“He did what?”
Alex Freeman, the 21-year-old son of former NFL receiver Antonio Freeman, has scored a goal in the first half of Friday’s match between the United States and Australia.
The goal initially was wiped out by an offside ruling. The decision was overturned on replay review.
Alex Freeman now has three goals in international play. He had an assist in last Friday’s 4-1 U.S. win over Paraguay. He plays professional for Villarel in La Liga.
Antonio Freeman spent nine seasons in the NFL, eight of them with the Packers. He was a member of the Super Bowl XXXI-winning team, and he provided one of the all-time great Monday night highlights with a bouncing-ball catch and run for a score in overtime against the Vikings during the 2000 season.
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The Packers have announced dates for their 2026 training camp.
The team’s first practice will be held on July 29 and it will be open to the public. That will also be the case for practices on July 30 and 31 and the team will hold 10 more open sessions in August.
Those practices will be held on August 2-4, August 7, August 10-11, August 16, August 18, August 24, and August 26. The August 7 practice will be a family night practice at Lambeau Field.
Practice on August 26 will be a joint session with the Cardinals before the team’s third preseason game two nights later. The Packers will also be on the road to face the Steelers and Broncos during the preseason.
One way to deal with political pressure is to ignore it and hope it goes away. Another way is to meet it head-on.
The NFL, which for the most part has tiptoed around the multi-platform assault on the broadcast antitrust exemption embedded in the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, has come out swinging — with the franchise that can best be propped up as the poster child for the status quo.
Via Rob Demovsky of ESPN (which is now partially owned by the Packers and the rest of the NFL), the Packers have issued a statement pushing back on potential changes to the SBA. And Wisconsin Representative Scott Fitzgerald, who is on the committee studying the SBA and who recently dismissed the team’s concerns about the antitrust exemption, has become the target of Green Bay’s ire.
“Packers fans everywhere should be deeply concerned that Rep. Fitzgerald admitted to giving ‘zero’ consideration to keeping the Packers in Green Bay as he explores upending the 65-year-old Sports Broadcasting Act,” the Packers said. “Fans should be offended that Fitzgerald then went further, saying our concerns were ‘laughable.’ What is laughable is that a congressman from Wisconsin is leading this charge. Why threaten the team his community overwhelmingly cherishes and its ability to compete on a level playing field?
“The tremendously successful model of pooling media rights and sharing revenue equally amongst teams has allowed the Packers to survive and thrive in the smallest media market in professional sports. This model is as foundational to the Packers’ existence as the very bricks in Lambeau Field. It is careless and unwise to rearrange the bricks of a foundation which has stood strong for over half a century.”
Demovsky’s article contains other talking points regarding the Packers’ struggle to compete with other NFL teams in the current climate. He points out that the Packers don’t have a deep-pocketed owner. (Of course, that’s because the Packers decided to embrace a non-stock stock structure decades ago, making it impossible for any one person to ever acquire ownership of the team.) Demovsky also mentions that the Packers can’t sell a piece of the team to private-equity funds. (Same reason.)
The concern is that, because the Packers are in the NFL’s smallest market, a requirement to sell TV rights individually would put the Packers at a disadvantage. But the Packers are a popular national brand. If the broadcast antitrust exemption were to disappear altogether (and it most likely won’t), every team would have to sell the rights to its home games.
Despite the size of the market, the Packers would be a very valuable property for a national TV deal. It’s Lambeau Field. The Frozen Tundra. It’s a bedrock franchise with a strong national following.
If the current socialized structure for NFL TV money suddenly flipped to a model that more closely mirrors true American capitalism, the Packers would land far closer to the Cowboys than the Jaguars when it comes to the annual cash value of Green Bay’s coast-to-coast TV viewership.
Would losing the broadcast antitrust exemption create chaos for the NFL? Yes, it would. But the Packers would likely do better than plenty of other teams under an every-franchise-for-itself model.
The broader question is whether the Packers devised their recent strategy to fight for the antitrust exemption on their own, or whether this is the latest effort by the NFL to fend off a Fox-driven political push in response to the NFL’s effort to get the broadcast networks to pay a lot more for settled TV deals through 2029. With the league’s “87-percent” talking point having significant flaws, which were exposed during last week’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, the NFL needed to come up with another P.R. plan.
The Packers first touched on the issue last week, in a mailbag column posted the day before the hearing. With Congress reportedly cobbling some sort of legislation together, the Packers have now made a more overt gesture.
We live in an age where the justification for anything someone wants is to claim that, if they don’t get it, they’ll face an existential threat. That’s essentially what the Packers (and the NFL) are now doing.
If the SBA goes away, the Packers won’t survive.
But Fitzgerald isn’t advocating for the antitrust exemption to be scrapped. In the interview to which the Packers are objecting, Fitzgerald simply uses the word “tweaked.”
For now, here’s the basic reality. Congress is taking a close look at the SBA, changes to it could be made, and the NFL (via the Packers) is trying its best to keep any changes to the SBA, “tweaking” or otherwise, from happening.
Packers head coach Matt LaFleur thinks Green Bay may get an immediate impact on its offensive line from rookie fifth-round draft pick Jager Burton.
Burton was working with the first-string offensive line during minicamp, at both left guard and right guard, and LaFleur said Burton appears to be ready to play at the NFL level.
“I see a really young guy that’s extremely coachable, athletic, and is maximizing the most of his opportunities,” LaFleur said, via ESPN. “So I think every practice he gets a little bit more comfortable, a little bit better, and I can see him, he’s definitely going to be in the mix to compete for playing time this year.”
The 6-foot-4, 312-pound Burton spent five years at Kentucky, redshirting the first one and then becoming a four-year starter after that. He has a wealth of experience playing at a high level of college football in the SEC, and he may be ready to play in the NFL in Week One of his rookie season.
Tight end Luke Lachey has joined the Packers for the second time this offseason.
Lachey initially came to Green Bay as a waiver claim in May, but he was waived with a failed physical designation. Whatever the issue was at that time, it appears to no longer be a concern for the team because they announced Lachey’s signing on Monday afternoon.
Lachey was a Texans seventh-round pick last year and he spent the season on the practice squad. The Texans waived Lachey in May.
The Packers waived wide receiver Jakobie Keeney-James in a corresponding move. He had two catches for the team in Week 18 last season.
Former NFL receiver Andre Rison has been jailed after pleading guilty to second-offense DUI.
TMZ reports that Rison will spend two days behind bars in Michigan, from Friday to Sunday.
Rison pleaded guilty this week after an August 2025 arrest. He was sentenced to five total days and 18 months probation.
A first-round pick of the Colts in 1989, Rison was traded to the Falcons in 1990. He spent five seasons in Atlanta and one in Cleveland.
He was released by the Browns after the 1995 season. Rison then signed with the Jaguars, who cut him after 10 games. The Packers claimed Rison on waivers, and he later scored the first touchdown in Green Bay’s Super Bowl XXXI victory.
Rison spent the next three years with the Chiefs and one with the Raiders. After his last NFL season (2000), he joined the Toronto Argonauts of the CFL for part of the 2004 and 2005 seasons, winning a Grey Cup to cap his first year.
Rison was a five-time Pro Bowler, a first-team All-Pro in 1990, and a second-team All-Pro from 1991 through 1993. He finished his career with 10,205 receiving yards (54th all time) and 84 receiving touchdowns (tied for 23rd with Mark Clayton, Irving Fryar, and Tommy McDonald).
The Packers exercised the fifth-year option on Lukas Van Ness’ contract despite the edge rusher’s first three seasons being disappointing.
The 13th overall pick in 2023 has 8.5 sacks, 23 quarterback hits and 84 tackles in 43 games in three seasons. He made only two starts, played only nine games and totaled only 1.5 sacks in 2025 due to a foot injury.
“It’s probably not been my ideal career if you would have talked to me in 2023 when I was a fresh rookie coming in here, but everyone’s got their own process and their own path,” Van Ness said this week, via Steve Megargee of The Associated Press. “I’ve trusted the path. I feel really good about where I’m at.”
Van Ness has never generated more than 27 quarterback pressures in a season, nor higher than an 11.2 percent pressure rate, per Next Gen Stats. He has never played more than 40 percent of the snaps in a season despite playing all 17 games his first two seasons.
But the Packers haven’t given up on him, and Van Ness hasn’t given up on himself. He still has a chance to live up to the team’s expectations and his expectations.
“I think pressure is a privilege to have,” Van Ness said. “We’re obviously in a blessed position where there’s people watching our spot and people are obviously going to have their own opinions, but at the end of the day I think you’ve just got to believe in yourself and believe in what you’re hearing in the building from your coaches and from your circle and other players in the defensive room.”
Packers tight end Tucker Kraft tore the ACL in his right knee in a Nov. 2 game against Carolina. He is on schedule in his rehab.
“I’m doing good. I’m doing better than expected,” Kraft said, via video from Ryan Wood of USA Today. “I really attribute it to the time and the commitment I put into my rehabilitation early on, the first three months. That really has catapulted me to where I am now. I feel great. My quad looks great. Swelling is minimal to none. No like weird pains and aches coming out of my treatment and my training. We’re really excited to get this ball rolling and we’re going to take off.”
Kraft concedes he could start training camp on the active/physically unable to perform list, but he anticipates getting enough work in this summer to play the season opener.
“With how I feel, I would say I’m going to get all the conditioning I need to start Week 1 on no pitch count,” he said.
Kraft led the team with 32 receptions for 489 yards and six touchdowns in the season’s first eight games.
As the NFL faces an unprecedented political attack on its 65-year-old broadcast antitrust exemption, the league and its teams are for the most part saying nothing — especially not publicly.
Beyond the “87 percent” talking point (which is technically true when looking at the entire nation but inaccurate as to any given market), no one connected to the NFL is saying much.
That made Tuesday’s lead item in a Packers.com mailbag column even more significant. Under the subtitle “SBA gives small fish a fair shake,” this is the first question for the day: "[D]o you think there is anything to the FCC and DOJ reevaluating the NFL’s special treatment under antitrust laws? The NFL has benefitted greatly from special exemptions that not many get under the understanding that the NFL would maintain reasonable customer access to their broadcasts. Is requiring five different streaming services reasonable access in your opinion?”
That’s a fairly pointed question, one that easily could have been ignored. Instead, it was embraced. Here’s the full, one-long-paragraph response from Wes Hodkiewicz of the Packers’ official in-house website:
“The Sports Broadcasting Act is a complicated subject but also a critical one to address because of the possible implications for a small-market franchise like the Packers. In many ways, the SBA has been the cage protecting the Packers from perilous waters. We’ve seen in other leagues how difficult it can be for small-market teams to survive when there is no salary cap and clubs must negotiate their own media contracts. When that happens, it’s the viewers who ultimately lose. My 95-year-old grandmother from Pulaski can flip on the Packers game every Sunday without fail. However, she was thrown into a tizzy this offseason because the Brewers games were no longer readily available due to MLB broadcasting deals. I commend the Brewers for the job they’ve done swimming against the current, but there’s a final boss in the Los Angeles Dodgers — with nearly four times the payroll — awaiting them in the postseason thanks to the Dodgers’ TV deal. The NFL has a tremendous product, and it’s led to unprecedented growth over the past 30 years. A big part of that formula for success, however, is the parity created through revenue-sharing and a structured salary cap. The SBA gives small fish such as Green Bay, Kansas City, and Cincinnati a fair shake in this vast NFL ocean. I understand the plight of fans to watch their favorite teams in today’s media landscape. We’ve spoken about it often over the past year. But it’s also important to acknowledge the valves and levers that allow the Packers to operate. The SBA plays into that. While it’s popular for politicians on both sides of the aisle to say, ‘Make all the games free for everyone,’ it feels more like a kid wistfully desiring every toy under the Christmas tree without knowledge of what it took to get them there. The reality is we live in a society where more and more households are cutting cords and switching their media consumption to streaming. Netflix now has more than 80 million domestic subscribers to cable’s 55 million. The NFL, like every media entity, is doing what it must to meet tomorrow’s consumers where they are today. No different than the challenge the Packers face with private equity money flowing into the league, they must keep finding ways to keep pace with these NFL titans. Losing the SBA, without any proper plan, would jeopardize that. That’s why this is such an important topic to discuss. We’ll see where Congress goes following the hearing this week, but this feels more and more like messaging to me than meaningful attempts at legislation or oversight. Truly a solution in search of [a] problem. What’s most quizzical to me is why a member of Congress from Wisconsin, whose constituents can already watch every Packers game for free within the Milwaukee market, is thrusting himself into the center of this conversation? If the SBA goes away, it’s teams like the Packers that would suffer most. Because make no mistake, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago will be fine. Without the SBA, it undoubtedly will be more difficult for the Packers to compete financially while likely being more expensive for fans who are accustomed to watching the Packers for free. So, it begs a simple question…what exactly are we doing here?”
