Packers: Kurt Benkert returning to Green Bay is great news

When the Green Bay Packers signed Kurt Benkert to their training camp roster in May, it wasn’t an exciting signing at the time. Fans who saw the transaction assumed he’d be just another camp arm that wouldn’t make the roster and that would be that.

It was nothing new.

We’ve seen this countless times while Aaron Rodgers has been QB1. Players like Ingle Martin, B.J. Coleman, Chase Rettig, Matt Blanchard, Joe Callahan, and Manny Wilkins. There have been a lot of backup quarterbacks that have come and gone that we don’t really think about anymore.

For me, I’d heard of Benkert before. I knew he played in Atlanta, but not much more than that.

I learned pretty quickly that Kurt Benkert was a different type of guy than the previous roster hopefuls that had come to Green Bay looking to latch onto the roster of the Packers. His social media posts gave fans a good look at who he is. He frequently posted pictures of his family and videos of him skateboarding to Lambeau Field.

He interacts with fans not only on Twitter but in person as well, like the time he was in the Packers Pro Shop talking with fans. He would chat with fans in the parking lot long after practice was over.

And we all know the popular story of him going over to Paul Bretl’s house for the Fourth of July after a simple Twitter exchange.

How many professional football players would do something like that? It’s really cool that he interacts with fans the way he does. In a town like Green Bay and in the state of Wisconsin, something like that is respected. It’s no wonder he quickly became a fan favorite.

Aside from how cool of a guy he is, he’s actually a very underrated quarterback. Benkert got a lot of playing time in the preseason. Rodgers didn’t play, and Jordan Love missed the second game with an injury that the Packers were being cautious with. During his playing time, he did pretty well, even with the second- and third-string players around him.

I don’t think it’s shocking he got cut, because the Packers have gone with two quarterbacks on the active roster in the past, and he isn’t going to beat out either Rodgers or Love. No matter how well he played, that’s just the way it was going to be. But I think he made the decision for the Packers a lot harder. The Packers were in a very good spot of having too many talented quarterbacks. A lot of teams barely have one functioning quarterback.

The big question was if he got cut, would the Packers be able to sneak him onto the practice squad? I personally think he played well enough that a team with some quarterback questions would have claimed him on waivers. Maybe a team like Atlanta, where he was before, that lost their backup quarterback to injury this preseason.

Luckily, no one claimed any Packers from the cuts, and they were able to sign Benkert back to the practice squad.

https://twitter.com/KurtBenkert/status/1433106493881131009

What’s great about keeping Benkert around is he provides some depth for the future. As we all know, next season is going to look very different from this season. The Aaron Rodgers situation could create two scenarios. First, Rodgers is traded and Love is the guy or vice versa. Either way, Benkert is in a prime position to be the number two quarterback in Green Bay in 2022 and maybe beyond.

The fan-favorite quarterback is sticking around for the foreseeable future, and many Packer fans are happy to see it.