GREEN BAY, Wis. – Before the start of OTAs in May, Green Bay Packers special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia was asked if the team would take kickers Anders Carlson, Greg Joseph and Jack Podlesny to training camp.

“I don’t know the answer to that,” Bisaccia said. “It could be those three. It could be three others. I don’t know. It could be six.”

The Packers hope that number 6 will be their lucky charm.

After Carlson and Joseph played on and off throughout training camp and the preseason, and after rotating through youngsters Podlesny, James Turner and Alex Hale, the Packers released Carlson on Tuesday as part of their 53-man roster reduction. On Wednesday, the last remaining man, Joseph, was released in favor of undrafted rookie Brayden Narveson, who was claimed off waivers by the Tennessee Titans.

For the second year in a row, the Packers will begin the season with a rookie kicker. Last year, after the dramatic change at quarterback, the NFL’s youngest team entered the season with low expectations. This year’s team will face the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 1 on September 6 with championship expectations.

Coach Matt LaFleur seemed downright excited about the unresolved kicker situation.

Not.

“This is new territory that I’ve been in in my time in the league,” LaFleur said before practice on Wednesday. “You just have to come in and perform. I don’t know how else to say it. But it’s definitely a unique situation.”

The Packers will practice under the lights at Lambeau Field on Thursday as a dress rehearsal for next Friday night’s game in Brazil. For LaFleur, it will be the first time he’s seen the kicker who may have to win games – the most important games – this season.

LaFleur, who has no experience, is certain that he may have to change his game management decisions “100 percent.”

“I think you have to consider all the circumstances,” he said. “No different than bad weather. Sometimes that influences some of the decisions you make.”

“We’ll see. At least we’ll spend a few days with him to get a feel for his performance. The difficult thing is that you just don’t have any experience playing with him. But he did a good job in Tennessee, I know that.”

While general manager Brian Gutekunst said Carlson’s missed 32-yard field goal against the Ravens on Saturday did not seal his fate, Narveson’s three field goals against Seattle in the second week of the preseason – including a 59-yard field goal in the fourth quarter and a 46-yard field goal as time expired to win the game – played a role in the decision to select the rookie over the battle-tested Joseph.

Still, the Packers are entering a season with an untested rookie who they believe has championship potential. He converted 18 of 23 field goal attempts last year at North Carolina State and did not miss a single extra point attempt in five years at Iowa State (2019), Western Kentucky (2020 to 2022) and NC State (2023).

How does Gutekunst know he has the right man for the job?

“I don’t know if you can ever know for sure,” he replied. “He had a great preseason where he caught a 59-yard pass and then a game-winning score at the end to handle that kind of pressure. You watch that stuff all the time, but until you get him in Lambeau Field and everything that comes with it, you never know.”

Gutekunst went on to make a pretty incredible admission considering he had just released his handpicked successor to the legendary Mason Crosby.

“I’m probably not as patient with specialists as I should be, I really am not,” Gutekunst continued. “I give Ted (Thompson) a lot of credit; he was certainly a much more (patient) guy than I was. I think Mason was under 80 percent until his fifth year, and then that sixth year was my first year in the office in 2012, and I think he was at 60 percent and missed 12 shots.

“I can tell you that there were people in the office right now who were like, ‘Let’s keep going.’ So I probably have to be a little more patient.”

Gutekunst’s first draft year was 2018. He selected punter JK Scott in the fifth round and traded him after three seasons. In his last two years with the Chargers, Scott was one of the better punters in the league in terms of net average and punts inside the 20.

Nevertheless, Gutekunst quickly wrote off Carlson and is now trying again to sign a talented but still unproven player.

“I’m very confident about this team and our ability,” Gutekunst said. “So I want to make sure we give this team every chance to win. So there’s going to be a certain standard that we want to achieve.”

While lamenting his impatience, Gutekunst said Narveson would be given a “short leash” – certainly shorter than Carlson was given last year.

“We’re really excited to have Brayden here and see what he can do,” Gutekunst said. “He certainly has a lot of talent and we’re excited about it, but at the end of the day, like everyone else that makes up this team, they have to perform.”

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