Green Bay Packers tight end Tucker Kraft (85) was having an All-Pro season in 2025 before tearing his right ACL.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Jayden Reed. Check.
Christian Watson. Check.
Tucker Kraft. Now it’s your turn.
The Green Bay Packers have locked up wideouts Watson and Reed with contract extensions this offseason. Next in line figures to be Kraft, the Packers’ standout tight end who tore his right ACL tear on Nov. 2, 2025.
“I’d say my goal is that I want to play for this organization my entire career,” Kraft said Wednesday. “I’m spoiled to have been drafted here and this is all I know. Green and gold is all I know. So we’d like to keep it that way. And my agent and the Packers front office, they’re going to be in those talks in time when it comes. You guys will find out eventually.”
“Eventually” could certainly come before training camp begins.
Kraft said Wednesday his rehab has gone “better than expected” and he expects to “start Week 1 on no pitch count.” That would be an enormous lift to Green Bay’s offense, as Kraft was having an All-Pro level season in 2025 before tearing his ACL.
Kraft would be entering the final year of his rookie contract with a base salary of $3.624 million, according to overthecap.com. The Packers were $21.6 million under the NFL’s salary cap on Thursday morning and have plenty of room to structure Kraft’s contract in a variety of ways.
Kraft would love the security of a second contract when the season begins. On the flip side, Green Bay could be hesitant to make a deal until Kraft proves he’s back to full health, but the tenacious tight end is just 25, one of the Packers’ elite workers and most respected players in the locker room.
“Certainly, the impact that he has on our football team, not only as a player but as a leader, is very important to us,” Green Bay general manager Brian Gutekunst said of Kraft earlier this offseason. “We’ve obviously already been in contact with him and just let him know how we feel and we’ll kind of see how it goes.”
San Francisco’s George Kittle leads NFL tight ends in average annual salary at $19.1 million per year. He’s followed by Arizona’s Trey McBride ($19.0M), Minnesota’s T.J. Hockenson ($16.5M), Atlanta’s Kyle Pitts ($15.045M) and Isaiah Likely of the New York Giants ($13.33M).
Kittle, McBride and Hockenson all signed four-year contracts, while Likely’s deal was for three years. The Falcons placed the franchise tag on Pitts last offseason, and he’ll become an unrestricted free agent in March, 2027, if the sides can’t agree on a long-term deal.
The Packers could choose to wait on a long-term deal with Kraft and make him prove he’s back to his previous form this season. If Kraft does perform like he did pre-injury, though, he could become the NFL’s highest-paid tight end next offseason and Green Bay would almost certainly place the franchise tag on him.
Instead of going down that road, a longer term deal now — one that pays Kraft in the range of perhaps $16M per season — seems reasonable for both sides.
“Tuck’s a guy that he’s not going to flinch, and that’s why we love him,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur said the day after Kraft’s injury. “I mean, he’s a hell of a player, hell of a teammate, hell of a guy.”
Kraft had 32 catches for 489 yards and six touchdowns in 6 ½ games last season before Sean Rhyan was blocked backwards and into Kraft’s knee in the third quarter of a Week 7 loss to Carolina. At the time of his injury, Kraft was the NFL’s only tight end with 30-plus receptions, 475-plus receiving yards, six-plus receiving TDs and an average of 15-plus yards per catch.
Kraft’s blocking is also elite, making him one of the league’s best two-way tight ends when healthy.
“I feel like went out at as tight end (No.) 1 in my opinion,” Kraft said. “Just the things that I do at the point of attack, where I’m at on any given play I feel like I went out at the top.
“I thought that as a combination of the do-it-all Y, which is me, that there wasn’t another guy in the league that was doing it as well as I was. Some people might think I’m delusional to say that, but … as far as putting it all together I felt like I was at a great spot.”
Kraft said the swelling in his knee has been “minimal to none.” He recently hit 21.5 miles per hour during sideline sprints at minicamp. And he’s building strength back in his quad, calf and hamstring to fully support the knee.
Kraft will likely begin training camp on the Physically Unable to Perform list, work his way back gradually with a goal of being fully cleared before Week 1.
If and when that happens, Kraft expects to be the player he was pre-injury.
“I’m not really buying into the people come back off an injury and aren’t the same,” Kraft said. “People come back off their injury — if you’re not coming back off your injury the same, then what are you doing? What were you doing your entire rehab? Some people might not be the same, but they don’t speak for me.”
No, Kraft is definitely his own man.
And he could be someone with a new contract before the 2026 campaign begins.
“There’s certain information that I’m not allowed to divulge at this point,” Kraft said. “So you can do with that comment what you will.”