One cornerback. That is Green Bay's secondary depth, and Minnesota just proved it matters.

The Packers entered 2026 having spent real money on the defensive side of the ball. Devonte Wyatt got a three-year, $57 million extension. Linebacker Isaiah McDuffie was retained. The front office moved with urgency and intention. None of it addressed the one structural flaw that was visible from the moment Micah Parsols tore his ACL in training camp: Green Bay has exactly one cornerback who logged meaningful snaps last season, and his name is Keisean Nixon. Behind him, the depth chart lists Kahlef Hailassie and Domani Jackson — neither of whom produced a single snap of tracked playing time. That is not a depth chart. That is a starter and a prayer.

This was the warning I kept returning to all summer. When Parsols went on the PUP list targeting a Week 6 return against Dallas, the math became brutal: five weeks of NFL football with a secondary built around one proven corner and a safety room where Xavier McKinney has no credible backup with game experience behind him either. Javon Bullard's foot injury in camp made it worse. Brandon Cisse's knee scare in the preseason game against Denver made it worse still. And Cisse is listed as questionable heading into the early portion of the schedule. The Packers did not lose the Week 1 game to Minnesota because of bad luck. They lost it because a defense this thin behind its starters cannot absorb the variance that NFL offenses generate week to week.

History is instructive here. The 2021 Rams won a Super Bowl partly because they understood that cornerback depth is not optional — it is load-bearing infrastructure. When they traded for Jalen Ramsey and built around him, they also invested in the players behind him. The teams that collapse in January are rarely the ones with a bad starter; they are the ones with a good starter and nothing behind him when that starter gets hurt or beaten. Green Bay is structurally identical to every secondary that has cratered mid-season over the past decade of NFC contention.

What makes this particularly frustrating is that the spending happened. The Packers were not passive this offseason. But the money went to Wyatt on the defensive line and to the tight end room on offense. The secondary received Kamal Hadden — a preseason revelation in the slot, to his credit — and a collection of players whose NFL résumés remain largely theoretical. That is a philosophical choice, and it is the wrong one for a team that finished last season losing four straight and posting a negative point differential over its final ten games. You do not fix a late-season collapse by reinforcing positions that were already working.

My declaration is this: the Packers will not survive the first six weeks of this season defensively unless Parsols returns ahead of schedule or the front office makes a move at cornerback before the roster hardens around its current shape. The Week 1 loss to Minnesota is not an anomaly to be explained away. It is the first data point in what will be a recurring problem. Nixon cannot cover every receiver on every field every week. McKinney cannot compensate for an entire secondary operating without proven depth. And when the schedule does not soften — it rarely does in the NFC North — the Packers will face the same exposure again and again until Week 6 arrives and Parsols either is or is not ready. The offseason spending was real. The secondary crisis is realer.