Three Straight Sevens: Green Bay’s 2026 Season, by the Numbers

The 2025 Packers were 9–3–1 in mid-December and looked like a genuine contender. Then it fell apart entirely: they lost that Denver game, the one in which Micah Parsons tore his ACL, and never won again, dropping five straight to end the year. The last of them will follow this team all season. Green Bay led Chicago 21–3 at halftime of the Wild Card round and lost 31–27. Since 2000, the Packers had been 115–1 when leading by at least 18 points. That made it 115–2. It was also the franchise’s first playoff loss to the Bears since 1941.

That left Green Bay 9–7–1, second in the division, and, for the third consecutive season, the NFC’s No. 7 seed. Then the offseason took the depth: Rashan Gary traded to Dallas, Romeo Doubs to New England, Elgton Jenkins and Nate Hobbs released, Quay Walker and Rasheed Walker gone in free agency. There was no first-round pick to replace any of it; that went to Dallas in the Parsons trade. And Parsons himself won’t be back until roughly mid-October.

What BBMI’s model says

BBMI’s preseason model rates Green Bay +2.8 points per game against an average opponent, 12th of 32, and projects 9.7–7.3 with a 55% chance to make the playoffs, 17% to win the NFC North and 2.9% to win the Super Bowl.

One note on how to read that rating: before any 2026 games, BBMI’s NFL rating is market-anchored, seeded by win-total priors that already reflect each team’s schedule. It sharpens into a genuinely opponent-adjusted number as the season is played, so preseason it sorts teams into tiers rather than splitting hairs.

The range matters more than the point estimate. The middle 80% of BBMI’s simulated outcomes runs from 7 to 12 wins, a huge band for a team sitting on a 9.7-win projection, with both a disappointing season and a real contender comfortably inside the model’s plausible range. For context, those 9.7 projected wins sit just above the current DraftKings total of 9.5, which has fallen from 10.5 back in February.

BBMI 20,000-season simulation · 80% range.

There is exactly one 2026 Packers game BBMI has weighed in on so far, and it’s the opener: at Minnesota, September 13. BBMI’s page is still awaiting its sportsbook-line feed, but the model projects Green Bay by four and makes the Packers its straight-up pick, a useful tell that it sees the Vikings, at 8.4 projected wins, as the division’s weak link.

Nine-and-a-half wins, again

That projection is the most Packers number imaginable, and that’s the problem. It’s almost exactly what they’ve done three years running, and three years running it has produced the same seeding: the No. 7 slot. Those three trips have yielded exactly one playoff win, the 2023 upset at Dallas. Matt LaFleur is 76–40–1 in the regular season with playoff berths in six of seven years, and also 3–6 in the postseason, with no NFC Championship Game appearance since 2020. Green Bay’s answer to a fourth straight division-less season was continuity: in January it extended LaFleur, GM Brian Gutekunst and football-operations chief Russ Ball together.

That’s the frame BBMI’s numbers land inside. The model isn’t predicting a collapse or a breakthrough. It’s projecting, once again, something in the middle.

The $188 million question

No single fact shapes Green Bay’s 2026 more than this one: Micah Parsons will not be there in September.

The Packers gave up two first-round picks and Kenny Clark to get him from Dallas in August 2025, then signed him to four years and $188 million, at the time, the richest contract ever given to a non-quarterback. He was worth it: in 14 games he posted 12.5 sacks, led the entire NFL with a 20.7% pressure rate, and made first-team All-Pro.

Then came Denver in Week 15: a torn ACL with meniscus damage, surgery in late December, and camp opening with him on the PUP list. Parsons has called a Week 6 return “very realistic” while making clear it isn’t guaranteed; the broader expectation is mid-October at the earliest, and the team has confirmed no date.

The chronology is brutal. Green Bay entered that Denver game 9–3–1. Parsons went down during it, the Packers lost, and they never won again. Now they open 2026 without him, and without Rashan Gary, traded to Dallas in March. The pass rush until Parsons returns leans heavily on 2023 first-rounder Lukas Van Ness, who has 8.5 sacks in three NFL seasons, and on Javon Hargrave pushing from the interior. If this season goes sideways, that’s where it starts.

