Packers Predicted to Part Ways With $84 Million Star After Season

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Packers head coach Matt LaFleur.

The Green Bay Packers will have a decision to make about the future of two-time Pro Bowl cornerback Jaire Alexander when they reach the 2025 NFL offseason, and at least one analyst thinks it is time for them to “end the Alexander era.”

Alexander — the team’s 2018 first-round pick — has been a high-level defensive player throughout his seven seasons with the Packers, earning both Pro Bowl and second-team All-Pro distinctions in the 2020 and 2022 seasons. He is also among the team’s highest-paid players on the roster with a $23.49 million cap hit on a four-year, $84 million deal that denotes him as the second-highest-paid cornerback in the NFL, in per-year value.

But while a healthy Alexander has proven worth the price, the 27-year-old cornerback has struggled to stay on the field in three of the past four seasons, including in 2024.

Alexander missed all but four games of the 2021 season with a shoulder injury. He then missed nine games in 2023 with back and shoulder injuries and sat out an additional game while serving a one-week suspension. Through 15 weeks in 2024, he has missed another seven games — and counting — with quadriceps, groin and knee issues.

While Alexander is signed through the 2026 season, Forbes’ Rob Reischel believes the time has come for Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst to “cut his losses” and is predicting the team will cut ties with Alexander when the 2024 season concludes.

“The process isn’t working,” Reischel wrote on December 13. “It hasn’t worked in nearly four years. And when the offseason arrives, Green Bay needs to end the Alexander era.”

Top Packers Columnist Also Weighs Jaire Alexander

Reischel is not the only one in the Packers media circle who has contemplated what the team should do with its injury-troubled star cornerback. Green Bay Press-Gazette and PackersNews columnist Pete Dougherty also addressed the possibility of the Packers moving on from Alexander in 2025 in response to a reader’s recent mailbag question.

“I went into the research [about Alexander’s situation] thinking they’ll very likely cut Alexander, but I now think the odds are better than 50-50 they won’t,” Dougherty wrote in his December 13 mailbag.

While Dougherty raised similar issues with Alexander — that his injury history argues “very strongly for moving on” — he also broke down the Packers’ ongoing cornerback issues outside of Alexander’s availability. Eric Stokes has regressed, not rebounded, as a healthy member of the defense in 2024, while injuries and youth have forced Keisean Nixon to play more on the outside than in the slot, where he traditionally starts.

The point being that the Packers will have enough challenges working to improve their secondary in 2025 without moving on from Alexander. While cutting him could save the team cap space, the potential pitfalls of trying to replace him could stay their hand.

“I’m assuming [the Packers will] sign a veteran CB and draft at least two,” Dougherty wrote. “But they can’t count on hitting on both picks (if it’s two) and there will be growing pains with young CBs. I could see Gutekunst biting the bullet and going one more season with Alexander.”

Will Packers Make Cornerback a 1st-Round Priority?

The Packers will likely look to the 2025 NFL draft for cornerback reinforcements no matter what decision they make with Alexander, but will they make it their top priority with their first-round selection? Gutekunst has gone down that road a few times before.

Earlier in his tenure, Gutekunst traded up nine spots in the first round of the 2018 draft to land Alexander at No. 18 overall. The next day, he cashed in the Packers’ No. 45 pick in the second round on cornerback Josh Jackson, doing so just one year after the team took cornerback Kevin King with the No. 33 overall pick of the 2017 draft. Neither King nor Jackson earned a second contract, but his move for Alexander paid up enormously.

Gutekunst then took another big swing after letting King walk after the 2020 season. With the No. 29 overall pick in 2021, he kicked off his fascination with Georgia Bulldog defenders and drafted Stokes to become the new perimeter starter opposite Alexander. While injuries would later derail Stokes’ career with the Packers, he shined as a rookie in 2021, finishing with one interception, 14 pass breakups and 55 tackles.

Now, maybe Gutekunst’s misfortune with Stokes has changed his draft approach, but it seems far more likely that he is prepared to take another big swing to address one of the biggest issues — if not the biggest — with his roster. That could mean the Packers using their first-round pick (projected at No. 27 overall in Week 16) to target a new corner.