Good morning!
The Green Bay Packers escaped Denver mostly unscathed in the preseason, after it essentially ended the 2025 team’s campaign. Crucially, several players stepped into open positions to take control of those spots, while others looked eminently replaceable.
Today’s free Monday newsletter digs into players who helped themselves or hurt themselves during the team’s 33-13 beatdown of the Broncos.
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Stock up
Trey Smack: Unofficially, Smack has gone 4/4 on kicks of 50+ this preseason, though only three actually counted. The University of Florida rookie nailed a 51-yarder before drilling a 59-yard try that likely had the juice to go 65 or more yards at altitude.
After a shaky start to the spring and early training camp, Smack has calmed the frayed nerves of Packers fans who watched Brandon McManus cost the team seven points in a playoff game their favorite team lost by four.
Perhaps the best part is Smack appears unchanged. The misses didn’t seem to faze him, and he’s met his latest successes with relative apathy as well, a temperament that should serve him well as the kicker on one of the league’s most popular teams with one of the NFL’s biggest, most voracious fan bases.
Kamal Hadden: Speaking of shaky starts, the backup slot defenders for the Packers put together dreadful performances against the Steelers last week. Despite a sterling training camp, Jaylin Simpson struggled mightily in his turn filling in for Javon Bullard, while Kitan Oladapo has never looked the part.
On Friday night, Hadden looked fluid in coverage, which makes sense as a former boundary cornerback. It was his play as a tackler that stood out, leading all players with a pair of tackles for loss. In a primarily zone defense, the nickel defender has to be a force player in the run game, filling from depth in pursuit. He looked more than up to that task against Denver, and given that he returned from injury to immediately get snaps there with the 1s, Hadden has to be the odds-on favorite to take that backup slot defender job.
Stock down
Tyrod Taylor: It’s not so much that the veteran quarterback has been terrible, though he hasn’t been particularly good, but more that Kyle McCord has looked sharp at every opportunity. Taylor finished 4/8 for 17 yards after an even more statistically dismal performance in Pittsburgh.
Taylor’s entire appeal centers around his reliability as a been-there-done-that quarterback. But playing against backups (albeit with mostly backups), Taylor has not been anywhere near the level the Packers have had at QB2 the last two seasons with Malik Willis.
Perhaps that’s an unfair bar, but considering how well McCord has spun it this preseason, the Packers have to consider either riding with three quarterbacks on the roster, or looking to deal Taylor to try and get something for him before the season.
Chris Brooks: This is the running back version of the Taylor situation. We know what he is in the NFL: an expert pass protector. Arguably the best in the NFL. The question is: does that make up for being so plodding as a runner? That question is even more apt when MarShawn Lloyd looks like a weapon in the passing game, so how much would Brooks even be on the field?
But like with Taylor, this is as much about how he looks relative to the guy behind him. In five carries, Brooks managed 12 yards, whereas Strong piled up 37 yards on eight totes.
Not only did Pierre Strong Jr. look like the much more explosive and dynamic runner, but he ripped off a 68-yard return as well. Brooks offers some special teams value as a kick return blocker, for example, but does that outweigh the benefit of someone who can be legitimately explosive with the ball? That’s not a question we would be asking if Lloyd and Strong didn’t look the way they do because Brooks does offer a defined skill set.
The value of that skillset, though, gets called into question against guys who can create explosive plays.