The Green Bay Packers have a cornerback problem. Well, they had a cornerback problem. It wasn’t necessarily a talent problem, but a size problem. Enter Benjamin St-Juste. The Packers agreed to a two-year, $10 million deal with the former Washington Commanders and Los Angeles Chargers cornerback, per NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport and Mike Garafolo. And for a team that was trotting out cornerbacks who needed a step stool to look some receivers in the eye, this move makes a lot of sense.
St-Juste stands 6-foot-3 and a quarter. That is a cornerback who can look most wide receivers dead in the face without craning his neck. In a Packers secondary where Carrington Valentine tops out at 5-foot-11 and change, St-Juste isn’t just an upgrade. He’s practically a different species.
Who Is Benjamin St-Juste?
He opened his college career at Michigan, then transferred to Minnesota, and eventually turned enough heads to get drafted by Washington in the third round of the 2021 NFL Draft. An 8.13 RAS score out of 10 at the Combine will do that for you.
That’s a quiet, unassuming path to the NFL. No five-star recruiting profile. No ESPN highlight reels as a teenager. Just a French-speaking kid from Montreal who decided he wanted to play football and bet on himself every single step of the way.
What St-Juste Brings To the Packers’ Defense
The production numbers are solid, not spectacular. In 2023 with Washington, St-Juste racked up 17 passes defensed. In 2024, he posted 1 interception and 7 passes defensed across 17 games. His best season from a pure coverage standpoint might actually have been his time with the Chargers last year, where Pro Football Focus charged him with a catch rate of just 47.5 percent while playing in a backup role.
The Packers needed this. General Manager Brian Gutekunst essentially said as much at the Scouting Combine when discussing the cornerback room. Nate Hobbs was in and out of the lineup all season with knee injuries. Kamal Hadden broke his leg. The team literally signed Trevon Diggs as a Hail Mary late in the year, and that didn’t last past the playoff loss.
St-Juste isn’t being asked to be a shutdown corner. He’s being asked to provide experienced, reliable depth in a room that was desperately thin on all three of those things.
St-Juste’s Mentality Sets Him Apart
What might excite Packers fans most isn’t the stats — it’s the mindset. When St-Juste signed with the Chargers last offseason, he didn’t just show up and collect a paycheck. He went back to basics. He studied what went right, what went wrong, and made a conscious decision to rebuild. “My goal for this offseason was to pinpoint what went right, what went wrong, and make sure that those mistakes don’t get re-created,” he said.
Is This Deal a Good Value For Green Bay?
Short answer: yes. Compare the two-year, $10 million deal St-Juste signed to the four-year, $48 million contract Hobbs received last offseason. That’s not an indictment of Hobbs — injuries happen. But the Packers got a proven starter with five years of NFL experience, legitimate size, and real versatility for a fraction of the price.
Low risk. Real upside. A player with something to prove under a new defensive coordinator, Jonathan Gannon. That’s a formula teams dream about finding in free agency. St-Juste turns 29 right around the time the 2026 season kicks off. He’s not an ascending youngster, but he’s also not coasting toward retirement. This is a player in the prime of his career who spent the last year sharpening his game in a backup role and is now getting a legitimate shot at a starting job.
For a Packers team that has now been bounced in the Wild Card round in back-to-back seasons, getting bigger, more experienced, and more versatile in the secondary isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity. Benjamin St-Juste has always found ways to make it work, even when the odds weren’t in his favor. Green Bay is betting he’s got a few more chapters left to write.
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