Border Battle: Packers-Vikings Q&A with The Leap's Jason Hirschhorn

I recently had a (very long) conversation with Jason Hirschhorn about the upcoming Packers-Vikings game at The Leap. We had a wide-ranging discussion covering every position group on the Green Bay Packers and how it interacts with the Vikings.

For the reciprocal piece, check out Hirschhorn’s reciprocal piece asking me about the Vikings.

My conversation with Hirschhorn covered the Packers’ ambiguity at offensive line, running back and cornerback, as well as how Jordan Love and Matt LaFleur plan to change the offense and deal with the Brian Flores defense.

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and flow.

Arif:

The Packers have demonstrated a lot of ambiguity about who might start along the offensive line and at cornerback. Should we expect Aaron Banks and Zach Bako-Bewele? Who are the starting five?

Jason:

There are two starters, at least on what would be the unofficial depth chart of the Packers, that you have to have at least some question about actually playing in Sunday's game or playing all of Sunday's game.

You mentioned Aaron Banks. That's one of them. He has dealt with a variety of injuries since he arrived in Green Bay in 2025. At one point earlier in the offseason, he did have whatever the 28-year-old version of a clean bill of health is, and then some knee issues started to come up right around the time of training camp. He has gotten back into practice, so it's not as though he has not worked with the starting offense in any way, but he also has not had a full normal practice at any point in training camp or just in 2026 — like the calendar year.

So, there's that question with Zach Bako-Bewele, and I'll just remind your audience who may not know: that's Zach Tom. He is in the process of legally changing his last name from Tom to Bako-Bewele. When you see that hyphenated name on the field, that's who that is. He is coming off a partially torn … I always forget if it’s a patellar or patella tendon, whichever one of those things can be torn; he partially tore it —

Arif:

I believe the bone is called the patella, and the tendon is the patellar tendon. But I’m not a doctor.

[Editor’s Note: I was right; that means I’m legally entitled to a medical degree]

Jason:

Well, we're both not doctors, so we're very quick to answer these questions. But he, like Banks, has returned to practice, and he’s probably had more consistent work than Banks has had in training camp.

But that's not the same as saying he's had normal reps. Like, even after he came back to practice, he was not participating in the 11-on-11 period. And then when he did move into 11-on-11, the Packers coaching staff was rotating him at least at a certain point with Anthony Belton, the guy who I presume would play in his stead if Bako-Bewele either can't go or if he's in a rotation or if he starts the game and has to drop out, whichever one of those situations could transpire.

The Packers coaching staff could be engaging in gamesmanship, but I'm not actually sure that they are. Matt LaFleur was asked about this earlier this week, and he gave one of those answers where you're like, "I really cannot tell if you're just being honest here, or if this is just like we want to gain that like 1% of 1% of 1% of an advantage in our heads by not making it clear to the Vikings that these players will or won't be playing.”

But the one person on the Packers coaching staff — who I'm not saying he doesn't BS, but like probably BSs very little by the standards of football coaches — is offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich. He was asked about this, and he was like, "I don't really know who the starting five are going to be in week one. Like I know what Zach Bako-Bewele will be once he's on the field, and I know approximately what Aaron Banks will be when he's on the field, but I can't guarantee you —” and I'm paraphrasing here “— if either those guys are going to be on the field or how much they play.”

And keep in mind, the Packers are one of like the few — I want to say not just NFL teams, but like major football programs in the country — that actually have a track record of rotating offensive linemen in games, so it is entirely possible that Aaron Banks starts Sunday's game at left guard, and Zach Bako-Bewele starts the game at right tackle, and then one or two drives in, you have different people occupying both of those spots, or one of those spots, or whatever it might be.

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If Aaron Banks either doesn't play or does not play the full game, I would expect rookie fifth-round pick Jager Burton to be the first man up in that spot. There was a period of time where it seemed like he actually might end up being like the starting right guard, but with Banks' knee issues, they kind of just committed him mostly to the left guard spot, just so they would have someone as ready to go as possible for if and when Banks was to miss time.

And I already mentioned Anthony Belton, the most likely guy to come in for Zach Bako-Bewele if he doesn't play the full game or doesn't play in the game at all. Other than that, Jordan Morgan will be the starting left tackle.

The center will be Sean Rhyan, the guy who finished in that position last season, and Jacob Monk, a late-round pick from a few years ago, is pretty hammered on at this point as the week one starting right guard. I don't know if that's going to be the case for the whole season. I have my doubts about that, to be honest. But at least this week, that appears to be the guy who's going to start in that position.

Arif:

So, the Packers have historically had a pretty excellent offensive line, and that's winnowed away, I think, over the past couple of years. Fully healthy — so that's with Aaron Banks and Bako-Bewele playing — how confident are you in this offensive line?

