/0gYx5xvSGz
— Bill Huber (@BillHuberNFL) July 25, 2024

Published Jul 25, 2024

BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packer Central, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.