The Green Bay Packers still talk like buyers before the NFL trade deadline, but buyers can also move a piece that no longer fits the board.
Zachary Rotman of FanSided feels that cornerback Keisean Nixon is that piece.
“Trading Nixon right now is probably a non-starter, but he’s on an expiring contract, and I’m not sold on the Packers ever turning things around,” Rotman wrote. “If they fall out of contention, it’d make sense for all parties for Nixon to get a fresh start.”
The split was already in motion before the season. Green Bay signed Benjamin St-Juste in free agency and spent a second-round pick on Brandon Cisse. Cisse has already pushed Carrington Valentine out of the lineup. St-Juste’s injury is the main reason Nixon is still starting.
Camp told the rest of the story.
Nixon was dropped in with the second team and called it what it felt like. “I guess I’m being punished right now, I guess, I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t really worry about what I’m running in camp, ones or twos. I just keep my process and just compete — for real.”
The numbers have not rescued him. Pro Football Focus has him at a 53.5 overall grade and a 49.8 coverage grade, the worst marks of his career as a full-time starter in Green Bay.
Since he took that role, his previous lows sat at 60 overall and 60.4 in coverage. Selling now means selling low.
The contract makes the math workable anyway. Nixon is in the final year of the three-year, $18 million extension he signed in 2024.
A deal clears a slice of cap space this season, and any return beats the compensatory-pick math of letting him walk in March.
The market also just lost its clearest corner option. Joey Porter Jr. was traded by Pittsburgh to Dallas, so clubs that had been circling Porter have to look elsewhere. Rottman pointed to Detroit, which missed on Porter, and to Pittsburgh, which just moved him. Both have a hole outside.
Nixon can play the boundary or the slot, his 2026 salary is modest, and an acquiring team is not stuck with him past this year. Struggles and an expiring deal keep the price down.
If Green Bay keeps losing, or if St-Juste returns and the depth chart finally matches the plan from the spring, Nixon becomes the kind of asset a contender can move without pretending the return will be large.
A fresh start for him, and a clean ledger for them, is the trade that only needs the standings to tip.
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