Packers starting to tip hand when it comes to offensive line
The offensive line appears in flux, and that extends beyond Anthony Belton's recent demotion.
Good morning!
In three days, the 2026 Green Bay Packers will play their first football game, or something approximating one. Head coach Matt LaFleur hasn’t said affirmatively whether healthy starters will appear in the preseason opener, commenting only, “Anyone that’s healthy, get ready to play.”
But while LaFleur hasn’t revealed the team’s plans for Thursday’s exhibition against the Pittsburgh Steelers, he and his coaching staff have begun putting their cards on the table regarding the offense, albeit tacitly. Today’s edition of The Leap separates the signal from the noise to determine where the roster stands at a key position.
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The offensive line’s current state of flux extends beyond Anthony Belton’s recent demotion
Jason B. Hirschhorn: At the outset of training camp, the Packers’ preferred five starters seemed clear. Jordan Morgan would end his multiyear odyssey and return to his college position of left tackle. Aaron Banks would again start next to him at guard, with Sean Rhyan entering his first season as the incumbent at center. On the right side, the newly christened Zach Bako-Bewele would take up his usual post at right tackle with second-year pro Anthony Belton set to start at right guard.
Most of that plan remains intact. Granted, Banks has yet to participate in 11-on-11 periods during practice, but the coaching staff hasn’t suggested that he won’t start at left guard when the season begins. Meanwhile, Morgan appears to have settled in nicely thus far on the blindside, and Rhyan hasn’t budged from the pivot. And, as of Sunday, Bako-Bewele notched his first full practice since his offseason surgery to repair a partially torn patellar tendon.
However, Belton’s camp has unfolded quite differently.
In part because of the Packers easing Bako-Bewele back into practice, Belton has seen a considerable number of reps at right tackle. That didn’t seem overly peculiar at first -- Belton played left tackle in college and only moved to guard late last season -- but the narrative began to shift over the past week, starting with LaFleur’s comments about the second-year offensive lineman after Friday’s Family Night public practice.
I love his versatility,” the head coach said of Belton. “Certainly, I think the tackle position comes a little more natural for him, just time on task. But I think he continues to show great promise at guard as well.”
In the Packers’ very next practice session, Bako-Bewele made his return to 11-on-11 work, ostensibly allowing Belton to slide back inside. However, the coaches opted to play Jacob Monk at right guard, limiting Belton to a rotation with Bako-Bewele as right tackle. In the locker room after practice, Belton acknowledged the demotion to reporters.
At the same time, the coaches haven’t hidden their enthusiasm for Monk, Belton’s apparent competition for the starting job at right guard.
“I love Monk’s play style,” offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich, a former O-lineman, said last week. “He’s got the right mindset. He tries to get after people and plays the game the right way. I’ve been happy with how he’s played so far in camp.”
“You talk about a guy that plays to the play style we want,” LaFleur said Sunday of Monk. “He shows that toughness, that grittiness, the strain, and I think he’s done a pretty good job inside. He’s a valuable guy. He can play any of the inside three positions.”
The decision to demote Belton and the praise for Monk paint a pretty unambiguous picture of where the offensive line currently stands. That doesn’t mean the Packers have rendered a final decision -- they haven’t even played a preseason game yet -- but Belton has lost the inside track at right guard.
And considered in the larger context, the development doesn’t seem as surprising as it might on first blush. Last season, Green Bay worked Belton almost exclusively at offensive tackle in training camp, the preseason, and for the first few months of the regular season before issues at guard forced the coaching staff to get creative. Given that the Packers cross-train virtually all of their young offensive linemen, the fact that they didn’t extensively rep Belton inside until late November suggests that the team’s decision-makers don’t envision him as a guard.
That notion runs counter to what a certain segment of the football internet has loudly believed since Belton arrived in Green Bay, but that concept always seemed flawed and reactionary. At the time the Packers drafted him, the Philadelphia Eagles had just come off a Super Bowl-winning season in which a similarly mammoth offensive lineman (Mekhi Becton) successfully converted from tackle to guard. That alone appears to have convinced a lazy contingent of “ball knowers” that Belton too should move inside.
But Belton never spent meaningful time playing guard at any point in his football career. He played 2,240 combined O-line snaps over his four years at NC State. According to Pro Football Focus, he spent only 11 of those at a position other than left tackle, and those came over at right tackle. And Belton’s measurements don’t suggest the type of prospect destined for a move to guard. At 6-foot-6 and 336 pounds, he possesses the requisite mass to handle a bookend spot, and his nearly 34-inch arms exceed those of both Morgan and Bako-Bewele.
Does that mean Belton can’t develop into a starting guard? Of course not. But the assumption from many that his future necessarily involved kicking inside seems at odds with how his coaches view him.
Whether the Packers’ preference for Monk proves justified remains to be seen. The Leap named him one of the players “running out of time in Green Bay“ shortly before the start of training camp. To date, he has played more than 10 snaps in just one non-exhibition game, a de facto preseason tilt with the Minnesota Vikings in Week 18 last season. Perhaps Monk has taken a step in Year 3, but that would require a significant amount of progress, the majority of which would have taken place this past offseason.
Both believers and critics of the Packers’ confidence in unheralded offensive linemen have precedent to highlight. About a decade ago, Lane Taylor went from a mostly unplayable guard over multiple seasons to a multiyear starter at guard. His sudden development helped convince the front office to release All-Pro Josh Sitton before final cuts in 2016, a truly shocking decision in the moment. Six years later, Green Bay took a similar approach with Jake Hanson, a third-year interior lineman with zero starts under his belt. He opened the 2022 season as the starting right guard. By Week 2, the coaching staff had benched him for good.
At least on paper, Monk shares no more in common with Taylor’s situation than Hanson’s. Packers radio analyst Larry McCarren revealed that Monk has bulked up to 320 pounds -- up from his listed weight of 308 pounds -- so perhaps the added mass will make a difference. Still, the former fifth-round pick has plenty to prove on the field before the coaching staff can fully close the door on Belton or someone else ultimately securing the permanent starting job.