Green Bay Packers Hidden Gems: 3 Secret Superstars on the 2025 roster

Which three hidden gems on the 2025 roster could help the Packers make a serious Super Bowl run?

In the 2024 regular season, the Green Bay Packers lost six games… by a total of 24 points. There was no game in which this team was out of the spectrum of victory; it was just that sometimes, things rolled the other way.

Then came the Wild Card game against the Philadelphia Eagles, the 22-10 loss, and Jordan Love’s three interceptions. It was a brutal way for the season to end, especially since the game was never really competitive as every other contest had been. It doesn’t lessen the sting that they lost to the eventual Super Bowl champions — more was expected and hoped for, and it didn’t happen.

Love, who threw just 11 picks for the second straight season before things went splat, now has two new targets in the 2025 draft in the persons of first-rounder Matthew Golden and third-rounder Savion Williams. There was all the talk last season that the Packers didn’t need a No. 1 receiver to succeed, but at a certain point, that philosophy becomes reductive, and you’re left holding the bag.

Golden, in particular, has the attributes to stand out.

Williams is a one-man demolition derby with contested catches — and he’s not a bad Wildcat quarterback, either.

Beyond Love and his targets, the Packers are once again primed for a deep playoff run… if everything clicks the right way. In the continuation of our “Hidden Gems” series, we look at one underrated veteran, free-agent signing, and draft pick. These three players could all be keys to the Packers’ story in 2025.

Underrated Veteran: CB Carrington Valentine

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When Jaire Alexander has been on the field throughout his seven-year career, he’s been about as good as any cornerback in the NFL. Problem is, “When” has become a major qualifier, as Alexander has missed more games than he’s played over the last four seasons. That was one of the reasons the Packers released Alexander on Monday, along with the $34.6 million in cap space the release gives the franchise over the 2025 and 2026 league years. Most of the cap liberty in this league year is taken up by Alexander’s $17.04 million in dead cap space, which general manager Brian Gutekunst said on Tuesday that the team will take on in 2025 to get it out of the way.

Alexander missed 10 games and 671 snaps last season with knee issues, and when Alexander was off the field, the Packers’ best cornerback was second-year man Carrington Valentine, whom the Packers stole out of Kentucky with the 232nd pick in the seventh round of the 2023 draft.

With Alexander unavailable, Valentine allowed eight catches on 18 targets for 97 yards, 5.4 yards per target, and an opponent EPA per play of -0.23. More than any other Green Bay cornerback, Valentine kept the standard at a certain level. The Packers did allow an opponent passing EPA of -0.03 with Alexander out, and -0.13 when he was healthy, so it’s not as if Alexander will be easy to replace as the No. 1 guy. But Valentine seems to have the skills to get there.

Most of Valentine’s “negative” plays at this point in his career are either easy catches underneath when he’s in off coverage, or plays in which he’s a step late to where he needs to be. You rarely see him get beaten outright in embarrassing fashion, which is obviously important. And given his ability to be in the right place at the right time, and to decipher and react to advanced route concepts, it would seem that the arrow is pointing all the way up.

“Just a guy that comes to work every day,” defensive passing game coordinator Derrick Ansley said of Valentine in January. “He’s the same guy, got a smile on his face. He’s got a unique personality, and you feel that in the meeting room, you feel that on the field. I always joke with him, his personality reminds me of Marlon Humphrey. He plays with that same kind of play style, that same kind of edge. He’s looking for the challenge, looking for the confrontation, and I think that’s helped him down the stretch make a couple plays.”

Underrated Free-Agent Signing: WR Mecole Hardman Jr.

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The signing of former Kansas City Chiefs, New York Jets, and Kansas City Chiefs (again) receiver and returner Mecole Hardman Jr. wasn’t a major blip on the 2025 free agency radar, nor was Hardman’s contract with the Packers anything to write home about. The seven-year veteran received a one-year, $1.5 million deal with $150.000 guaranteed, and coming off a 2024 season in which he missed the last five games of the regular season, and all of the Chiefs’ postseason, with a knee injury, one wonders what Green Bay might be expecting here. There is some special teams spice there, as Hardman has been an impactful return man throughout his career.