Jason:

Relative to, let's just say, the Packers' offensive lines of the early LaFleur era till like the first year of Jordan Love — that being 2019 to 2023 — I think it's not reasonable to expect, even if everybody involved is healthy or as healthy as they can be, for this version of the offensive line to be as good as those.

Now, I think there's reason to believe that this offensive line could be better than the version they had last year. Jordan Morgan has not really spent a lot of time in regular season or playoff games at left tackle, but that is the spot that he played exclusively at Arizona. And the returns from training camp and the preseason, such as they are, have been very positive. And it seems like he is going to be a capable left tackle.

Whether or not he's anything more than that remains completely unclear because you cannot really assess more than a little bit, if even a little bit, from preseason games. But he looks like someone who's going to be better in pass protection, or at least no worse in pass protection than last year's starter Rasheed Walker, and he might have some advantages in the run game that Rasheed Walker didn't have, so there's a scenario where that spot is better.

Now, Banks in 2025 was outside of the short period of time late in the regular season, not very effective, and almost all of that coincided with injury. So, if he's healthy, there's reason to believe that he could actually play reasonably well. Like no one's going to confuse him for an All-Pro guard, but he can be someone who can actually hold that spot pretty well when he's healthy

But as we already discussed, he is currently not healthy, and there is no indication that he is going to be as healthy as someone can be in the middle of a season anytime soon. So I have significant doubts about his effectiveness, pretty much at any point moving forward.

For the other spots, like Zach Bako-Bewele, even a diminished version of him is still probably going to be their best offensive lineman. He's just dealing with a higher floor and higher ceiling than I think anyone else on that unit. Sean Rhyan, I thought, was mostly fine once he moved to center last season. This is his first year where he's fully preparing to be in that spot. There's a scenario where he's a little bit better than he was last year, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect him to go from a passable center to someone who's like a plus starter there. It's not impossible that happens, but I personally wouldn't expect it.

Jacob Monk, again, is going to be, it seems, the Week One starter at right guard. I do not know that that will be the guy starting at right guard by October. Not because there's no way that's the case. It's more that there's very little to go off of the training camp reps that were available to the public, and the preseason work that he got in was not terrible, but also wasn't like so dominant.

We can see why the coaching staff really likes this guy. They've talked about his “play style,” which has been the term of art used by the coaching staff as it pertains to Jacob Monk, and thus far, it's kind of hard to see what they really mean. Like, you know, he's got the tenacity, nastiness, etc., that is generally associated with a good offensive lineman. But at some point, that has to also be associated with consistent pass protection and moving people in the run game. And at least thus far, he has not shown those things.

I wonder if part of the reason he is the Week One starter at guard, like right guard in particular, is because the Packers know they're playing a Brian Flores defense, and maybe you wouldn't want to throw a rookie like Jager Burton, even if you like him.

You wouldn't necessarily want to throw him into like that maelstrom right off the bat, and maybe that's the situation they're trying to shield him from early on, and then he maybe takes that job at some point later in the season.

I don't know how much the Packers can really confidently know themselves because Monk has barely played in the NFL. His only career start, funny enough, was against the Vikings last season, and that was a situation where the Packers basically didn't play any of their meaningful players. And Jacob Monk was fine.

Arif: That does implicate what characterizes the Vikings' defense, which is how blitz-heavy they are and how often they get pressure. They had the fastest time to pressure in the NFL last year. Not a huge surprise, given how they organize their pass rush.

Typically Jordan Love is even better against the blitz than he is otherwise. But against the Vikings' blitz, he does actually seem to get worse than he does otherwise. So I'm a little curious how they're going to approach it.

It seems like in the preseason — which, you know, who knows; it’s the preseason — they were much more willing to do stuff like take short, quick passes than Jordan Love has typically done in the past. He's a deep ball passer, and his response to the blitz is to throw even deeper.

The Vikings, against every other team in the NFL last year, held their opponent to the lowest opposing depth of target because of the way that they play, and found themselves going up against deep ball passing from Jordan Love.

How do we expect Jordan Love to approach the way that the Vikings do defense this year, and is it going to meaningfully change over the last four or five games he's played against Brian Flores' defense?

Jason: You already threw out the necessary caveat that we don't always know how much of what we see in the preseason is indicative of what a team does or doesn't plan to do in the regular season.

So, with that caveat out there, I want to remind your audience — if they were even aware of this — back when the NFL had its annual league meeting with whatever super nice resorts and all the coaches there with the photos and all that stuff. Matt LaFleur was asked about the offense, and he said in so many words that part of their off-season plan is to kind of go back down to the foundational elements and then build back out from there.

