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GREEN BAY − Green Bay Press-Gazette and PackersNews columnist Pete Dougherty responds to reader questions about the Green Bay Packers after the NFL draft.
These are excerpts from his full mailbag focusing on Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst and his ability as a drafter.
For the full mailbag, click here.
Art, St. Peter, MN: Please explain how this draft helps our run game and overall game other than the obvious passing game. Also, how does it make our team more competitive postseason? And yes, Anthony Belton looks like the barn door, but the pessimists say he lacks a motor. What say you? The crowd that insists CB, edge and DT were/are first priorities and missed it are struggling to love this draft.
Dougherty: I was surprised as anyone that Brian Gutekunst didn’t draft a DT, edge or CB with any of his first three picks. But I probably shouldn’t have been. So shame on me for getting locked into thinking that, because their offense did melt down at the very end of last season.
Of course, the Packers were surprised how the draft went, too. Gutekunst and Matt LaFleur said they didn’t expect to take receivers with two of their first three picks. But these things can happen in the draft if you stick to your board and don’t feel like you have a single need that you absolutely have to fill early on.
I do wonder what Gutekunst would have done if Matthew Golden had gone a pick or two earlier. Would he have taken the Kentucky CB Maxwell Hairston? Or Tennessee edge James Pearce Jr.? Or Ohio State DT Tyleik Williams? Or been more willing to trade back? We don’t know, but the Packers’ draft might have looked very different.
Anyway, Gutekunst’s willingness to take receivers in the first and third rounds, and an offensive lineman in the second, clearly shows he was bothered by his offense faltering in the final three games (two regular season and one playoff).
So theoretically, at least, that’s how his team got better. It got more dynamic on offense. Williams could help the run game some because he had 50-plus carries for TCU last season, mostly as a wildcat quarterback. Have to think his best chance to get touches will be on jet sweeps and bubble screens. Golden should at minimum help stretch the defense as a deep threat.
Still, whether the Packers got better with this draft ultimately depends on how the players they picked turn out. If the player isn’t good, drafting him hasn’t helped anything.
I thought pass rusher was their greatest need. They added two, but in the fourth and fifth rounds. No matter what round you draft a player, there’s a decent chance he won’t be good, but the deeper in the draft you go, the more those chances increase. We’ll just have to wait and see whether Barryn Sorrell and/or Collin Oliver can help them this year, or down the road for that matter. Drafting two edge guys increases the odds some, but neither was a high pick.
Tosafish: Coaches and team executives often talk about winning their division as a primary goal of any team. How do you see the Packers improving their competitive position vs. division rivals given their draft choices and selective free agency decisions?
Dougherty: I was talking to a personnel executive for an NFC team before the draft and asked him to rate the talent of the four teams in the NFC North, leaving the quarterback out of it. He went Detroit, Green Bay, Minnesota, Chicago.
I’m not saying that’s a consensus position in the league, but this guy is a longtime scout, and it was an informed ranking. I might have put Minnesota ahead of the Packers, mainly because of Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison, but not sure on that.
In any event, a lot of the Packers’ season, and really for most if not all teams in the league, depends on how much improvement they get from within. With the Packers in particular, so much rests on Jordan Love’s play. He was up and down last year, and we don’t know how much of a factor the knee was as the season went on. But he’s got a lot of talent, and if he blossoms in Year 3 as a starter, that will make a huge difference. Drafting two receivers and an offensive lineman early should help him at least some.
Detroit is talented and gets Aidan Hutchinson back. The Lions have to be the division favorite. But Minnesota is making a change at QB. Sam Darnold performed poorly at the end of the season but overall had a really good year. He’s in Seattle now. J.J. McCarthy might very well become a good NFL starting quarterback, but I can’t imagine he’s going to play as well in his first year as a starter as Darnold did last season. He’s going to have some big ups and downs in 2025.
Chicago’s a wild card. The Bears were active in free agency, hired a highly respected offensive mind as their new coach, and have a talented young QB in Caleb Williams. Hard to guess what they’re going to be this year.
