NFL Combine: Packers miss in draft when they stop caring about their standards
The Green Bay Packers are proof not to believe too much in one’s own ability to evaluate football prospects.
This is a truism supported by a Pro Football Focus study that shows teams miss more often on draft picks the further they stray from consensus rankings. Going back to Ron Wolf (and starting with Al Davis), the Packers held standards at certain positions with specific athletic markers they look to in order to find the best players. It’s a methodology that has worked well when they stick to it, and mostly failed miserably they’ve strayed. In other words, stick to what works.
For the Packers, athleticism reigns supreme. They haven’t become a punchline like Davis and the Raiders, mostly because they have found the balance between prioritizing measured athleticism and identifying play-making skills on tape. Particularly at the end, the Raiders appeared to be drafted players based solely on their 40-yard dash times.
Those predisposed to view the combine through a circumspect lens will point to the dangers of falling in love with workout warriors. And that’s true! Don’t do that. The tape still matters the most. But athletic profiles provide a handy baseline and players who don’t fit those baselines tend to fail at higher rates.
To wit, the creator of Relative Athletic Score (RAS), Kent Lee Platte, pointed out on Twitter that more than 81% of current NFL players have above-average athleticism relative to their positional peers. In this case, that’s a RAS of 5 or above. And a whopping 45% are 8.0 or higher.
Whether or not the Packers use RAS doesn’t matter; they clearly use some kind of size-speed profile, something Brian Gutekunst has said on the record is true.
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