Green Bay Packers Draft Grade

[DenverPackFan]

As I said in my previous post, it is hard to grade a draft that begins with a late first-round developmental QB.  

Love seems to have a ceiling of Rodgers and/or Mahomes.  That's a very high ceiling and if he hits it or even comes close it will have been well worth giving up picks #30 and #136 and this pick alone will make this grade an A.  Thus I think I'll change my grade from "C" to "I" for incomplete.  While you never know about how any draft pick will deliver on potential, this case is much more extreme than most.

Overall, I have to say that I admire the Packers' leadership for picking the guys that they want for their scheme and ignoring what the experts on the interwebs think about value.

[Shanedorf]

Football Outsiders with an interesting look at draft value from 2010-2019
they looked at which teams had the most capital to work with and which teams got the most value

Packers had 7th lowest amount of capital to work with...
...but managed to be # 5 in draft value returned and # 2 in value returned/capital spent (efficiency)

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2020/nfl-drafting-efficiency-2010-2019

Edited June 12, 2020 by Shanedorf

[craig]

Thanks, Shane.  That's really interesting and really impressive.  I wouldn't have expected them to have been evaluated so favorably.  (I've sometimes thought that the vaunted FA binge last year was possible only because of draft failure, such that there weren't guys worth 2nd contracts.) 

I've also wondered regarding Gute:  he was the college draft boss.  So *IF* the draft was mishandled late in TT's run, might not that mean Gute was significantly at fault?  

But *IF* the Packers were the 2nd-most-efficient drafting team over the decade, with Gute as the head of college scouting, that's really encouraging that he does know what he's doing, and will carry good analysis and smart evaluators forward through the upcoming years.  

Perhaps he and his guys will prove out to be very wise, and the Love-Dillon-Deguara draft will NOT go down as a dumb failure, when viewed in future retrospect?  

[Skippy]

On 4/29/2020 at 10:13 AM, Dubz41 said:

I was wondering what Horseface and Skip the dip were thinking!  NOT!  Can't believe you would even repost ANYTHING those two shock jocks would spew.

I love it, Horseface. I can't stand those two and refuse to watch them at all. Horrible show. 

[Joe]

19 hours ago, craig said:

Thanks, Shane.  That's really interesting and really impressive.  I wouldn't have expected them to have been evaluated so favorably.  (I've sometimes thought that the vaunted FA binge last year was possible only because of draft failure, such that there weren't guys worth 2nd contracts.) 

That's because it happened because of draft failure in that we ignored the position. Take a look at our last 10 years.

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/gnb/draft.htm

No EDGE guys drafted from 2014-2018 except for Carl Bradford who was an undersized 4-3 DE who got moved around in an interesting hybrid front. 

Nick Perry should never have been given a second contract and I was dumbfounded to see TT give him one when he clearly was producing due to the fact that he was in a contract year. With CMIII tailing off, you would've thought we would've gone after another pass rusher early in a previous draft(not counting Fack). I think you go back to 2014 and see that only 2 of those guys truly hit and then back that up with 2015 and look at the WHY in regards to who was drafted and it was MM and TT overreacting to a major ST's issue from the previous year.  

Our biggest issue in drafting has been hitting on DL. We've only hit on Mike Daniels and Kenny Clark since the BJ Raji pick of 2009.

 

I think we need to take a long look at our scouting department and make some significant changes when scouting the defense. We've gotten lucky in recent years at DB, but you look at our success with the rest of that defense and it's been pretty ugly. I do, however, blame Dom for a lot of that.

 

[Green19]

On 6/12/2020 at 2:02 PM, craig said:

Thanks, Shane.  That's really interesting and really impressive.  I wouldn't have expected them to have been evaluated so favorably.  (I've sometimes thought that the vaunted FA binge last year was possible only because of draft failure, such that there weren't guys worth 2nd contracts.) 

I've also wondered regarding Gute:  he was the college draft boss.  So *IF* the draft was mishandled late in TT's run, might not that mean Gute was significantly at fault?  

But *IF* the Packers were the 2nd-most-efficient drafting team over the decade, with Gute as the head of college scouting, that's really encouraging that he does know what he's doing, and will carry good analysis and smart evaluators forward through the upcoming years.  

Perhaps he and his guys will prove out to be very wise, and the Love-Dillon-Deguara draft will NOT go down as a dumb failure, when viewed in future retrospect?  

Issue is with that thinking... there are tons of stories of Ted’s guys setting up trades, picks, etc and then Ted ignoring them and his group getting upset.

And if at the end of Ted empowered Ball more than others , as it seems to of been the case given reports, I don’t know if anyone can say for sure how much or little anyone had a hand in anything.

[craig]

The discussion following that article was interesting.  The prevailing conclusion was that while drafting may be a skill, that there doesn't seem to be much indication of consistent success.  That a GM who seems to draft well one year or for a couple of years, that doesn't predict that he'll draft above-average in future.  Perhaps there are so many smart guys and smart scouts in the game that it's hard to be way better than the other.  

I guess I just took from it that Gute and his Packer scouts, most of whom were involved in scouting and recommendations under TT as well, are not outclassed and under-qualified.  

Doesn't mean they'll be one of the top 2 or top-5 drafting teams over the next decade.  Or who knows, maybe they will.  

I think 2019 draft has a chance to be a huge success, *IF* Gary can be at least pretty good.  Obviously they had unusual draft capital, picking 12th plus having extra pick.  But I think Gary, Savage, Jenkins, and Jace all project to be really high-snaps guys this season, and perhaps variably good players too.  Who knows, maybe Keke will play a good number of snaps, too; and even Hollman's got a chance.  

2020 draft, not much draft capital, and that may be a really unproductive draft, assuming Love never makes it.  But that also has a really high ceiling; with little draft capital to have spent, *IF* Love eventually emerges as a legit good NFL starter down the road, to get value like that from a low-capital draft would look really effective in these types of draft analyses.  So kind of a high-ceiling-low-floor draft.  

[CWood21]

On 6/12/2020 at 4:02 PM, craig said:

Thanks, Shane.  That's really interesting and really impressive.  I wouldn't have expected them to have been evaluated so favorably.  (I've sometimes thought that the vaunted FA binge last year was possible only because of draft failure, such that there weren't guys worth 2nd contracts.) 

I've also wondered regarding Gute:  he was the college draft boss.  So *IF* the draft was mishandled late in TT's run, might not that mean Gute was significantly at fault?  

But *IF* the Packers were the 2nd-most-efficient drafting team over the decade, with Gute as the head of college scouting, that's really encouraging that he does know what he's doing, and will carry good analysis and smart evaluators forward through the upcoming years.  

Perhaps he and his guys will prove out to be very wise, and the Love-Dillon-Deguara draft will NOT go down as a dumb failure, when viewed in future retrospect?  

The "problem" as ToT would say is that it includes data as far back as 2010.  If you look at the Packers draft from 2010 until Gute took over was that the drafts got worse as the years wore on.  Not the god awful classes that lead to entire regimes being replaced, but when you're not drafting at a significantly higher success rate and not supplementing those draft misses with FA signings, you're going to have a weakened product.  As it's been discussed ad nauseam, his 2015-2017 classes were disastrous.  Of the 25 picks made over those 3 drafts, only 6 are still on the roster.  Of those 25, only four of those are projected starters for 2020.  A 16% success rate is miserable.