Tom from CA: Please share your specific thoughts on what will make this a successful draft by season’s end. Example: Golden is top two in catches for rookies and Belton starts the season at RG. Or three players play a third of the O or D snaps. Or six draft picks make the 53, etc.
Dougherty: I’d say this draft class helped immediately if both rookie receivers are regularly in the rotation and getting their share of touches, and if one of the two rookie edge players contributes something to the pass rush that wasn’t there last season.
Judging for the longer run will take a couple of years. We’ve all seen classes that start out promising but then fail to blossom, and vice versa.
Carl Gerbschmidt, Elk Mound: Why does Gutey "reach" so much from the consensus? We know from history that when he reaches — the results (other than maybe Evan Williams) do not turn out well. See: A.J. Dillon, Sean Clifford, Josiah Deguara, Josh Myers, Anders Carlson, etc. etc. etc.) as example. On the other hand, when he picked players projected to go earlier — the results are much better: Tucker Kraft, Zach Tom, Rasheed Walker, etc. What say you?
Cliff J: Why did the Packers draft Anthony Belton, tackle, in the second round instead of a player on defense? All of these players were available when the Packers picked ... Mike Green, Trey Amos, Omarr Norman-Lott, Shemar Turner, Andrew Mukuba, Darlus Alexander. Everything I have read indicates that Belton would have been available to the Packers in round 3. This sounds like another Lukas Van Ness reach again by the Packers.
Dougherty: I included these two questions together because they’re representative of a lot of questions in this chat.
Let’s take the overall question first. Why does Gutekunst reach so often on picks?
I know it’s easy to come away with that impression when we’re only exposed to a few draft pundits (ESPN, NFL Network). But we have to remember that that’s a small sample of the scouting community. Every team has numerous scouts, and there are 32 teams. That’s a lot of different opinions on players.
There’s no such thing as a consensus board. Evaluations of players can vary widely from team to team and scout to scout. That’s evaluating them both as players and as people. What one team likes about a prospect (as a player or person), another might dislike.
The Dane Bruglers and Daniel Jeremiahs and Mel Kipers of the world are very good at their jobs and surely are good enough to scout for NFL teams. But their opinions on players often differ from each other and are bound to be different than teams’. They also don’t have all the resources teams have for medical and background checks on players — they often rely on their contacts with teams to help with that. And independent scouts aren’t looking at players for a specific team or system, either.
So while these pundits can give us an idea of how some of the league and some scouts see these players, it’s just a small sample of evaluations. The pundits are wrong a lot, too, just like the teams. I believe Jayden Reed was considered a reach by draft pundits two years ago, and he’s a good player.
Every team picks players every year that someone or other considers a reach. The NFL draft is the ultimate beauty-is-in-the-eye endeavor.
As for Belton in particular, Gutekunst and his staff obviously really liked Belton, and Gutekunst said at his news conference after Day 2 that he didn’t think Belton would be there when he picked in the third round (No. 87 overall). He probably had good reason to think so, because part of the scouting staff’s job is to suss out when players are likely to get picked.
I didn’t ask any scouts about Belton before the draft but read some publicly available reports on him. Third- or fourth-round grade seemed to be most common, but one anonymous scout in one story said guys with Belton’s size and talent often go in the second round. So I doubt the Packers were the only ones who saw him as a second-round player.
That’s not to say their evaluation was common around the league, but they really liked him and must have thought he was going to get picked either later in the second round or the first 20 picks of the third.
I don’t know if Belton is going to be a good player, but the Packers clearly liked his size and athleticism a lot. They want to be a big team, and he’s a big man.
Larry: After numerous mock drafts, it seemed GB passed on many higher-rated edges and OT and even their second WR. Were all these experts off base or is money for signing the object? Their draft was what I expected just not the players.
