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Tonight! Packers 2026 Schedule Reaction and Review

The wait is almost over.

Tonight the NFL reveals the Packers’ 2026 schedule and we get our first look at the roadmap for a season that already feels loaded with intrigue.

Start with the NFC North.

Six games that could define everything.

The Bears remain the team to beat until someone knocks them off, which means every Packers-Bears clash will feel massive. The Lions will arrive carrying fresh offseason optimism and the desire to flip the script against a Green Bay team that swept them in 2025. And Vikings week? That’s annual chaos, with weird bounces, wild finishes, and the kind of games that can swing a season.

Then there’s the reunion.

Jeff Hafley returns to Lambeau with the Miami Dolphins, bringing one of the schedule’s most compelling storylines with him. The former Packers defensive coordinator helped reshape Green Bay’s defense, and now he’ll try to beat his old team in front of a Lambeau crowd that once embraced him.

That’s the beauty of schedule release night. It’s the first real chance to map the road ahead. Which divisional games land in December? Where are the primetime showdowns? How tough is the travel stretch?

Join CHTV co-founder Aaron Nagler on our YouTube channel tonight as he breaks it all down. The rivals. The revenge games. The defining stretches. Don’t miss it!

2026 Packers Schedule Preview

With the league announcing the opening Monday Night Football game being Chiefs and Broncos, the Packers will assuredly play their ]Week 1 game Sunday afternoon.

The Packers will play their opening game on Sunday, September 13th either at 12 PM central time or 3:25 pm Central.

Week 1 - Division Opponent? Since 1994 when FOX took over the rights to the NFC games, the Packers have played exactly half (16 of 32) of their opening day games against current NFC North opponents. The most common opponent for the Packers on Week 1 in that time span is the division rival Bears. The Packers and Bears have played seven times in Week 1 dating back to 1997 when the Packers defended their 1996 championship with a Monday Night Football opener.

There is a chance the Bears play the Wednesday night opener at the Seattle Seahawks, which would obviously mean they can’t play the Packers on Week 1. However, if the Seahawks play somebody else, it would not be a surprise for a marquee game on FOX or CBS being Packers vs. Bears.

Which divisions do the Packers play? For the first time since 2022, the Packers will play the entire AFC East. The four matchups: at Jets, at Patriots, home to Dolphins and home to Bills are the same as the last season the Packers won the Super Bowl in 2010. The four NFC division opponents are the NFC South. The Packers last played at Saints, at Bucs, home to Panthers and home to Falcons back in 2020.

It is the first season since 2002, the first year of realignment when all of these eight games were identical. From the NFC East, West and AFC South the last three remaining opponents are the Cowboys, Rams and Texans.

Get much more in our schedule preview right here!

No International Games For the Packers in 2026

With the reveal of the NFL's 2026 International games of the 2026 NFL schedule, one thing immediately jumps off the page: No international games for the Green and Gold. Nine home games and zero international travel. In a league built on razor-thin margins, that's a big advantage.

Packers Will Play Rams On Thanksgiving Eve

The NFL has announced Green Bay will face the Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium on Wednesday, Nov. 25th, the night before Thanksgiving. The marquee holiday matchup will be streaming on Netflix.

It’s another measuring-stick moment for Matt LaFleur’s squad, facing a proven NFC contender in primetime with the entire football world watching. Holiday games carry a different kind of pressure, and Green Bay will need to be sharp in every phase against a talented Rams team in a hostile environment. For a Packers team with legitimate postseason ambitions, this isn’t just a spectacle, it’s an opportunity to make a statement on one of the NFL’s biggest regular season stages. I

t's just the second time in franchise history the Packers will play on a Wednesday. The other was on Sept. 28, 1938, against the Chicago Cardinals in Buffalo.

Examining the Status of Packers Entering Contract Years in 2026

The Packers already locked up multiple players from their 2023 draft class beyond this upcoming season, with Lukas Van Ness and Jayden Reed under contract at least through 2027, the former via his 5th year option, and the latter through a three-year extension.

But what about the other players from that 13-man class? Let’s examine where they stand in terms of getting long-term deals to stay in Green Bay.

Colby Wooden, Sean Clifford, Dontayvion Wicks, Anders Carlson, Lew Nichols, Anthony Johnson and Grant DuBose are already playing elsewhere, with Brian Gutekunst managing to turn Wooden into veteran linebacker Zaire Franklin and Wicks into multiple picks through trades.

There are still several players on the roster from that class though, all of whom are entering contract years.

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The Modern NFL Is A War Of Attrition

Packers Prove Again That Boring Is Good

The move barely caused a ripple nationally.

No splashy contract. No screaming debate shows. No dramatic introductory press conference. Just a veteran quarterback signing in May, the sort of transaction that scrolls quietly across the bottom ticker before disappearing beneath schedule-release speculation and fantasy football projections.

And yet the Packers signing veteran quarterback Tyrod Taylor may say more about where this franchise is headed than most people realize.

Because this was not a move about upside. It was a move about stability.

That matters.

Green Bay Packers the most hated NFL team? They hate us 'cause they ain't us

Why do so many NFL fans love to hate the Green Bay Packers? On the latest episode of Carry The G Radio: The Podcast, Aaron and Billy kick things off by diving into the Packers’ reputation as the league’s most hated franchise via a recent survey and why Green Bay always seems to live rent free in the minds of rival fanbases.

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The Packers need more Devonte Wyatt #greenbaypackers #gopackgo #NFL #Packers

Packers claim TE Luke Lachey and CB M.J. Devonshire off waivers

The Packers continued tinkering with the back end of the roster on Tuesday, claiming cornerback M.J. Devonshire and tight end Luke Lachey off waivers.

