Green Bay Packers Thread

Brendan Bendar wrote: »

Ooooh..... some big moolah being spent by the Packers.

What’s the opinion of you folk out there........

Fairly average players but all bar the lineman is still a big upgrade. Way overspent on the face of it but then again when every team is overspending then it doesn't count.

Needed to do something anyway so it's nice to see a different strategy for once. The old one hasn't worked for a long time.

He has to go for the money he's on.

I would also not at all be surprised to see Tramon Williams cut to save another $4.8mn. Great locker room guy and all, but he looked past it last year and turned 36 a few days ago; that's a good bit of money to be spending on a no.5 or no.6 CB/backup safety.

Beyond that, any other cuts are really hard to identify. Jimmy Graham was decent last year but nowhere near worth the $12mn he is getting this season, but even if we draft Fant or Hockenson I think we still need Jimmy to be safe (esp with so many young pass catchers - I love their upside, but right now Geronimo Allison is basically our third most experienced 'skill position' player, not including Marcedes Lewis who will be doing well to get into double digits this year for passes caught.

I also see we retained Marcedes Lewis on a cheap one year deal. Very happy with that, he is one of the peripheral players I really wanted to see us keep since he is still a quality blocker, and assuming we do draft a TE, having them learn to block from one of the best blocking TE's of the last 10-20 years, and learning in the passing game from one of the top receiving TE's of the last 10-20 years, with well over 20 years experience betwen them, would be a huge benefit.

Lance Kendricks has also been released outright, which is certainly a good thing. I thought he could be a great fit at TE2/3 having had 30-40-50 catch seasons before, but the guy just isn't an NFL level player beyond an emergency stopgap for injuries during the year.

Bubba Franks was a first rounder too, so we all know how much luck is involved in the draft.

Really unhappy to see them shell out that much to keep a passenger like Graham around for next year though, regardless of who they draft.

They can't keep ignoring the offense. Taylor and Ford will probably be gone by 44 but they'd at least need to add to the receivers at that stage.

raze_them_all_ wrote: »

8 years of defensive first round picks. If that can't sort a teams defence the team really needs to look at their scouts/draft guidelines

The problem there is, when your opponents best weapon and your defenses biggest weakness is often your own defensive coordinator, you can literally draft a secondary full of all pros and watch them look average... which is exactly what happened to us. I'm not saying the talent was perfect by any means, but it didn't really matter who the talent was when having our plays called by a dinosaur where the opposing QB knew better than our own players what they were going to be doing on any given play (kind of inevitable when you give a different formation/look to seemingly every play).


I'm... pretty happy with the draft so far.

First of all, I was very happy to see us not take a WR in the first two rounds - initially I pretty much stopped reading as soon as a mock had us taking one early, but for the last month or so just about every mock seems to have had this, which is irritatingly lazy. Davante Adams is a top 8 WR in the league easily (half a yard more pace and he would be up there with Julio and Antonio Brown imo, and Brown is the best WR I've ever seen - above Megatron, Fitz, Owens and Moss even). Beyond that, Allison is a serviceable no. 2 and nothing more... but MVS and St. Brown showed quite a lot last year, and I'm more than happy for those three to fight it out for the other spot. Kumerow is also in there to add some competition, and I think he could be a late bloomer who turns into a 40-60 catch, 13-15 yard per catch, kind of guy. J'Mon Moore showed absolutely nothing, but that's not too uncommon for rookie WRs. To me, the boundaries are solid... but we really have nobody in the slot, unless one of the aformentioned guys goes there, which brings me to my next point. LaFleur also seems to prefer to run the ball more, which might mean more two-TE sets and less slot guys... and hopefully, less running the ball 6 times in our opening drive of each half, and 4-5 times for the entire remainder of the game.

We didn't need to trade up to get Savage - he almost definitely would have still been there at no. 30, while Adderley was there until 5-6 picks from the end of the 2nd round, while Deionte Thompson is still there at the start of round 4. That said, I guess it points to Pettine knowing exactly what he wanted and Gutekunst being willing to go to bat for him - having someone with such incredible range in the backfield should free up Pettine do mess around with all 11 other guys on the defense (maybe 10; Kevin King seems more of a pure coverage guy from what I've seen), which is what his system is all about.

It's because of that that I get the Gary pick, though I'm still quite split on it and wonder how much we were banking on Hockenson or Oliver falling. Guys who struggled to produce in college in my guesstimation bust far more often than they boom in the NFL, but the guy is an absolute physical freak and can play DE or OLB, which will allow us to shift formations, looks and play calls at the LOS even more, and having picked up the two Smiths, plus having guys like Martinez, Fackrell, Daniels and Clark (and hopefully Mo Wilk on another cheap 1yr deal!) adding to the sack count, means that Gary should not have much pressure on him this year and can develop.

It stung a little watching some of the other OL men coming off the board right before our second rounder, and Jawaan Taylor in particular was of interest to me (fight for a G spot this year, take over for Bulaga/Spriggs at RT next year kind of thing), but the talk on Jenkins is pretty positive and he gives us an option to replace Linsley or Taylor moving forward (or Turner if he doesn't work out at RG). I am actually a little higher on our O-line than most (we also got Cole Madison reporting back a few days ago, and he was seen as one of the bigger steals of all of last year's draft, plus Turner of course) and think we might have used it for other areas, but good value on good linemen should never be seen as a bad thing.

And we picked up a TE, which is good. Hock or Fant would have been great but each were ridiculously expensive, and while I don't know a tonne about Sternberger I've seen his style compared to Zach Ertz - a good athlete but not great, fluid but not explosive, shifty and smart to catch passes in the seams, and a potentially great guy to 'keep the chains moving'. He's going ot be learning pass catching techniques from one of the very best pass catching TEs over the last decade, and blocking from one of the very best blocking TEs, of the last decade too, which is a major plus.

I really think the two fourth rounders we gave up for Savage are a bit of a missed opportunity for us to go pick up a quality slot guy, and possibly a 3rd RB as well, or even another DB. On that note though, I'm also relieved we have not yet taken a RB as we had far, far bigger needs and Aaron Jones has the potential to be a top 5-8 RB in the entire league. I just feel like this is an area of the draft where we typically draft among the very best in the league, and it's a shame to be missing out on it. We have a fifth, two sixths and a 7th rounder left... imo beyond round 4 it really becomes much more about BPA, but I ideally would like to see a RB, slot WR, and DB amongst them.

Christ, we're mid-way through round 4 now and I'm wondering if it's worth seeing if we can do a small trade to snag Thompson at S to go with Amos, Savage, and Jones (also playing some ILB) and Tramon (also playing CB further down the depth chart).

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