Packers ignored offense too often in draft while not finding good value on defense

Few teams claim to adhere more closely to their board in the draft than the Green Bay Packers. Ron Wolf, Ted Thompson, and Brian Gutekunst preached the importance of selecting the best player available, and yet all three had and have a history of going hard at positions of need. It’s not just the best player, but the best player available that can help this particular team.

Unfortunately, for too long, that meant investing in defense, an approach that frankly hasn’t done much to fix the problem. Meanwhile, the offense languished last season for stretches in large part because the cupboards accumulated dust. They were bare.

It has to change for the Packers to change the way they want to change.

We can quantify the gap between offensive and defensive investment with draft selections. For years, teams have attempted to quantify what picks were worth so they could be traded. In order to determine value, Jimmy Johnson famously came up with a trade value chart of draft picks. Over the years, it’s been tweaked, but most teams broadly use the same (or approximately the same) figures.

Rich Hill over at Pats Pulpit put together a chart based on recent trades that may update the Johnson trade value chart based on transactions we’ve actually seen made the last few years, assigning each pick points. In other words, Hill’s chart shows how much each pick is worth.

2018

18 - Jaire Alexander (287 draft points)

45 - Josh Jackson (131)

88 - Oren Burks (47)

2019

12 - Rashan Gary (347)

21 - Darnell Savage (261)

44 - Elgton Jenkins (135)

75 - Jace Sternberger (63)

2020

26 - Jordan Love (223)

62 - AJ Dillon (84)

94 - Josiah Deguara (41)

2021

29 - Eric Stokes (202)

62 - Josh Myers (84)

85 - Amari Rodgers (50)

2022

22 - Quay Walker (253)

28 - Devonte Wyatt (209)

34 - Christian Watson (175)

92 - Sean Rhyan (43)

That means the Packers have spent 1,737 draft value points on defense. That’s essentially the No. 1 overall pick plus more than the No. 2 overall pick combined in defensive value. On the flip side, they’d poured just 898 draft points into the offense. Less than half!

To make matters worse, this disparity created a two-pronged problem: The defense hasn’t materially improved despite pouring enormous amounts of resources into it (and even finding a couple of elite players!) and the value they did get out of the offense has been mostly pathetic.