"Pre-draft picture" is a position-by-position look at the Packers' roster heading into the 2025 NFL Draft. The series concludes with the specialists.
GREEN BAY – For the first time in three years, the Packers have reached this point in the offseason with zero questions about their kicker.
Two years ago, the team was moving on from veteran Mason Crosby and wound up drafting Anders Carlson. After an up-and-down rookie season, Carlson was forced to compete with roughly a half-dozen other kickers throughout the spring and summer of 2024 to keep his job.
The top contenders were Carlson and Greg Joseph, but the Packers ultimately settled on neither, claimed Brayden Narveson off waivers from Tennessee at the end of training camp, and then moved on from him after a six-game audition was nothing but a struggle.
Enter veteran Brandon McManus, who hit walk-off field goals in his first two games with the Packers to beat the Texans and Jaguars, missed just one field goal all season before a costly and uncharacteristic miss at Philadelphia in the playoffs, and then re-signed with Green Bay a week before free agency began in March.
The Packers have their kicker, and McManus has a new lease on a career whose direction, after nine years in Denver and one in Jacksonville, was uncertain as 2024 began.
One other kicker also resides on the current roster – Alex Hale, a native of Australia who entered the NFL via Oklahoma State. He was one of the competitors last summer, and the Packers decided to keep him around on the practice squad with the international player exemption.
But while Hale develops his game, make no mistake, McManus is the man with a new deal that puts him back among the top dozen kickers on the pay scale. Going 21-of-23 on field goals, playoffs included, and 31-of-31 on extra points returned him to that status.
Similarly, the Packers have no questions at punter, but the difference is Daniel Whelan is by no means a finished product.
Two years into his career, the NFL's first Irish-born player in nearly four decades posted the second- and third-highest single-season gross punting averages in team history (46.2 in 2023, 46.1 in '24), and shown consistency in other statistical areas too.
In his first season, including playoffs, he placed 21 of 61 punts inside the opponents' 20-yard line, with just five touchbacks. Last year, it was 22 of 58 inside the 20, also with five touchbacks.
The Packers are interested to see where the long-levered (at 6-5, 219) punter's game goes from here. He's only the second Green Bay punter since Tim Masthay's six-year run ended in 2015 to hold the job for three straight seasons.
Also entering his third season with the Packers is long snapper Matt Orzech, who fought off competition from Peter Bowden last summer to hold down the job. It's a good bet another competitor will be brought in at some point this year as well, but Orzech will be tough to unseat.
As for other special-teamers, just two of the Packers' top six coverage tacklers – Eric Wilson and Corey Ballentine – aren't back, but leading tackler Edgerrin Cooper may not be playing as much special teams in 2025 as an every-down defensive player.
Robert Rochell is another special-teams regular who departed, so opportunity exists for young players coming into their own, like Kitan Oladapo and Arron Mosby, among others, to join the ranks of "we-fense" leaders Isaiah McDuffie, Zayne Anderson, Ty'Ron Hopper and Javon Bullard.
Pre-Draft Roster Series:
