The end of the 2024 season also ends a couple of multi-year talking points.
The Packers’ 2024 season expired yesterday, and with it one of the great excuses used by those that talk about this team — and sometimes even the team itself.
“They’re young,” we’ve said of the Packers over the past couple of seasons. “They’re inexperienced and still growing.”
And you know what? It’s been true. They have been young. They have been inexperienced. They have been green and growing, to borrow a phrase from an ancient Milwaukee Bucks promo song.
But that excuse, if it was ever exculpatory, had a shelf life. Eventually, these young, inexperienced Packers were going to be neither young nor inexperienced, and I think that time has come.
Next year, the core of the Packers will be decidedly veteran heavy. Jordan Love will enter his third season as the Packers’ starter next fall, turning 27 in November. He’ll spend much of the season handing off to Josh Jacobs, also in his age-27 season this fall. Blocking in front of them will be fourth-year pro Rasheed Walker (25 in February), seventh-year Elgton Jenkins (30 in December), fourth-year Sean Rhyan (25 in September), and fourth-year Zach Tom (26 in March). And catching passes (depending on their health, of course) will be some combination of Romeo Doubs, Jayden Reed, Dontayvion Wicks, Tucker Kraft, and Luke Musgrave. All will be in at least their third season, and all will be at least 24 years old during the 2025 season.
On defense, the story will be much the same, even with the future of guys like Jaire Alexander and Keisean Nixon in flux. Xavier McKinney will lead the way (age 27, sixth season), and he’ll get help from Rashan Gary (28 in December, eighth season) and Kenny Clark (30 in October, 10th season).
This hardly paints the picture of a team that’s long in the tooth (with the exception of Kenny Clark), but neither are they a collection of freshly minted NFL players. The Packers will enter next season not exactly old, but certainly experienced — and definitely well past the point where “they’re young” should be any excuse for their on-field performance.
Should it ever have been an excuse? I think that’s another question worth asking. The Packers certainly needed to churn the roster in the wake of Aaron Rodgers’ departure, but nobody put a gun to Brian Gutekunst’s head and made him construct the league’s youngest roster two years running. They’ve been so young in large part because that’s what they wanted and, in 2024 at least, thought they could contend as such.
Whether or not they should have thought so is beside the point now. We know the answer. The Packers weren’t contenders in 2024. In 2025 they’ll hope to be, and they’ll have to do so without the excuses of age and inexperience covering for their mistakes.