“He [has] a little bit more experience in the punt return game than the kick return game, but he can do both,” Gutekunst said of Hardman at the owners meetings in March. “He’s obviously going to add some speed to our football team. He’s been in big games, and played well in big games.”

Fair enough, but after studying the Packers’ run game in 2024, I think there might be additional value for Hardman in the kinds of two-back, jet-action concepts this team got into in some really interesting ways last season. For his part, Hardman has totaled 305 yards and four touchdowns on 39 carries as a runner in his NFL career, mostly on the kinds of sweeps Matt LaFleur would occasionally dial up for Jayden Reed last season.

The amount of effective misdirection in those two-back sets with receiver threats in the run game can set a defense on edge, and Hardman certainly understands how to get that done. Both of Hardman’s explosive plays in the 2024 season came on those sweep runs, and they both happened against the San Francisco 49ers in a 28-18 Week 7 win — a 20-yard run at the start of the second quarter, and an 18-yard touchdown with 3:24 left in the game.

If you superimpose those plays over the kind of stuff LaFleur and his staff have dialed up for Reed and other receivers at times, the fit is fairly obvious.

Hardman’s snaps in that role dropped in 2024 as Xavier Worthy became more of a speed-sweep factor, but there will be opportunities in his new NFL home, Reed’s (and others’) snaps in said role notwithstanding. Especially since Bo Melton is now a cornerback!

Underrated Draft Pick: EDGE Barryn Sorrell

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The Packers’ edge rush was an interesting bag of stuff in the 2024 season. Rashan Gary led the team with nine sacks and 49 total pressures among edge defenders, and outside of Gary’s efforts, it was Kingsley Enagbare, Lukas Van Ness, and Brenton Cox Jr. to greater or lesser degrees. Obviously, more has been expected of Van Ness, as the team selected him with the 13th overall pick in the 2023 draft, but that’s been a non-starter so far.

The Packers didn’t make any big splashes for a pass-rusher in free agency, but they did go after two intriguing guys in the draft. There was Oklahoma State’s Collin Oliver with the 159th overall pick in the fifth round. Injuries limited Oliver’s ability to get on the field in 2024, but when he was on the field, his impact was obvious. Oliver then went to the scouting combine and really showed off, proving that the athleticism you see on tape is a real thing. Without an abbreviated season, Oliver might have been a second-day selection.

But the rookie who has my attention is Texas’ Barryn Sorrell, who the Packers got with the 124th pick in the fourth round. Last season for the Longhorns, the 6’3, 256-pound Sorrell totaled nine sacks, 49 total pressures, 35 solo tackles, 25 stops, and five tackles for loss. Moreover, he was a multi-gap nightmare for opposing offenses, lining up 16% of the time as a defensive tackle, and even getting nine snaps as a shaded nose tackle.

Wherever he lined up, Sorrell’s mission was destruction, and it wasn’t just about quarterback disruption. He was able to prevent several red zone touchdown runs with his knack for crashing through the line and coming down with the ballcarrier.

Sorrell doesn’t lack for confidence, either. He knew he wasn’t going to be a first-round pick, but he wanted to attend the NFL draft in Green Bay, so he went there with the understanding that the wait might be tough.

It wasn’t for Sorrell, because he had bigger things in mind. And a family that was behind him.

“It was a dream for me,” he said of the experience. “I would encourage everybody to follow your dreams. Don’t let anybody put you in a box and tell you what you can or can’t do. If you have a dream, and that’s something you always wanted to do, go for it.”

Sorrell wasn’t a first-round prospect because there are questions about his wingspan and arm length, and there are those in the scouting community who have wondered about his ability to bring power and speed to the edge at the NFL level. Based on the tape I’ve seen, I’m not one of them. Sorrell might not be a Day 1 field-tilter, but the attributes that do show up, show up with authority.

(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus and Sports Info Solutions).