GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers are interested in signing free-agent cornerback Asante Samuel Jr.
They’re not alone.
According to ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler, the Packers are one of six teams who will host the talented cornerback in the coming days. It will be the free agency version of speed dating.
The Vikings are one of 6 planned visits for free agent CB Asante Samuel Jr, per @JFowlerESPN. Samuel's schedule:
Today: Panthers
Thursday: Packers
Friday: Vikings
Monday: 49ers
Tuesday: Bears
Wednesday: Steelers— Kevin Seifert (@SeifertESPN) November 6, 2025
Samuel started his tour with the Carolina Panthers on Wednesday. He’ll be in Green Bay on Thursday. All six teams in the mix are playoff contenders.
The Packers have a key need at cornerback, where their three players who have played all the snaps this season, Keisean Nixon, Nate Hobbs and Carrington Valentine, have combined for zero interceptions. With Hobbs out for a couple weeks with a knee injury, the Packers are down to Nixon, Valentine, Bo Melton and Kamal Hadden.
While Nixon and Valentine are solid, experienced starters, neither Melton nor Hadden have played a snap of defense in a regular-season game.
Samuel isn’t going to pick a team to be a depth piece, though. He is going to pick a team where he can eventually start once he’s fully acclimated.
Samuel has six interceptions in 50 career games (47 starts). A second-round pick in 2021, he had double-digits pass breakups in each of his first three seasons but was limited to only four games last season due to what he called “stinger symptoms.” In April, he had spinal fusion surgery.
He’s been cleared to resume his career. Now, he’ll meet with medical staffs, coaches and front-office personnel before choosing his team for the stretch run to the season.
The ace up the Packers’ sleeve could be their defensive passing game coordinator, Derrick Ansley. Samuel was drafted by the Chargers in 2021, the same year that Ansley joined their coaching staff.
They spent three years together, when Samuel had six interceptions and 37 passes defensed.
“Resilience. Toughness. Short-term memory. Competitive character,” Ansley told Chargers.com at the end of the 2021 season. “All the things that make a corner unique that you have to have in the National Football League, he has those intangibles. He wants to be great, doesn’t blink in adversity. The pressure doesn’t get to him – he actually thrives in it.”
While only 5-foot-10 1/4, Samuel has been almost exclusively a perimeter corner.
“I feel that I’m a dominant corner on the outside,” he said at the 2021 Scouting Combine. “They try to look at my height and things of that nature, but I’m the same size as Jaire Alexander and he’s a dominant NFL cornerback right now – one of the best in the league. I feel like size doesn’t matter; it’s about the heart, and the dog mentality you have on that field.”
He’s played 40 snaps in the slot, according to Pro Football Focus, though he worked it a lot during training camp in 2023.
“He’s a defensive back,” Ansley said at the time. “He’s not a guy that you pigeonhole in one spot. Very high IQ. Very competitive. He knows that he can move around and play multiple spots, and we knew that. So for him to come out here this year and really take the bull by the horns, and really dive into that even deeper, just shows you what kind of competitor he is and what kind of makeup he’s got.”
His father, Asante Samuel Sr., was a fourth-round pick in 2003. He finished his career with 51 interceptions and led the NFL in 2006 and 2009. Samuel Jr. had two interceptions in each of his first three seasons.
At the 2021 Scouting Combine, he ran his 40 in 4.41 seconds. His Relative Athletic Score was 7.46.
“I’ll never be the biggest, or even the fastest guy on the field, and I know that,” Samuel told Yahoo! after opting out of the remainder of the 2020 season. “I know my technique has to be great all the time. Playing with leverage. I see undersized cornerbacks playing against big receivers and they win because they play with technique.
“I am never going to make my [lack of] size a reason to fail. A lot of people out there are way smaller than me.”
When he drafted Samuel, then-Chargers GM Tom Telesco was high on Samuel’s “competitive spirit” and how he challenges receivers.
“He plays bigger than his size, and we heard that a lot from our scouts,” Telesco said. “You do see that when he plays. He has all those traits and attributes that you need at that position if you’re going to be a little bit size deficient. …He has enough of those attributes. You’d love them all to be 6-foot, 6-foot-1, but they all can’t be that tall. But he has everything else we look for, and some versatility, too.”