And you know that's a vague enough description that it can mean any number of things, right? Like, we're just going to reteach the fundamentals, but we're going to do more or less what we did last year. That could be “we're going to go back to the fundamentals and maybe make those a larger piece of the offense,” and for much of this year, it was really hard to say what that did or didn't mean, and it's still somewhat ambiguous.

But again, if the preseason provides any indication here — and maybe it does, maybe it doesn't — I tend to think some of it is telling. The Packers have gone back to some of the foundational principles that Lafleur put in back in 2019 and 2020, his first two seasons with the Packers.

Now back then, they were more of an under-center team than they were last year. They also ran more outside zone than they did last year. They ran a lot more bootlegs than we've seen from the Packers in quite a few years.

And what I think you described in your question, where there's a lot of like — you didn't say play action — but play action with those kind of slice routes that come underneath the offensive line, and they're quick throws.

It's a way, in some ways, of like hiding the offensive line deficiencies because it's play action, which can slow down the defense, and they're quick passes to one side, so you have the quarterback on the move away, presumably, from the defenders, as just a way that you can get pretty easy layups against defenses that are trying to come after you.

I think that's going to be one of their answers, not specifically to the Vikings, but to pass rushes this year. And obviously, there's only so many of those you can call before the returns diminish. But they were not calling a lot of those last year.

I don't have the number in front of me, but I like anecdotally it seemed like it was the lowest number of like quarterback keepers, nakeds, bootlegs, however you want to describe them, that they've had during the entirety of the excuse me the LaFleur era.

I expect them to use more of that at least while they're figuring out what that offensive line needs to look like. Like if they get to the point, let's say in like late October, and they've kind of coalesced around a group of five offensive linemen that they feel reasonably comfortable with as their pass protectors, maybe they start moving into other directions.

But until something like that happens, I think they're going to have to put Jordan Love on the move more often than they have in the past, and that is not the only way, but a way that you can kind of get around a high-pressure defense like the Vikings have.

Arif: One element of pass protection is usually the running back, but the running back is gone, on the commissioner's exempt list. They did trade for Kaleb Johnson; I'm curious how much he's expected to play. I'm also curious how many snaps in this game. MarShawn Lloyd will choose to be healthy. What should we expect from the Packers running back group?

Jason: So, in terms of the running backs that are officially on the 53 — I'm just going to throw that caveat now, so we don't have to say it every single time — it is somewhat unclear.

Now, I mentioned in my answer to my previous question that I think they're in general going back to a lot more like core principles of LaFleur's offense from early in his tenure in Green Bay, and as I said before, they ran a lot more outside zone from under center than they have in the last few years.

If you look at the running backs presently at the top of their depth chart… Marshawn Lloyd is someone who, at least in terms of his skill set, would make sense in those kinds of runs. And Kaleb Johnson had a lot of success in college on outside zone. That was something that the Packers, both their general manager and head coach Matt LaFleur, mentioned after that trade went through.

I think that provides at least some sign that they expect Kaleb Johnson to be a meaningful part of that rushing attack as it presently exists with the players that they currently have on the 53.

But I don't really think that he's going to have a giant role in Week One because I kind of don't know how he could. He's still a very young player; this is his second season. He, I mean, he did have a rookie season in Pittsburgh, but like by the midpoint of 2025, he just wasn't really a part of that offense, and I don't really know how prepared he is to come into any team, whether it was Green Bay or someone else, and like take five to ten carries off the bat. Maybe that happens.

I think it's more likely that MarShawn Lloyd ends up being maybe not the top running back in terms of pure snap count, but the top running back in terms of touches in Week One. And offensive coordinator Stenavich hinted at that earlier today in his press conference. So we have again some sign that that might be the case, and I expect that you'll see a lot of Chris Brooks in obvious passing situations, he is not much of a ball carrier, but he's kind of good at everything else.

Like he's their best pass protector. That was true last season as well. And with a team like the Vikings facing you, you probably do want a pass protector in their running back, right? So, I think he's going to see a fair amount of snaps. Just know how many touches he's ultimately going to get, at least as like pure handoffs.

And I expect right now, though they have not said for sure this is going to happen, that Pierre Strong Jr. will be a game-day elevation from the practice squad, and then that combination will probably be the core of what they use in Week One. It doesn't mean that Kaleb Johnson won't be active and that he won't necessarily see time on offense, but I just don't think they want to throw in someone who is, in general, inexperienced in the NFL and also very inexperienced with their offense.

Arif: A lot of South Dakota State guys on this roster.

Jason: Correct me if I'm wrong — North Dakota State is the one that you have, like, declared a blood feud with, correct?

Arif: Correct. I’m a Jackrabbits fan by circumstance and proxy.

Jason: So this is a positive development. That’s all I needed to know.

Arif: Correct.