Dougherty: As I said in the previous answer, there’s no such thing as a consensus draft board. Evaluations of players vary widely from team to team. Every team, for instance, passed on Mike Green, the edge rusher from Marshall. He didn’t get picked until No. 59 overall even though pretty much every mock draft I saw had him going in the first round, and most of them in the top 20 picks. Different teams see players differently.
Money is not an issue drafting players. The pay for draft picks is a predetermined formula based on the slot they were picked. That’s part of the collective bargaining agreement between owners and the players union. So if you’re picking No. 23 in the first round, the contract for that player is going to be pretty much the same regardless of the position he plays.
Raymond Apple: So many prognosticators and supposed draft “experts” weighing in with “Gutey did not get good value,” “Gutey did not fulfill top needs,” “could have gotten that player in round X, therefore he was a reach.” I on the other hand applaud Gutey for his discipline and adherence to the “board.” We have seen time and again Gutey nailing talent in rounds 4 and 5 , for example. And even seen UDFAs take snaps from day 1 and 2 picks. So what I am saying is he is not perfect, but Gutey has shown skill in working draft boards and not getting carried away by emotion.
Dougherty: GMs need to have the courage of their convictions. Their job is to evaluate players as best as they can and make decisions based on those evaluations.
Drafting players is as much art as science even with all the money and analytics poured into scouting. All you need to do is look at the history of the NFL draft to see that. Players are constantly over- or under-performing relative to their draft position.
Need of course figures into drafting, but it’s smart not to go overboard drafting for need. If you draft the best players you can get, and you’re a good evaluator, then your odds improve for picking some good players.
This Packers draft was most definitely a board draft in that they didn’t think they’d take receivers with two picks in the first three rounds. But they really liked those players when their picks came up, and they thought both guys could help their team even if they might have preferred taking, say, an edge rusher with one of those picks.
That’s having the courage of your convictions in evaluating players, even while knowing more players fail than succeed, even high in the draft.
This article originally appeared on Packers News: Packers mailbag: Pete Dougherty answers about Brian Gutekunst’s draft
Continue reading...
These are excerpts from his full mailbag focusing on Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst and his ability as a drafter.
For the full mailbag, click here.
You must be registered for see images attach
Art, St. Peter, MN: Please explain how this draft helps our run game and overall game other than the obvious passing game. Also, how does it make our team more competitive postseason? And yes, Anthony Belton looks like the barn door, but the pessimists say he lacks a motor. What say you? The crowd that insists CB, edge and DT were/are first priorities and missed it are struggling to love this draft.
Dougherty: I was surprised as anyone that Brian Gutekunst didn’t draft a DT, edge or CB with any of his first three picks. But I probably shouldn’t have been. So shame on me for getting locked into thinking that, because their offense did melt down at the very end of last season.
Of course, the Packers were surprised how the draft went, too. Gutekunst and Matt LaFleur said they didn’t expect to take receivers with two of their first three picks. But these things can happen in the draft if you stick to your board and don’t feel like you have a single need that you absolutely have to fill early on.
I do wonder what Gutekunst would have done if Matthew Golden had gone a pick or two earlier. Would he have taken the Kentucky CB Maxwell Hairston? Or Tennessee edge James Pearce Jr.? Or Ohio State DT Tyleik Williams? Or been more willing to trade back? We don’t know, but the Packers’ draft might have looked very different.
Anyway, Gutekunst’s willingness to take receivers in the first and third rounds, and an offensive lineman in the second, clearly shows he was bothered by his offense faltering in the final three games (two regular season and one playoff).
So theoretically, at least, that’s how his team got better. It got more dynamic on offense. Williams could help the run game some because he had 50-plus carries for TCU last season, mostly as a wildcat quarterback. Have to think his best chance to get touches will be on jet sweeps and bubble screens. Golden should at minimum help stretch the defense as a deep threat.
Still, whether the Packers got better with this draft ultimately depends on how the players they picked turn out. If the player isn’t good, drafting him hasn’t helped anything.
I thought pass rusher was their greatest need. They added two, but in the fourth and fifth rounds. No matter what round you draft a player, there’s a decent chance he won’t be good, but the deeper in the draft you go, the more those chances increase. We’ll just have to wait and see whether Barryn Sorrell and/or Collin Oliver can help them this year, or down the road for that matter. Drafting two edge guys increases the odds some, but neither was a high pick.
Tosafish: Coaches and team executives often talk about winning their division as a primary goal of any team. How do you see the Packers improving their competitive position vs. division rivals given their draft choices and selective free agency decisions?
Dougherty: I was talking to a personnel executive for an NFC team before the draft and asked him to rate the talent of the four teams in the NFC North, leaving the quarterback out of it. He went Detroit, Green Bay, Minnesota, Chicago.
I’m not saying that’s a consensus position in the league, but this guy is a longtime scout, and it was an informed ranking. I might have put Minnesota ahead of the Packers, mainly because of Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison, but not sure on that.
In any event, a lot of the Packers’ season, and really for most if not all teams in the league, depends on how much improvement they get from within. With the Packers in particular, so much rests on Jordan Love’s play. He was up and down last year, and we don’t know how much of a factor the knee was as the season went on. But he’s got a lot of talent, and if he blossoms in Year 3 as a starter, that will make a huge difference. Drafting two receivers and an offensive lineman early should help him at least some.
Detroit is talented and gets Aidan Hutchinson back. The Lions have to be the division favorite. But Minnesota is making a change at QB. Sam Darnold performed poorly at the end of the season but overall had a really good year. He’s in Seattle now. J.J. McCarthy might very well become a good NFL starting quarterback, but I can’t imagine he’s going to play as well in his first year as a starter as Darnold did last season. He’s going to have some big ups and downs in 2025.
Chicago’s a wild card. The Bears were active in free agency, hired a highly respected offensive mind as their new coach, and have a talented young QB in Caleb Williams. Hard to guess what they’re going to be this year.
Tom from CA: Please share your specific thoughts on what will make this a successful draft by season’s end. Example: Golden is top two in catches for rookies and Belton starts the season at RG. Or three players play a third of the O or D snaps. Or six draft picks make the 53, etc.
You must be registered for see images
Dougherty: I’d say this draft class helped immediately if both rookie receivers are regularly in the rotation and getting their share of touches, and if one of the two rookie edge players contributes something to the pass rush that wasn’t there last season.
Judging for the longer run will take a couple of years. We’ve all seen classes that start out promising but then fail to blossom, and vice versa.
Carl Gerbschmidt, Elk Mound: Why does Gutey "reach" so much from the consensus? We know from history that when he reaches — the results (other than maybe Evan Williams) do not turn out well. See: A.J. Dillon, Sean Clifford, Josiah Deguara, Josh Myers, Anders Carlson, etc. etc. etc.) as example. On the other hand, when he picked players projected to go earlier — the results are much better: Tucker Kraft, Zach Tom, Rasheed Walker, etc. What say you?
Cliff J: Why did the Packers draft Anthony Belton, tackle, in the second round instead of a player on defense? All of these players were available when the Packers picked ... Mike Green, Trey Amos, Omarr Norman-Lott, Shemar Turner, Andrew Mukuba, Darlus Alexander. Everything I have read indicates that Belton would have been available to the Packers in round 3. This sounds like another Lukas Van Ness reach again by the Packers.
Dougherty: I included these two questions together because they’re representative of a lot of questions in this chat.
Let’s take the overall question first. Why does Gutekunst reach so often on picks?
I know it’s easy to come away with that impression when we’re only exposed to a few draft pundits (ESPN, NFL Network). But we have to remember that that’s a small sample of the scouting community. Every team has numerous scouts, and there are 32 teams. That’s a lot of different opinions on players.
There’s no such thing as a consensus board. Evaluations of players can vary widely from team to team and scout to scout. That’s evaluating them both as players and as people. What one team likes about a prospect (as a player or person), another might dislike.
