The 2025 NFL Draft is in the books, and it was a smashing success for the city of Green Bay. The league announced that over 600,000 people attended the event at Lambeau Field and the surrounding area, more than five times the city’s population and almost double that of the larger metropolitan area. Team president Mark Murphy was able to electrify the home crowd with his announcement of a first-round receiver choice for the first time since 2002.
Still, it remains to be seen whether this year’s draft will be as successful for the Green Bay Packers on the field as it was off of it.
General manager Brian Gutekunst had quite a few team needs to juggle as the Packers look to capitalize on their strong foundation in their third season with Jordan Love. In the first two days, he went receiver, offensive line, and receiver. They brought Matthew Golden, the dynamic Texas product, in to become the No. 1 target that Josh Jacobs candidly pointed out that the team lacked.
With the prices on the open market soaring, Gutekunst opted not to make the Seattle Seahawks an offer for D.K. Metcalf and has chosen to rebuild the receiver room through the draft with Golden and TCU’s Savion Williams.
However, they didn’t address one crucial need.
Cornerback.
Reporting all offseason has suggested that Green Bay is hellbent on moving on from Jaire Alexander. They owe their star cornerback tons of money and feel frustrated with his availability issues. As a result, many expected them to target promising prospects like Jahdae Barron and Maxwell Hairston. Not only did they pass on Day 1, they also passed on Day 2, setting up All-Pro return specialist Keisean Nixon, free-agent signing Nate Hobbs, and 2023 seventh-rounder Carrington Valentine to man the secondary in front of Xavier McKinney.
In a fiercely competitive NFC North that features premier receivers in each rival city, that is an anxiety-inducing cornerback room to work with. Gutekunst was clear after the 2024 season that he expected his young team to leap into championship contention this fall. However, he has a massive issue at one of the most critical positions in the game. That’s part of what has made the Jaire Alexander situation so perplexing for many fans and the media.
In an interview with Jacobs, Kay Adams pressed him on what was happening with Alexander. Jacobs didn’t reveal much. Still, like with Gutekunst’s press conferences, it was pretty easy to read between the lines and see that he didn’t expect No. 23 back.
As this saga has taken place, Alexander has remained involved as if he will return. He posted workouts with McKinney on Instagram, followed Golden on social media after he was selected, and attended the first week of the virtual and voluntary offseason program. The public continued to see nothing to indicate he was surely on his way out, and the media continued to insist that the Packers were exploring every option to get him off the books for 2025.
From a personnel standpoint, after failing to land a promising cornerback in free agency or the draft, it’s hard not to look at Alexander as the missing piece for this defense, even as he’s currently under contract with the team.
Suddenly, the reporting has begun to shift. ESPN’s Rob Demovsky reported that the door is open for a potential reconciliation between Alexander and the Packers. However, he cautioned that all options, including a trade or release, remain on the table. National reporter Albert Breer added that Alexander would rather the Packers cut him than trade him so he can choose his destination. Still, in his opinion, the most likely scenario is a return on a downsized contract that replaces some of his guaranteed salary with incentives.
That’s huge news for the Packers. Alexander was the first draft pick that Gutekunst made as general manager, and he infused the position with the flair, physicality, and playmaking that had been missing for much of the Aaron Rodgers era. In recent years, he hasn’t played like an All-Pro; he hasn’t played much at all. His availability issues and slight decline in productivity have contributed to a situation where the Packers don’t feel that they have gotten their money’s worth on Alexander’s top-of-the-market contract.
However, there simply are not a lot of paths to putting together a championship-level cornerback room at this point in the offseason. The best path for Gutekunst and the front office is to take advantage of the financial flexibility that the team has and try to get the most out of Alexander, even if some of that includes purely hoping. Much of this saga may have been designed to get enough leverage to get him back on a reduced deal. Whatever the case, if he walks out of that door, things get a lot more difficult for the Green Bay Packers. I think you live with whatever he does inside of it.