Arif: So, the Packers lost something like 1800 receiving yards, or at least half of their receiving yards. A little bit due to injury, like Luke Musgrave, but a lot of it due to free agency — I mean, [Romeo] Doubs, Dontayvion Wicks. What is the expectation for Christian Watson and Matthew Golden? Matthew Golden had, I think, 360 or so receiving yards last year — certainly not at least 400. And Christian Watson — correct me if I'm wrong, I don't believe he's had more than 700 in a single season.

Jason: Sounds about right. I don't have the numbers staring me in the face, but it's like between 600 and 750, somewhere in that range is his single-season high, if I recall correctly.

[Editor’s Note: His career high in total receiving yardage in the regular season is 620]

Arif: Right, and so with that in mind, especially given Matthew Golden's pedigree as a first-round pick, Christian Watson recently signing a pretty nice-looking contract for him… What is the expectation that that receiving group can actually — not that like Romeo Doubs is setting the world on fire — live up to the amount of replacement snaps necessary to make this like a fully-fledged offense?

Jason: So the other person you didn't mention in that, though he's not technically a wide receiver, is Tucker Kraft, right? And he missed over half of last season and is now coming back. By all signals, he is going to be full send from the jump this season. So that's going to be part of that formula too.

In terms of the wideouts, though, it is interesting because prior to the Josh Jacobs de facto suspension with the commissioners’ exempt list, there was reason to believe that the Packers were still going to be some version of the offense they were in the past. Insofar as the run rates in neutral or early downs, things like that.

Well, with Josh Jacobs not available for the foreseeable future, it does actually make you wonder: Do the Packers have to recalibrate those elements of the offense? Those could come in a variety of forms, but maybe you just have to pass more because you can't just give MarShawn Lloyd and Kaleb Johnson and Pierre Strong Jr. and Chris Brooks, you know, the kind of workload you would have given Josh Jacobs and friends in previous seasons.

I bring that up to say there might be more passing volume or passing opportunities for a player like Christian Watson and a player like Matthew Golden than the predecessor here, Romeo Doubs, didn't have. The Packers were not a team that actually passed a lot just in terms of total volume. They were one of the slowest-paced offenses in the NFL. It was very efficient, but there just weren't that many plays, whether by design or otherwise.

I wonder if that's something that, in general, is going to have to take into account for that change in the backfield. And if that ticks up, does that push Christian Watson to having to flirting with 1000 yards, let's say, health permitting, that certainly seems possible. After he came back in 2025, he was one of the most down-to-down effective receivers in the NFL, and you know that again, it's a Christian Watson stat, so it obviously has to come with caveats. But that still matters.

Like, over the second half of the season, there were not a ton of receivers that were that much more effective than Christian Watson was. And there's also this scenario that I think the Packers are betting on, independent of how exactly they get to it. When you have Watson or a receiver like that on the boundary, it forces defenses to approach you in a variety of ways in terms of the coverage because you can't just let that guy get behind you. It's game over if that happens.

Well, if you're already accounting for what Christian Watson can do deep down the field, you know [with] Tucker Kraft you [can] spit the ball out to him, and he's a first down automatically, which is statistically basically true.

Well, then how is that opposing defense? Do you defend against that? Well, you can get to the quarterback, but if the quarterback is getting the ball out too quickly for you to get to him, maybe there's just not an easy solution to that. So it doesn't mean the Packers' offense is going to be automatically what it was the past few seasons, where it was, I think, by DVOA, it was like six and four and six in terms of its regular-season finishes.

But they do have a lot of answers there. That's before you even get to someone like Matthew Golden. In the case of Golden, he did not have a big role as a rookie, and there was a period in the middle of the year where that was due to injury. If memory serves me correctly, he was dealing with, I think it was like a shoulder and maybe like a wrist or a hand injury.

[Editor’s Note: Shoulder injury, suffered in Week 9 vs. Carolina, and a wrist injury that appeared two weeks later]

But outside of that, they drafted him to essentially be their answer against man coverage, and then Romeo Doubs kind of just developed into that guy in 2025. Not that Doubs, as you put it, is a world beater, but he was good enough that it just made sense to leave that guy out here. He's actually resolving the issue that the offense had in 2024.

Arif: I think we can switch to the other side of the ball. I think that the primary question for me — I know you know personnel questions are important — but [the primary question] is what losing Jeff Hafley means and what gaining Jonathan Gannon means as the Packers' defensive coordinator?

We know both are fairly zone-heavy; they don't blitz a ton relative to the rest of the league. So stylistically, it feels like there are some similarities, but also they have different ways that they approach safety rotations, what coverages that they favor, and Gannon as a DC is used to having a pretty deep pressure package to rely on along the defensive line, which, frankly, Green Bay doesn't seem to have.

So what are kind of the challenges and changes that you expect with Gannon in as DC, and is this a concern losing Hafley so soon after finally finding a defensive coordinator Packers fans actually like?