The Green Bay Packers won't be among the teams – barring a trade – selecting a player Thursday, April 23 on the first night of the NFL Draft.
The first round begins at 7 p.m. CT, and the Packers surrendered their first-round pick in a massive offseason trade for pass rusher Micah Parsons.
Though 32 players will hear their name announced in Pittsburgh, the No. 20 pick that would have otherwise gone to Green Bay belongs to the Dallas Cowboys instead.
Here's more about the Packers and the 2026 NFL Draft:
The Packers will have the No. 52 overall pick, the 20th pick of the second round, on Day 2 of the draft Friday, April 24.
The Packers haven't been without a first-round pick since 2017, and that was the result of a draft-day trade in which they famously traded back, missing out on former Wisconsin linebacker T.J. Watt, who went on to be a perennial All-Pro with Pittsburgh, and selecting cornerback Kevin King early in the second round.
Before that, the Packers last came away without a first-round pick in 2008, when they traded the 30th pick to the New York Jets and took wide receiver Jordy Nelson in the second round.
The last time the Packers went into a draft without a first-round pick? That would be 1986; the Packers had previously traded that pick to the San Diego Chargers for safety Mossy Cade.
Green Bay also surrendered its first-round pick next year to Dallas, so we'll do this all again in 2027. Defensive lineman Kenny Clark also went to the Cowboys in the trade.
Parsons was electric, racking up 12.5 sacks and earning first-team All-Pro and a fifth career Pro Bowl berth. The downside: He tore his ACL and was limited to 13-plus games. It's unclear if he'll be available to start the 2026 season, but he figures prominently in the team's plans for the season.
Clark had three sacks, six tackles for loss and 36 tackles while starting all 17 games for Dallas in his age-30 season (he'll turn 31 in October). Clark played 68% of the defensive snaps for Dallas, an increase from 63% in his final year with the Packers.
Dallas finished the year 7-9-1, a half-game better than the previous season. The Packers finished 9-7-1 (finishing with a tie head-to-head in Dallas) and made the playoffs. Parsons made a huge tackle of ex-teammate Dak Prescott to cement a stalemate when the teams met Sept. 28.
The Packers have moved up in the first round of the draft before, including in 2020, when they traded for quarterback Jordan Love, and the year before that, when they moved up nine spots to draft safety Darnell Savage.
So there's no reason to think the Packers would be averse to trading up. It's just a little more complicated without the asset of an original first-round pick.
Round 5: No. 153 (from Atlanta through Philadelphia in the Dontayvion Wicks trade)
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Packers don't have first-round pick in NFL Draft; this trade is why