Jordan Love, and the case he still has to close

Jordan Love is unambiguously the guy, playing under the four-year, $220 million extension he signed in 2024 and coming off the most efficient season of his career: 3,381 yards, 23 touchdowns, 6 interceptions, 66.3%, a 101.2 rating, and a PFF passing grade of 88.7, third among all quarterbacks. He missed one start after a Week 16 concussion and sat the finale.

BBMI’s 2025 team page agrees. Green Bay finished 9th in overall offensive EPA per play, driven by the league’s No. 2 pass offense and No. 2 quarterback EPA mark (+0.276 per dropback). By the measures that matter most, Love was very good.

The counterweight isn’t the tape, it’s the record: three seasons as the starter, three playoff appearances, one playoff win. Green Bay is paying for more than efficiency, especially over a first month it will spend without its best defender.

The defense: new voice, new shape

The other half of 2025 was the problem. BBMI’s team page has Green Bay 20th in defensive EPA per play last season and 22nd against the pass, a steep fall from a 2024 unit that graded near the top.

So the scheme changed. Jeff Hafley left to become head coach of the Miami Dolphins, and Green Bay hired Jonathan Gannon, the former Cardinals head coach and Eagles defensive coordinator, to replace him. Gannon is moving the Packers back toward a 3-4 structure while leaning on disguised coverages and three-safety looks built around Xavier McKinney, the second-team All-Pro safety. He’s also been explicit that the system will bend to the personnel rather than follow a rigid playbook.

He has pieces: McKinney and Pro Bowl corner Keisean Nixon on the back end, Hargrave and Zaire Franklin added in the middle, and a defense-heavy draft class behind them. But it’s a new scheme, a rebuilt back seven, and no Parsons for the first month or more.

The weapons around Love

The Packers made their choice at receiver: let Romeo Doubs walk to New England and Dontayvion Wicks go to Philadelphia, then pay the two they kept. Christian Watson got a four-year extension after returning from his own ACL tear to lead the team at 2.28 yards per route run; Jayden Reed got three years and $50.25 million. The leap candidate is Matthew Golden, the 2025 first-rounder who managed 445 yards as a rookie.

Better news at tight end: Tucker Kraft, who tore his ACL in Week 9, came off PUP on July 31 and returned to 11-on-11 work on August 16, targeting Week 1 without a snap restriction. Up front, the line is in flux after losing Jenkins and Rasheed Walker, with Sean Rhyan extended to hold center and right tackle Zach Bako-Bewele, who changed his surname from Zach Tom this year to honor his Nigerian grandparents, anchoring the right side.

At running back, Josh Jacobs returns after rushing for 929 yards and a team-leading 13 touchdowns in 2025, and he returned to practice on August 18 after a groin issue.

The games that matter

The schedule hands Green Bay its story in three dates. Week 6, Dallas at Lambeau on Sunday night (Oct. 18) is the one circled in ink: Parsons’ own most optimistic return target, against the team that traded him, with Rashan Gary now wearing the other uniform. Week 12 at the Rams (Wednesday, Nov. 25) is the inaugural Thanksgiving-Eve game on Netflix, against the team BBMI rates No. 1 in the league. And Week 16 at Chicago on Christmas Day sends the Packers back to the site of the 21–3 collapse.

Then it ends where the division probably does: Week 18, Detroit at Lambeau Field. BBMI makes the Lions heavy division favorites, 60% to Green Bay’s 17%, which is its own curiosity, given Detroit finished last in the NFC North a year ago at 9–8 and missed the playoffs entirely while Chicago won it at 11–6. The model is betting on the Lions’ talent reasserting itself over one strange season. If it’s wrong, and if Parsons comes back the player he was, the Packers have exactly the profile that turns a coin-flip playoff probability into January football. That’s the season: survive September, get the superstar back, and finally make a No. 7 seed mean something else.

BBMI is expanding its NFL coverage as the season approaches. Green Bay is one of the first teams up. Model ratings are preseason and update as real games are played.