The Packers recently waived rookie kicker James Turner. That made the team’s competition at that position a two-man battle instead of three, with incumbent Anders Carlson and free agent signing Greg Joseph remaining in place. 
As those two continue to compete for a roster spot, though, Green Bay will still check in on other options. The team is set to bring in Jonathan Garibay for a workout, ESPN’s Rob Demovsky reports. Garibay previously had a deal with the Cowboys in 2022, but he did not see any regular season game action. The Texas Tech product spent last season in the UFL, missing only one of his kicks.
That success could give him the opportunity to compete with Joseph and Carlson. The latter received a vote of confidence from Green Bay in his rookie season, but inconsistency down the stretch and in the playoffs made it clear he would need to fend off other kickers in 2024. Carlson, 26, has not been the top producer to date in training camp, as noted by Matt Schneidman of The Athletic (subscription required). Joseph has been more accurate on his summer attempts, but no final call needs to be made for quite some time.
“There’s competitive position battles going on throughout the team and we’re going to have constant conversation about it,” special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia said of where things stand with the kickers (via Schneidman), “and we’ll sit down collectively and make a decision when the time comes.”
Three years remain on Carlson’s rookie deal, whereas Joseph signed a one-year contract following the end of his Vikings tenure. The 30-year-old has a career accuracy of 82.6% on field goals and 90.1% on extra points, and continuing his strong summer during the preseason will help his chances of landing the job in Green Bay. Without any guarantees on his deal, though, Joseph will not have any assurances in the coming weeks. Garibay’s performance – if his workout translates to a contract – will be worth watching as well.
I don’t consider Greg Joseph to be a particularly good kicker but you’d have to be a pretty insensitive GM to cut a guy on his birthday…lol.
He’s done it before.
I imagine there are sometimes circumstances where a GM really has no other option but the news should be delivered to the player with a piece of cake 🙂
I don’t recall the timing of it-either during camp or once the season had started, but I do remember seeing on 1 of the Packers fb fan pages wishing the player happy birthday, and like an hour later showing that he’d been released. Don’t recall the name, but it seems like he re-signed later on. I guess when your dream is to play pro ball, you can’t stay mad ata team/GM for ruining your birthday.
The perfect irony would be a GM getting fired on his own birthday…lol. I don’t know if that has ever happened.