The Green Bay Packers are 6-3 entering the bye week and a legitimate playoff contender in the NFC at the midway point of the 2024 season.
At Tuesday’s NFL trade deadline, the Packers were sellers, not buyers.
General manager Brian Gutekunst made one trade, sending veteran edge rusher Preston Smith to the Pittsburgh Steelers in exchange for a seventh-round pick in the 2025 NFL draft, which recouped the draft capital lost in the team’s trade for backup quarterback Malik Willis before the regular season.
Some outsiders saw edge rusher as an area where the Packers needed to add before the deadline. Instead, Gutekunst sold off an aging, expensive and mostly unproductive part from the pass-rushing equation.
Smith turns 32 in November, has only 10 pressures in nine games and was unlikely to be in Green Bay past the 2024 season. His transition from 3-4 outside linebacker to 4-3 defensive end wasn’t translating into production — a problem many of the pass-rushers in Green Bay are working through. The trade creates valuable cap space in the short-term and long-term, while also opening up snaps for younger players at edge rusher such as Lukas Van Ness and Kingsley Enagbare.
The Packers have emphasized creating opportunities for young players to get on the field in big roles. That has meant moving on from older, experienced players and taking a risk on young, inexperienced talent. This appears to be another case of the Packers opening the door to the youth on the roster.
Van Ness, a 2023 first-round pick, stands to benefit the most. He is suddenly a very important player for the Packers, who have Super Bowl aspirations but can’t be considered a true title contender without more consistency from the pass-rush up front on defense.
Last year, the Packers were 3-6 and sellers, sending cornerback Rasul Douglas to the Buffalo Bills. This year, the Packers have a 6-3 mark but remained sellers — suggesting Gutekunst found more team-building value in selling off an asset than buying one.
There’s a compelling case to make on the Packers’ need for help at edge rusher or cornerback, even as the defense has made progress under first-year coordinator Jeff Hafley. But the Packers rarely make trade deadline deals, likely as a result of never wanting to risk overpaying — especially for what could be a rental player – and so Gutekunst ended up being a seller once again.
Losing Smith isn’t likely to prevent the Packers from competing for a title. But will not adding a piece at the deadline allow any of the potentially fatal flaws of the Packers roster to be exposed come January? Time will tell. Like last year, the Packers will need internal improvement from a young but talented roster to turn Matt LaFleur’s team from a good one to a great one over the second half of the 2024 season.