Urgency Is The Buzzword For The 2025 Green Bay Packers

Forbes

5 days ago

Jordan Love and the Green Bay Packers want to play with more urgency in 2025.
It's tough to measure the urgency of a football team in May.
Players don't have pads on. There is no live tackling, or really, any contact whatsoever.
As Green Bay Packers linebacker Edgerrin Cooper said Wednesday, 'It sucks that we've got to go like 50% right now.'
Yes, in many ways Organized Team Activities are the epitome of fake football.
Still, there's still plenty that teams can accomplish. And the Packers are doing everything possible to attack the offseason with an urgency that was called into question when the 2024 season ended.
Green Bay general manager Brian Gutekunst first dropped the U-word — urgency — in mid-January, four days after the Packers' 22-10 loss to Philadelphia in an NFC Wild Card game.
'I think for me, the thing that's been on my mind as we concluded this season is we need to continue to ramp up our sense of urgency,' Gutekunst said that day. 'If I'm looking at one thing, that would be it.'
Now, four-plus months later, that word still seemed to be ringing in many of the Packers' heads as OTA's rolled along this week.
'You feel the urgency for sure,' Packers Pro Bowl running back Josh Jacobs said. 'You feel a lot of the younger guys growing up, you can definitely feel them coming into their own. You feel the urgency just from the way the guys are going about practicing and the details and the way they're on top of everything.'
Cooper, Green Bay's rising second-year linebacker, agreed.
'As soon as we start ball, as soon as we enter this building, everything we try and do we try and have urgency,' he said. 'Everything we do.'
With good reason.
Green Bay played much of the 2024 campaign like lions, then exited like lambs.
The Packers were 6-2, 9-3 and 11-4 at various points last year and were still in the mix for big things. Then, Green Bay lost its final three games in a collapse that was almost as surprising as it was disappointing.
First came a 27-25 setback at Minnesota in a game Green Bay trailed, 20-3 and 27-10 before two late touchdowns made the final score both respectable and deceptive.
Then, NFC North doormat Chicago came to Green Bay with nothing on the line and rallied for an improbable 24-22 win. That snapped the Packers' 11-game winning streak over the Bears, and also marked the first time Green Bay head coach Matt LaFleur lost a game to his neighbors to the south.
Finally came a dreadful offensive performance in Philadelphia, where the Packers lost the turnover battle, 4-0, and quarterback Jordan Love had a passer rating of 41.5 — his second-lowest since becoming the starter in 2023.
Some Packers tried taking consolation in the fact they held the eventual Super Bowl champion Eagles to their fewest points of the postseason. But don't forget, if Philadelphia running back Saquon Barkley hadn't laid down late in the game to keep the clock running, he was on his way to a 76-yard TD scamper that would have made the final score much worse.
When the season ended, LaFleur said he wanted Love to be more vocal in 2025. So far, the Packers' sixth-year quarterback has taken that message to heart.
'That's always something I'm trying to improve on, get better at, just be more comfortable being a vocal leader,' Love said. 'But it's definitely something I've put a lot of work in since I've been here, trying to step out of my comfort zone and speak up. I think the more comfortable you get with the guys, the easier that all becomes.'
Gutekunst also threw the 'urgency' log on the fire, knowing it's time for many in this group to sink or swim.
Green Bay had the youngest roster in the NFL each the past two seasons. The 2023 Packers — with an average age of 25 years, 214 days — were the youngest team to win a playoff game since the 1970 NFL/AFL merger.
In many ways, reaching the postseason the first two years after trading Aaron Rodgers was a pleasant surprise.
Now, anything shy of a deep postseason run would be remarkably disappointing.
'Like, it's time,' Jacobs said. 'It's time. You know?'
It seems like everyone in the building knows.
The Packers' extremely strong 2022 and 2023 draft classes that included players such as Quay Walker, Zach Tom, Devonte Wyatt, Sean Rhyan, Rasheed Walker, Romeo Doubs, Tucker Kraft, Jayden Reed and Lukas Van Ness are just hitting their prime.
Several of those same players, though, are coming up on contract years after this season or the 2026 campaign. That means the roster will look dramatically different in a year or two.
So for a large number of players — and the 2025 Packers — this is undoubtedly a 'prove it' season.
'With this type of locker room, where we've got pieces all over the board, offense and defense, it just makes that urgency get a little bit more intense, because the only thing that can really stop us is us,' Jacobs said. 'If we lock in on the things we need to do, if we put the work in, then we'll reap the benefits.'
Pro Bowl safety Xavier McKinney didn't mince words when asked where he thinks the 2025 Packers can eventually wind up.
'No. 1. It's that simple,' McKinney said. 'I'm just going to put it out there right now. That's what we're aiming for.'
A lot more urgency figures to go a long way — even if it is only May.