GREEN BAY, Wis. -- T.J. Lang doesn’t know why the Green Bay Packers cut his teammate and best friend, Josh Sitton, and he certainly would like to. But he does know what it means.

"Nobody's safe, I guess," said the fellow starting guard. "We know just as much as you guys do, the reasons behind it. I don't know. I don't want to speculate on any of that. Been here eight years now, and one of the most surprising cuts that I've seen."

By the time Lang spoke on Monday, Sitton already had made his first appearance in the Bears' locker room after he signed a three-year, $21.5 million contract one day after the division rival let him go. Yet the shock of the move was still noticeable, especially with the Packers’ offensive linemen.

Lang said it would be easier to deal with if he knew the Packers' reasoning behind the move. Earlier on Monday, coach Mike McCarthy said there "wasn't just one thing" that led to the cut.

"I think everybody'd like to know," Lang said. "I don't think we're ever going to get an explanation. It's not our job to understand. We don't make those decisions. We don’t always have to understand or agree with them. Our job is to show up and play football. Like I said, I could sit here and speculate for hours. The fact is, I don't know the reasons behind it, and I don't think we probably ever will. I think that makes it a little tougher to move on, but you've just got to find a way.”

Josh Sitton no longer wears Packers colors, and his friends and former teammates would like to know why. Jim Dedmon/Icon Sportswire

Lang does not think the team owes him -- or anyone else -- an explanation. "[It] might make it a little easier if we understood why, but they don't owe us anything,” he said. "So the only thing we can do is try to move past and put it behind us and get ready to play."

Lang confirmed that both he and Sitton were told recently that the Packers would not negotiate with either of them during the season on new contracts -- both were scheduled to be free agents after this season -- because the team planned to focus on re-signing some of its younger players first.

But Lang denied that it was a source of tension. "Josh and I both got that news the same day," he said. "Obviously we were a little disappointed. It's not the news anybody wants to hear, but once we kind of took a day to kind of get past it, we moved on and we got back to how we normally go about business. I don't think that was a problem at all. For me, I don't know what's going to happen. Nothing's changed. Just go out and play football and try to focus on being the best teammate, the best leader and a great locker room guy, and just continue to get better."

Left tackle David Bakhtiari, who is in the final year of his contract, said he was unaware that Lang and Sitton were told anything about negotiations, which is an indication he's on the list of players the Packers intend to re-sign. "All I know is we were caught off guard by this," Bakhtiari said.

The reaction was the same on the other side of the locker room, where defensive tackle Mike Daniels just shook his head and repeated: "It's the NFL."