The Packers have made a move for some cap room.
Per Jeremy Fowler of ESPN, Green Bay has restructured safety Xavier McKinney’s contract, converting $4.25 million in salary to a bonus.
McKinney is under contract through 2027 after signing a four-year deal with Green Bay in free agency during the 2024 offseason.
In 2025, McKinney recorded 107 total tackles with 10 passes defensed, one forced fumble, and two interceptions in 16 games.
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Hopefully, Ben Johnson has an alibi.
Via Fox 11 in Green Bay, Lambeau Field was evacuated on Tuesday afternoon due to a fire in one of the locker rooms.
Sprinklers had activate before firefighters arrived, and most of the blaze had been extinguished. The rest of the fire was quickly neutralized.
A crew from Fox 11 observed the removal of a burned plastic storage bin from the stadium.
The fire remains under investigation. It happened in a third locker room, used neither by the Packers nor by the visiting team, that was built in 2024 at a cost of roughly $5 million.
The Packers are retaining one of their pending restricted free agents.
Green Bay and running back Chris Brooks have agreed to a two-year contract, according to agency One West Sports Group.
Brooks’ deal is worth $4.85 million. If the Packers had extended a right of first refusal tender on Brooks, they would have owed him $3.52 million for 2026.
Brooks appeared in all 17 games for Green Bay in 2025, rushing for 106 yards and catching 13 passes for 91 yards.
He spent most of his time on special teams, playing 55 percent of snaps on the unit.
Rams backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo is due to become a free agent next week. The Cardinals and Packers reportedly are interested. Are the Rams?
“Absolutely,” coach Sean McVay told reporters on Tuesday. “I love Jimmy. I would absolutely want him back. I did see those reports too on [Cardinals coach] Mike [LaFleur] trying to steal our guy, but no, Jimmy’s a really good player and so we would love him back.
“I’m sure he’ll have multiple opportunities and then we’ll see where we’re at. He’s been tremendous for the last couple of years. We’ve loved everything he’s about. You guys know how I feel about him when we’ve spoken about him and we would love him back. I’m also not naive to the fact that he’ll probably have a lot of opportunities and if those are things that he wants to pursue that give him a chance to play, I would understand that.”
If they really wanted him, they would have extended his deal before he got close enough to sniff free agency. Garoppolo will now hit the open market — and possibly will hit the road.
Should Garoppolo leave, the Rams will need a new No. 2 quarterback. Stetson Bennett, a fourth-round pick in 2023, enters the final year of his contract. He was entrusted with the backup job for two games in 2024, when Garoppolo was serving a suspension under the NFL’s PED policy.
Rich Bisaccia stepped down as the Packers’ special teams coordinator on Feb. 17. It came after his assistant special teams coordinator, Byron Storer, took a job as the Browns’ special teams coordinator.
Bisaccia is not retiring, though.
He has agreed to terms to join Clemson’s staff, Tiger Illustrated reports, pending the school’s board of trustees approval of the deal.
Bisaccia has a house in South Carolina.
The Tigers do not have a vacancy, with Mike Reed still on staff. He served as assistant head coach, special teams coordinator and cornerbacks coach last season.
Bisaccia has worked as the special teams coordinator for the Bucs, Chargers, Cowboys, Raiders and Packers. He was also assistant head coach for each of those teams, and in 2021, was the interim coach of the Raiders.
Jimmy Garoppolo could be making a comeback.
Not that he ever left. But he hasn’t been a starting quarterback since the Raiders benched him for Aidan O’Connell midway through the 2023 season.
Now, Garoppolo could be in play to fill the void created by the looming departure of Kyler Murray from the Cardinals.
Via Jeremy Fowler of ESPN.com, the Cardinals are interested in Garoppolo. And for good reason. New head coach Mike LaFleur comes from the Rams, where Garoppolo has spent the last two seasons as the understudy to Matthew Stafford.
“That’s his guy,” an unnamed source told Fowler regarding Mike LaFleur’s opinion of Garoppolo.
The Cardinals also have Jacoby Brissett under contract for 2026. He’s due to make $5.44 million in 2026, with another $1 million if he takes 50 percent of the snaps and $1 million more if the percentage lands at 65 or higher. On the fifth day of the 2026 league year, $1.5 million of Brissett’s base salary becomes fully guaranteed.
Per Fowler, the Rams would welcome Garoppolo back as the No. 2 to Stafford. Garoppolo also is in play to replace Malik Willis as the No. 2 to Jordan Love in Green Bay.
Garoppolo has 64 career starts. The bulk of those came during five-plus years with the 49ers. In 2019, he led San Francisco to the Super Bowl.
For a brief time in 2018, Garoppolo was the highest-paid player in the league, at $27.5 million per year. He made $3 million last season with the Rams.
If the Cardinals keep Brissett and sign Garoppolo, it’ll be a reunion — 10 years later — of the quarterbacks who split four starts during Tom Brady’s #Deflategate suspension.
In little more than a week, the negotiating period will begin for impending free agents. And quarterback Malik Willis will undoubtedly be agreeing to terms quickly.
With the Packers having no real shot at keeping Willis as the No. 2 to Jordan Love, the tampering will be even more rampant than usual. A deal may already be done, now that the full week of rampant tampering and excessive consumption of bovine body parts in Indianapolis has ended.
