GREEN BAY \u2013 General Manager Brian Gutekunst addressed the media for nearly a half hour Tuesday, two days before the start of the 2026 NFL Draft.<\/p>\n
Here are five things we learned:<\/p>\n
The Packers will be watching the first round very closely.<\/p>\n
Gutekunst may not have a first-round pick this year (or next) due to the Micah Parsons<\/a> trade, but he and his staff will be following the action Thursday night very closely because who gets picked, who makes trades, etc., will have a major impact on the final six rounds \u2013 when the Packers have eight picks going in.<\/p>\n “The phones won’t be as busy, that’s for sure, but we’re going to kind of keep our ears open,” Gutekunst said of the approach Thursday night.<\/p>\n “It’s always interesting how it falls, how it affects every team that picks, the trades that are involved. So, we’ll follow that process. What happens on Thursday will affect Friday and Saturday, so we’ll be in tune with it. We put a lot of work into these guys that you kind of look at this, OK, hey, how do we see this shaking out? What would we do here, if it was us? Things like that.”<\/p>\n The homework they did on first-rounders they won’t be picking still matters, too.<\/p>\n With any number of veterans Gutekunst has acquired from other teams during his tenure, he’s mentioned liking those players when they were coming out in the draft. So the advance work on top talent stays in the files because opportunities could arise down the road, such as signing Alabama stars and high draft picks Josh Jacobs<\/a> and Xavier McKinney<\/a> as free agents two years ago.<\/p>\n “Everything’s, you know, the lifeblood. Everything starts with these guys coming out of college,” he said. “This is where our players come from. We’re very intense about that process and understanding, because that does carry over quite a bit. So certainly guys change as they get into our league, and they get better or worse. But a lot of the information we gather right now is stuff we’ll be using three, four or five years from now on these players.”<\/p>\n He’s not ruling out a trade up in the second round, or any round.<\/p>\n While a trade back to acquire more picks is probably more likely, Gutekunst’s motto is always “if the right player is there \u2026” The Packers may not have a ton of draft capital this year to move up, but he did mention all the compensatory picks \u2013 up to four \u2013 the team is expecting next year from its lost free agents, plus the three additional picks (one this year, two next) he added by trading Rashan Gary and Dontayvion Wicks.<\/p>\n So it’s within the realm of possibility to trade a pick next year in order to move up this year. But again, if the right player is there.<\/p>\n “The compensatory formula, we won’t know exactly what we have for next year, but we feel pretty good about the amount of picks we’re going to have,” Gutekunst said, referencing 11 or more.<\/p>\n “Whether it’s in this year’s draft, next year’s, the ability to move around to acquire the type of players we want to acquire, you have to have those picks to do that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GREEN BAY \u2013 General Manager Brian Gutekunst addressed the media for nearly a half hour Tuesday, two days…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[68019,198515,11977,4718,260971,28139,13041,349,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-599421","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-2026-nfl-draft","9":"tag-brian-gutekunst","10":"tag-homepage-cp","11":"tag-news-all-news","12":"tag-news-2026-nfl-draft","13":"tag-news-five-things","14":"tag-news-national-feature","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}