Packers’ pre-draft visits point to cornerback and defensive line
· Yahoo Sports
With two days to go until the 2026 NFL Draft, we’ve got nearly a full slate of pre-draft visits on the board.
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Our pre-draft visit tracker shows 28 confirmed visits with a mysterious quarterback making up the 29th. The Green Bay Packers have certainly used all 30 of their visits, but we don’t always get full confirmation of all 30, so we’ll make do with what we can.
What are those visits telling us? As you know, the Packers’ pre-draft visits are always a good indication of what they’re looking at in a particular draft, and this year should be no different. In short, the data shows the Packers are looking at cornerbacks, defensive linemen, and undrafted free agents.
As we’ve outlined previously, if the Packers use five or more visits on a given position, it’s pretty much a given they’ll use at least one pick on that position in that year’s draft. This year, only two positions are going to hit that five-visit threshold: cornerback and defensive lineman.
That’s no surprise to anyone following the Packers. Cornerback and defensive line are probably their two biggest draft needs this year, and it would be a colossal disappointment if they came out of the draft without significant help at either spot.
It’s also noteworthy what kind of player the Packers are looking at this year. Without a first round pick, it would stand to reason the Packers would use most of their visits on later-round prospects, and that is very much the case this year. As of this writing, the Packers’ visitors have held an average position of 201.4 on the NFL Mock Draft Database consensus big board, and that’s not counting the mystery quarterback or the five players ranked so low that they didn’t qualify for the board at all. And for what it’s worth, there are more than 700 players that qualify for the consensus board. You have to be going pretty far off the beaten path to find guys that don’t rank at all.
The Packers are essentially reverting to Ted Thompson-era practices of using a substantial portion of their pre-draft visits as UDFA recruiting trips, which isn’t a bad strategy if most of your picks are going to come on the latter two days of the draft.
It’s going to be a challenging weekend for the Packers’ front office, but so far it looks like they’re taking the right approach. If you’re going to be sitting out the first round, you’d better make sure you’re prepared to nail rounds two through seven. Judging by their visits, the Packers are on track to do that.