So what will Willis get? One theory is that Willis will land in the range of $20 million to $25 million per year on a two- or three-year deal.
That’s at the lower end of the veteran starter scale. Last year, the Jets gave Justin Fields a two-year, $40 million deal with $30 million of it fully guaranteed. Although Fields played more than Willis (Fields had 50 appearances and 44 starts through four seasons; Willis has 22 and six), Willis played very well in limited opportunities during his two years in Green Bay.
Of course, if enough teams want Willis, the money could go higher. Maybe he could get to $30 million per year.
Last year, Sam Darnold parlayed 14 regular-season wins into $33.5 million over three years with Seattle. But the Seahawks didn’t have much if any competition for Darnold. The more suitors for Willis, the more he can make.
The ideal arrangement for Willis, if the number is south of $30 million per year, would be to have a very low cap number early in the deal and a bigger one later — big enough to give Willis the leverage to force an extension if things go well.
As mentioned earlier in the day, the Dolphins and Cardinals provide an important litmus test for his perceived potential. If neither wants him, it’s a red flag. If both want him, more should get involved. And he could end up with a better deal than expected.
Running back Emanuel Wilson will reportedly hit the open market as an unrestricted free agent next month.
Jeremy Fowler of ESPN reports that the Packers have decided not to tender Wilson a contract as a restricted free agent. Any tender offers must be extended ahead of the start of the 2026 league year on March 11.
Wilson has appeared in 41 regular season games and four playoff games for Green Bay over the last three seasons. He has 242 carries for 1,083 yards and seven touchdowns in the regular season and 16 carries for 45 yards in the postseason.
Josh Jacobs and MarShawn Lloyd are set to return at running back for the Packers.
The most storied rivalry in football is generating some good stories.
After the Bears beat the Packers in the playoffs (it was only the third postseason meeting between the franchises), Chicago coach Ben Johnson declared in the locker room, “Fuck the Packers! Fuck them!” Addressing his reaction later, Johnson’s explanation was simple, “I don’t like that team.”
In a visit this week with PFT Live, Johnson was asked to elaborate.
“Who likes the Packers?” Johnson said.
The next question focused on whether Johnson is simply leaning into his job as head coach of the Bears, or whether he truly doesn’t like the Packers.
“The Bears and the Packers, they should not like each other,” Johnson said. “I think it’s as simple as that. And I think that’s gonna make this rivalry, this game, something that people are going to watch here going forward.”
He’s right about that. Even though the NFL tends to market itself, a WWE-style effort to stir things up a bit only makes an upcoming game more compelling. Case in point: Every network and streamer will be jockeying with 345 Park Avenue to televise one of the two games between Chicago and Green Bay during the 2026 season.
But there’s another side to it. Johnson has made Packers coach Matt LaFleur a periodic pin cushion, starting with Johnson’s introductory press conference more than a year ago. Within the high-turnover coaching industry, where relationships among coaches with other teams fuel future employment prospects, open hostility from one head coach to another is rare.
Johnson was asked whether he has talked to LaFleur, who seems to be confused by all of it.
“We don’t talk,” Johnson said.
Does he want it that way?
“I’m good with it.”
Has he tried to reach out?
“No.”
Bears fans love it. The YouTube version of the full interview and the social-media clips drew significant attention, with nearly 600,000 views. Chicago sports radio was buzzing.
So, yes, it’s good for business — ours and the NFL’s — for Johnson to embrace and to reflect the basic reality that the Bears and Packers should not like each other. In an age where players come and go far more often than they did in the days before free agency and the salary cap, the hatred the fans feel toward a rival isn’t shared by the men in uniform.
Johnson is taking a very different approach. To the delight of everyone in Chicago, and Bears fans everywhere.
The value of the next contract for quarterback Malik Willis remains to be seen. It will be driven ultimately by the number of suitors.
And the involvement, or not, of two potential franchises should say plenty about the broader market for Willis. Whether and to what extent the Dolphins and Cardinals pursue Willis will be a key litmus test as to his perceived potential as a full-time starter.
In Miami, two former Packers now run the show. And, as coach Jeff Hafley explained this week on PFT Live, he and G.M. Jon-Eric Sullivan are in close alignment. If they believe in Willis after two years of having full access to him, they’ll pursue him. If they don’t pursue him, they don’t believe.
Obviously, they need a quarterback. Willis would be a perfect fit particularly over the next two years, if a reasonable but fair contract can be negotiated during the cap wreckage of the Tua Tagovailoa deal. It all comes down to whether two men who were able to watch him, to study him, to get to know him for two entire football seasons believe he’s equipped to be a high-level, week-in, week-out starting quarterback.
Ditto for the Cardinals, indirectly. They need a quarterback. New coach Mike LaFleur’s brother, Matt, coached Willis for two years. Assuming Matt will share his views with Mike about Malik, Mike will act accordingly. Especially since Mike needs a quarterback, too.
That said, it’s possible Mike LaFleur will be overruled by G.M. Monti Ossenfort and/or owner Michael Bidwill (he’s the team president, after all) regarding Willis. It would be foolish to do so, but some teams do foolish things.
It would be potentially foolish for a team that doesn’t know Willis to pursue him if the Dolphins or Cardinals aren’t. Those are the two teams in the best position to know whether Willis is “the guy.” If they don’t believe it, it’s buyer beware for the other quarterback-needy teams.