The SBA wasn’t designed to save small-market teams; it was put in place to ostensibly save the league at a time when it wasn’t nearly as popular and successful as it now is. Yes, the equal sharing of TV revenue helps all teams. But the exemption was aimed at avoiding a reality in which the teams would be forced to let the market determine the revenue that each team would receive for their home games, and in which some of them would have to fold.
If the exemption were to be rescinded now, would it really hurt the Packers? Although the market is small, the Packers would be in a position to negotiate a very strong individual package for their games.
They’re basically the Notre Dame of the NFL. A historic team with a national profile that plays in a stadium generally regarded as pro football’s Mecca. Someone would pay big money to broadcast Packers home games in Wisconsin and beyond.
Despite the effort to dismiss the current Congressional focus on the SBA, there’s a real question as to whether the NFL has exceeded its antitrust exemption by selling packages of games to cable, satellite, and streaming companies. And while the current model ensures that Packers fans living in and around Green Bay and Milwaukee will see all games on a traditional, over-the-air broadcast network, displaced residents (and folks who became Cheeseheads from afar) have to spend plenty of money to see all Packers games.
They need to have access to ESPN, Prime Video, Netflix, and (most importantly) Sunday Ticket, which has been deliberately overpriced to persuade Packers fans in Pasadena to choose to instead watch the “free” games on CBS and Fox in lieu of purchasing the privilege to watch all Packers games that don’t appear on their local broadcast affiliates.
If the antitrust exemption were to go away, the Packers would likely benefit financially. They could do a national deal to put all of their home games on a broadcast network, allowing Packers fans throughout America to see all games for free and making a bunch of money from Fox, CBS, NBC, or ABC. At the end of the day, the Packers would likely earn more TV money than their current 1/32nd share of total TV revenue.
The NFL and its teams are committed to keeping the broadcast antitrust exemption. Losing it would create a certain degree of chaos. (That said, having it enforced as to Sunday Ticket could result in all games being available on the networks contained in most basic cable packages, every Sunday.)
The point for now is that, despite the arguments aimed at downplaying the issue by one of the NFL’s 32 teams, the fact that the Packers have devoted digital real estate to the issue shows that there’s a level of concern within the organization as to what will happen — which means there’s a level of concern throughout the league.
Wednesday’s hearing and its aftermath could make that concern even more pronounced.
Wide receiver Christian Watson has shown plenty of ability since the Packers made him the 34th overall pick in 2022, but his productivity has been tempered by injury issues that have kept him off the field for 20 games over his first four seasons.
Those absences didn’t stop Green Bay from investing into a future with Watson, however. The wideout signed a four-year, $92 million contract and said on Tuesday that he feels the Packers “gave me countless amounts of chances when it seemed like I shouldn’t have had those chances anymore.”
Watson went on to say that he hopes to prove the Packers right for having that belief in him and shared what he thinks that would look like in terms of numbers.
“I try not to look into the number stuff too much,” Watson said, via Steve Megargee of the Associated Press. “I take it week by week. But if I’m really searching and I want to set personal goals, I definitely want to have double-digit touchdowns and I want to have over 1,100 yards.”
Watson can earn another $18 million through incentives over the life of the deal, so staying healthy and in the center of the offense would benefit him personally while it helps the Packers put themselves in position to win.
