Are the Packers due for a "Jeff Hafley" draft or will Brian Gutekunst keep the reins?

Ted Thompson and Brian Gutekunst have drafted in themes over the years. The GM seems to have taken control the last few years, but is a reorientation coming?

Good morning!

The NFL Scouting Combine is here, and even though the Green Bay Packers coaching staff won’t be there, I will be. I’ll be gathering information, talking to prospects and sitting in with GM Brian Gutekunst on Tuesday. We’ll bring you all the latest here on The Leap.

Today's edition of The Leap looks at some themes the Packers have featured over the years in their drafts, particularly the last few seasons, and whether it’s time to give Jeff Hafley his pick of the proverbial draft litter.

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There’s an easy line to draw between the Packers drafts of late and their coaches (and a player). Is 2025 going to be Jeff Hafley draft?

Peter Bukowski: The trend line started in 2020 when, in retrospect, the draft belonged to Matt LaFleur.

1st round: Jordan Love

2nd round: A.J. Dillon

3rd round: Josiah Deguara

According to our friends at GoLongTD, LaFleur started calling on Love back in the fall of 2019, before he’d even seen much of Aaron Rodgers in person as the quarterback. According to Tyler Dunne’s reporting, no one did more work on Love than the Packers and that’s including and especially the head coach.

LaFleur showed last year how much he’d love to have a power back as the engine of this offseason featuring Josh Jacobs more than he ever tried with Aaron Jones.

And Deguara was a player LaFleur gushed over early in the tight end’s career, to the point LaFleur says he’d shown the team an effort play Deguara made while at Cincinnati even before the Packers drafted him. This was a pet project from the start.

After coming to Green Bay, the then-new head coach architected the turnaround of a toxic locker room culture, reinvigorated a then-two-time MVP, and won 13 games. It made sense for Gutekunst to say, “OK, what do you want? How can we build this team in your vision?”

But in 2021, as the Summer of Discontent™ unfolded, the now-three-time MVP pouted, insisting on changes to the front office or presidency and pressure rose on the team to add immediate impact players despite the realities of a cap-strapped league after the novel coronavirus all but eliminated in-stadium revenues for the league.

That made the ‘21 draft Aaron Rodgers’.

1st round: Eric Stokes

2nd round: Josh Myers

3rd round: Amari Rodgers

Cornerback always made sense as the pick, but it would be easy to intuit the Packers selected Stokes because he was pro-ready thanks ti his man coverage ability (generally an indicator of pro readiness) his experience, and superlative athletic traits.

After that, the Rodgers-y-ness is obvious. Selecting Myers over Creed Humphrey, clearly faulty in its evaluation from the beginning, felt in real-time like the Packers picking a player they were more sure could handle the rigors of big-boy NFL football out of the Big 10, as opposed to the spread-out defenses Oklahoma saw in the run-and-gun Big 12.

Even without an athletic profile due to injury, Myers represented the win-now move.

And Amari Rodgers was, “We know you want Randall Cobb, but how about his protege?” Rodgers admitted, and Gutekunst confirmed, Rodgers had asked for help at the slot receiver position before trading for the aforementioned Cobb or drafting the other Rodgers.

The Clemson Rodgers didn’t fit their receiver archetype, and Gutekunst confirmed they didn’t use their usual models for him, but the scouting staff loved him anyway.

He was drafted to placate their superstar quarterback.

Later that fall, the defense debuted under Joe Barry and their new linebacker De’Vondre Campbell thrived. The defense made some improvements in key areas despite injuries to Jaire Alexander ( a harbinger of things to come) and Za’Darius Smith (ditto). That season ended with one of the few Rodgers playoff games where it cannot be said the defense let the team down. Barry’s group played incredibly well in against the San Francisco 49ers, not to mention in games against star quarterbacks like Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes, and Russell Wilson that season.

That brought us the Barry draft.

1st round: Quay Walker

1st round: Devonte Wyatt

2nd round: Christian Watson

3rd round: Sean Rhyan

The Packers drafted Walker to assuage the run defense concerns and live more in nickel after they thrived playing dime thanks to Campbell’s outlier season. Mike Montgomery, the defensive line coach at the time, asked for a penetrating 3-technique and Gutekunst used a first-round pick on one.

Much like the Barry experiment, this plan did not go to the letter.

But the spring of 2022 saw a stark change organizationally: Rodgers left for the New York Jets, the coaches stopped going to the combine and Gutekunst stamped the next two drafts with his unique brand of Thompson-Wolf-y-ness.

1st round: Lukas Van Ness

2nd round: Luke Musgrave

2nd round: Jayden Reed

3rd round: Tucker Kraft

Van Ness, the hulking underachiever fits the Rashan Gary mold (2019 was also a Gutekunst draft). Musgrave and Kraft is classic Gutekunst (2018 was also a Gutey draft) throwing multiple assets at a glaring weakness. Trading down for Reed in a move that also lands the Packers Dontayvion Wicks and Karl Brooks must have had Ted Thompson smiling from his film room in heaven.

Jordan Morgan was a nod to the future, the kind of thing a head coach rarely acknowledges. Filling up the coffers at safety and linebacker were less about scheme-specific needs and more about merely having workable NFL bodies at the position, a thing that could not be said heading into the 2024 draft.

That brings us to now. Jeff Hafley arrives and immediately effects massive change on a defense that couldn’t accomplish what the team hoped when it constructed the group over the spring and summer.

Sure, Xavier McKinney worked like a charm, and they struck platinum, and then gold with Edgerrin Cooper and Evan Williams, but the front struggled to rush the passer, the coaching staff had to pivot on the fly, yet still built a top-10 group by DVOA.

History suggests the Packers will give Hafley even more room to build this team in his image this offseason. That likely means doing what we already expected them to do: add a pass rusher and a cornerback to this group, but in terms of process, the fingerprints of Hafley will likely be all over whatever moves are made.

In a year from now we may look at this 2025 draft and go, “This was the Hafley draft.”

Considering how last season’s Hafley defense went, he deserves the benefit of the doubt to get it right.