Green Bay Packers Roster Preview: Safeties
· Yahoo Sports
The Green Bay Packers are a little thin across the board after the first line of the depth chart, but one position where they have bodies to spare is safety, arguably the deepest position on the team. In the final defensive edition of our 2026 roster preview, we’ll touch on every safety on the team and how they’re expected to contribute this upcoming season.
Visit moryak.biz for more information.
If you want to read any of our previous installments, here are our breakdowns of Green Bay’s other position rooms:
Xavier McKinney
While he didn’t make the All-Pro team in 2025 like his first year with the Packers in 2024, Xavier McKinney is still one of the better ballhawking safeties in the NFL. The difference between 2024 and 2025 is that opposing offenses rarely tested McKinney in the air, as they now understand his potential following his eight-interception 2024 campaign.
McKinney was recently voted as the 70th overall player in the NFL by the league’s players, so the appreciation didn’t stop with his two-interception 2025. Look for McKinney to continue to start for the Packers and continue to alter the deep middle of the field, whether it’s him making plays on the ball or teams avoiding him entirely.
Evan Williams
Initially, Evan Williams started the 2025 season in a rotation with Javon Bullard, but he eventually ended up winning the starting job outright after a month or so. Last year, Williams recorded 100 total tackles and brought in three interceptions with the Packers.
More of an all-around player than McKinney, Williams can play in the box, in the middle of the field or as a split-high safety and perform well in all of those roles. Because McKinney is generally in the post, Williams is usually the drop-down safety when the Packers play single-high safety looks.
At just 24 years old, the former fourth-round pick is one of Green Bay’s best young players. He might also end up being one of general manager Brian Gutekunst’s best draft choices, as the selection was considered a “reach” on draft day but has panned out extremely well for the Packers over two years.
Williams should continue to start opposite McKinney at the safety position in 2026.
Javon Bullard
As mentioned previously, Williams and Bullard began the season splitting the safety position before it eventually went to Williams full-time. Now, Bullard is a full-time slot defender, a role that is still played for about two-thirds of defensive snaps.
While his man-to-man ability in the slot is not great, and can get the Packers in trouble when they face players like Justin Jefferson or Amon-Ra St. Brown, Bullard fits blocks well — which helps in both the run and screen game. Considering the cornerback room doesn’t have much experience in the slot, Bullard should continue to be the starting slot in 2026.
The only note I would add here is that there were times where the Packers chose to play a coverage player (Nate Hobbs) in the slot in place of Bullard in obvious passing downs. It will be interesting to see if the team continues that trend in 2026 or whether Bullard will be an every-down slot.
Kitan Oladapo
The first man off the bench over the last two years has been Zayne Anderson, who has since followed Jeff Hafley to the Miami Dolphins. With Anderson out of the mix, Kitan Oladapo will now be the number one backup at both the safety and slot positions. Oladapo does play in the slot, though there’s only been a handful of times where the Packers’ depth at that position was tested.
The 2024 fifth-round pick has looked the part of an NFL safety in the limited looks that he’s gotten on defense, and he helps a good amount on special teams, too. In total, he’s played 136 defensive snaps over two years and 264 special teams reps. Last season, he played 68 defensive snaps (6 percent of the total snaps for the team) and 199 special teams reps over 17 games.
Johnathan Baldwin
The leader in the running for the fifth safety job is probably 2025 UDFA Johnathan Baldwin, who was one of the Packers’ three most-expensive UDFA signings last year, along with nose tackle Nazir Stackhouse (who made the 53-man roster in 2025) and linebacker Jamon Johnson (who played in games in 2025 but was waived with an injury designation this offseason). Baldwin actually played the slot position at UNLV, but has worked pretty much exclusively as a safety with the Packers in the limited looks that we’ve been able to get of him.
Baldwin got in for just one regular-season game as a rookie, the Week 18 JV game against the Minnesota Vikings. He played 66 defensive snaps, recording seven total tackles throughout the game. He also played 14 special teams snaps and recorded 10 special teams snaps (no defensive snaps) in the Packers’ playoff loss to the Chicago Bears.
Mark Perry
When all of the Packers’ injuries stacked up at the end of last season, the team signed Mark Perry to their practice squad on January 1st. A 2024 UDFA, Perry is now on his sixth team in the NFL, but he has yet to play a regular-season snap in the league.
We don’t know much about Perry, considering his limited playing time in the preseason and him only recently being a member of the Packers, but Green Bay has kept him on the offseason roster despite their roster churn. Maybe there’s something there that they think can push Baldwin.
Murvin Kenion III
One of my favorite undrafted free agents on film this year is Murvin Kenion III, who has a pretty crazy story. Kenion is listed by the Packers at 25 years old, the same age as Lukas Van Ness, who just had his fifth-year option picked up, and Sean Rhyan, who just signed a new contract following the expiration of his rookie deal.
How is Kenion so old as a rookie? Well…
Kenion originally enrolled at the City College of San Francisco as a greyshirt player, meaning that he would not practice or work out with the team until the winter of 2020 (rather than the spring of 2019) to preserve that extra semester of eligibility. Then the 2020 season was canceled (and preserved from an eligibility perspective) at the JuCo level. He finally got to play college football in 2021, which counted as his first year of eligibility, even though he had been at CCSF since 2019.
Then, Kennion played at Idaho for two years and at Sacramento State for a year, which should have been the end of his four years of eligibility. Then, Diego Pavia sued the NCAA and successfully made the case that the NCAA cannot use JuCo eligibility against players, since the NCAA has no oversight of players at the JuCo level. That is why Kenion was awarded an extra year (he had only used three years of eligibility at the FCS level) and was able to make the jump up to the FBS and play for Nevada in 2025.
That’s how you get a college career that spanned seven years, like Kenion’s.
As a prospect, I like his ability as an all-around player. Even against Penn State, the best competition that Kenion played in 2025, he was laying the wood and looking the part of a player who would advance to the next level. He might be a sleeper roster player, depending on how he ends up looking in the preseason.