Devonshire arrives with a bit of NFL nomad status already attached, having spent time with the Raiders, Panthers, Ravens and most recently the Bills since entering the league as a seventh-round pick in 2024. He has yet to appear in a regular season game, but the Packers clearly see something worth exploring in a cornerback in need of capable bodies.

Lachey is perhaps the more intriguing addition, if only because of the position. Tight end has questions about long-term roles at the back end of that room and bringing in a young developmental option makes sense. The former Texans seventh-rounder spent all of last season on Houston’s practice squad.

No Excuses For The Packers In 2026

The path is clear.

Nine home games and zero international travel.

The NFL season is a grind by design. Travel wears teams down. Disrupted sleep, altered practice schedules, long flights, weird recovery windows, it all adds up over 17 games. Just ask teams forced to surrender a home date for an international showcase while dealing with the logistical circus that comes with crossing multiple time zones. The Packers? None of that.

And let’s be clear, squeaking into the wildcard game this season is unacceptable. Brian Gutekunst pushed his chips in when he traded for Micah Parsons. The Packers doubled down on contention by reshaping the coaching staff, bringing in Jonathan Gannon to run the defense and continuing to build around Jordan Love and a young offensive core that should now be entering its prime. This is a team built to compete right now.

Fair or not, the pressure sits squarely on Matt LaFleur. He has the quarterback, the roster, the extra home game, and a schedule free of international disruption. Expectations aren’t theoretical. Good coaching gets you into the playoffs. Great coaching gets you a deep playoff run and a chance at playing in the Super Bowl.

If you’re the Packers, what more could you ask for from a scheduling standpoint? No passport. No neutral-site sacrifice. No built-in travel disadvantage. Extra home game. Familiar routines. That doesn’t guarantee anything, of course. The NFL doesn’t hand out Lombardi's in May. But expectations should absolutely rise. This isn’t a season where “they’re young” works as cover. It’s not a year where fatigue from brutal travel can explain a late-season fade. The Packers have talent. They have offensive continuity. They have quarterback stability. And now they have schedule fortune.

If Green Bay falls short of winning the NFC North, fair questions will follow. If they fail to make a deep playoff run, those questions get louder. Because with this year's schedule, the runway is clear.

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Get to Know Green Bay's New LB Coach: Sam Siefkes

Welcome back to Wisconsin, Sam Siefkes. The Packers have a new linebackers coach for 2026, and unsurprisingly, it's someone Jonathan Gannon knows well. This will be Siefkes' second stint coaching linebackers at the NFL level, stepping in for Sean Duggan, who departed in January as part of the offseason coaching carousel. Duggan landed in Miami as the defensive coordinator on Jeff Hafley's staff.

When it became clear the Packers needed a replacement, several names surfaced — Siefkes among them, largely due to his existing relationship with Gannon. At 34 years old, Siefkes arrives in Green Bay with nearly fifteen years of coaching experience under his belt, though only four of those came at the NFL level. He's not the most seasoned option they could have pursued, but experience isn't the only thing worth valuing in a hire.

For Siefkes, this one is personal. He's a Wisconsin native who grew up here, went to college here, and launched his coaching career here. "It means a lot. I grew up watching, obviously, Green Bay, and that was what we did every Sunday," he said earlier this month. The Packers will actually be the fourth Wisconsin-based team he's coached for — a full-circle moment for a guy who's spent most of his life in the state he now gets to represent at the highest level.

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Big Opportunities Await Golden and Williams in 2026

Flashback to the 2025 draft. Going into that weekend, it was pretty obvious that the Packers were going to come away with some kind of talent infusion at wide receiver. That season had been full of drops, struggles against man coverage, and a general lack of extremely high end talent. The space that should have been filled by Davante Adams as the #1 receiver was vacant, and it showed on the field.

The range of where a receiver could have been taken in that draft was wide-ranging, but as we all know the Packers didn’t wait long. Matthew Golden was the team’s first round selection in a historic occasion (one of the better draft moments for Green Bay in recent memory). Some observers were surprised that Golden was still on the board at all in that moment, and there was palpable excitement from Packers fans as the team finally pulled the trigger.

The real surprise, however, came two rounds later when another receiver got the call from Green Bay. Savion Williams, the big, shifty gadget man from TCU was next. If Golden’s selection was a celebration, William’s was one of, well, confusion.

Maybe Gutekusnt really did just take the best remaining player on their board in the third round. It’s worth noting how needs-based the Packers’ 2026 draft was, compared to the 2025 result. After ignoring positions like cornerback, pass rusher and nose tackle in the first three rounds of 2025, they hammered those positions this year. Again, maybe that’s just the board doing the talking, but part of me still thinks the team felt extremely let down by certain positions in 2025.

Regardless, Golden and Williams have a massive opportunity to flourish with an appropriate amount of targets going their way, and a higher place in Green Bay’s WR hierarchy heading into 2026.

Packers claim WR Brenden Rice Off Waivers

The Packers are taking another low-risk swing on upside, claiming wide receiver Brenden Rice off waivers a day after adding to the roster via the same route. Yes, if something feels familiar about the name, it's because he's Jerry Rice’s son, known around these parts as That Guy Who Fumbled.

A 2024 seventh-round pick for the Chargers, Rice brings size at 6-foot-3, 210 pounds, and gives Green Bay another developmental option in a crowded receiver room. Having bounced between five organizations in short order, he’s clearly still searching for footing in the NFL. But in the offseason, these are exactly the kinds of lottery tickets worth scratching.

To make room on the 90 man roster, the Packers waived DL James Ester.