The Dane Bruglers and Daniel Jeremiahs and Mel Kipers of the world are very good at their jobs and surely are good enough to scout for NFL teams. But their opinions on players often differ from each other and are bound to be different than teams’. They also don’t have all the resources teams have for medical and background checks on players — they often rely on their contacts with teams to help with that. And independent scouts aren’t looking at players for a specific team or system, either.
So while these pundits can give us an idea of how some of the league and some scouts see these players, it’s just a small sample of evaluations. The pundits are wrong a lot, too, just like the teams. I believe Jayden Reed was considered a reach by draft pundits two years ago, and he’s a good player.
Every team picks players every year that someone or other considers a reach. The NFL draft is the ultimate beauty-is-in-the-eye endeavor.
You must be registered for see images attach
As for Belton in particular, Gutekunst and his staff obviously really liked Belton, and Gutekunst said at his news conference after Day 2 that he didn’t think Belton would be there when he picked in the third round (No. 87 overall). He probably had good reason to think so, because part of the scouting staff’s job is to suss out when players are likely to get picked.
I didn’t ask any scouts about Belton before the draft but read some publicly available reports on him. Third- or fourth-round grade seemed to be most common, but one anonymous scout in one story said guys with Belton’s size and talent often go in the second round. So I doubt the Packers were the only ones who saw him as a second-round player.
That’s not to say their evaluation was common around the league, but they really liked him and must have thought he was going to get picked either later in the second round or the first 20 picks of the third.
I don’t know if Belton is going to be a good player, but the Packers clearly liked his size and athleticism a lot. They want to be a big team, and he’s a big man.
Larry: After numerous mock drafts, it seemed GB passed on many higher-rated edges and OT and even their second WR. Were all these experts off base or is money for signing the object? Their draft was what I expected just not the players.
Dougherty: As I said in the previous answer, there’s no such thing as a consensus draft board. Evaluations of players vary widely from team to team. Every team, for instance, passed on Mike Green, the edge rusher from Marshall. He didn’t get picked until No. 59 overall even though pretty much every mock draft I saw had him going in the first round, and most of them in the top 20 picks. Different teams see players differently.
Money is not an issue drafting players. The pay for draft picks is a predetermined formula based on the slot they were picked. That’s part of the collective bargaining agreement between owners and the players union. So if you’re picking No. 23 in the first round, the contract for that player is going to be pretty much the same regardless of the position he plays.
Raymond Apple: So many prognosticators and supposed draft “experts” weighing in with “Gutey did not get good value,” “Gutey did not fulfill top needs,” “could have gotten that player in round X, therefore he was a reach.” I on the other hand applaud Gutey for his discipline and adherence to the “board.” We have seen time and again Gutey nailing talent in rounds 4 and 5 , for example. And even seen UDFAs take snaps from day 1 and 2 picks. So what I am saying is he is not perfect, but Gutey has shown skill in working draft boards and not getting carried away by emotion.
Dougherty: GMs need to have the courage of their convictions. Their job is to evaluate players as best as they can and make decisions based on those evaluations.
Drafting players is as much art as science even with all the money and analytics poured into scouting. All you need to do is look at the history of the NFL draft to see that. Players are constantly over- or under-performing relative to their draft position.
Need of course figures into drafting, but it’s smart not to go overboard drafting for need. If you draft the best players you can get, and you’re a good evaluator, then your odds improve for picking some good players.
This Packers draft was most definitely a board draft in that they didn’t think they’d take receivers with two picks in the first three rounds. But they really liked those players when their picks came up, and they thought both guys could help their team even if they might have preferred taking, say, an edge rusher with one of those picks.
That’s having the courage of your convictions in evaluating players, even while knowing more players fail than succeed, even high in the draft.
This article originally appeared on Packers News: Packers mailbag: Pete Dougherty answers about Brian Gutekunst’s draft
Continue reading...
