Anders Carlson’s most recent kick for the Green Bay Packers went wide left on a 41-yard field-goal attempt with 6:18 left in an NFC second-round game against the San Francisco 49ers on Jan. 20.

The 49ers responded with a 12-play, 69-yard drive capped by running back Christian McCaffrey’s 6-yard touchdown run with 67 seconds to play. San Francisco took a 24-21 lead instead of tying the game, and that ended up as the final score.

After joining Green Bay as a sixth-round selection from Auburn in the 2023 NFL Draft, Carlson was the only kicker on the Packers’ roster from May 22 on.

That’s not the case this offseason. After Carlson made 29-of-36 field-goal attempts and 41-of-47 extra-point kicks as a rookie, including the playoffs, Green Bay has three kickers on its roster in 2024.

“I think certainly Anders had a promising rookie start, but we wanted to bring in competition,” Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst said. “That position is obviously critical to us attaining our goals moving forward. I think we’ll continue to make sure there’s competition throughout training camp on that one.”

The Packers signed Jack Podlesny in January and Greg Joseph in March. Both most recently kicked for the Minnesota Vikings. A rookie from Georgia last year, Podlesny was released by the Vikings during the preseason. Joseph served as Minnesota’s kicker for a third season in 2023. He made 24-of-30 field goals and 36-of-38 extra-point tries last season before leaving in free agency.

“They’re going against each other, really, on a daily basis,” Green Bay special-teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia said on Thursday. “It’s been a good competition. They’re all getting better. …

“It’s all on film. It’s all being graded. They know they’re in a competition. I think they can feel that amongst themselves every day in practice.”

Bisaccia termed Carlson’s reaction as “good” to the kicker’s change in circumstances this year.

“I just think his response has been work,” Bisaccia said. “It was that way during the year last year. He went through some of the ebbs and flows of kicks, and I think he’s really been the same way. He’s come back a little bit stronger in the offseason than I think he was a year ago, and I think at this point it’s been a good competition.

“They’ve had their good days and bad days. There hasn’t been a lot of bad. They’ve actually been kicking, in the last four days, really well all of them, so I think the reaction is more of a competitive mindset, an improvement mindset, and that’s kind of what’s been showing on the field.”

Asked about carrying three kickers into training camp, Bisaccia made no predictions.

“Might be those three; might be three other ones,” Bisaccia said. “I don’t know. Might be six. But we’re appreciative certainly of Brian getting it to the point it’s at right now having a three-man competition, and we’ll see how long we can keep that going. Maybe the anticipation of even having, there’s some things going on in a bunch of different leagues that everyone’s talking about, and we’re going to keep investigating to try to end up with the best player we possibly can.”

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.