The Green Bay Packers may have to settle for a first-round pick without testing
The best players in the draft aren't testing and the ones who are, selectively test. This creates problems for the Packers who prize athleticism especially in the first round.
Good morning!
We are almost there! The draft is less than three weeks away, and it’s one of the most jumbled classes in recent memory. Complicating the process even more, top prospects opted out of testing, are hurt, or put together incomplete draft profiles.
Brian Gutekunst has never drafted a first-round player without enough athletic data to complete a Relative Athletic Score. That might have to change this year.
Today’s newsletter delves into why and what the Packers can do about it to ensure they’re still getting an S-tier athlete if they want one.
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Of the top 15 players in the 2025 NFL Draft by The Athletic consensus board, just three have full athletic profiles. What kind of options will the Packers have if they want a player with certified elite athleticism?
Peter Bukowski: The short answer is: not worry too much. This is a problem that exists mostly at the top of the class. While it’s true that only three of the top 15 projected players have enough testing to qualify for RAS, 19 of the top 40 players have profiles, and only two of them fall below average.
If you think this is just underwear Olympic nonsense, consider Green Bay has selected a player who qualifies for RAS with every single top 100 draft pick of the Gutekunst era except Josh Myers, who was hurt. Not only did they qualify for RAS, but they also excelled athletically. Darnell Savage had the worst RAS of any first-round pick at 8.35, which tells us Savage is roughly an 83rd percentile athlete for a safety.
Even Jordan Love had an RAS of 8.45.
And while some fans bristle at the dogmatic adherence to these types of standards, it’s more that the best players tend to be athletic. According to Kent Lee Platte, the creator of RAS, more than 80% of NFL starters are average athletes or better. Expecting to get a starting-caliber player from a below-average athlete is a fool’s errand.
But teams know now, more than ever, when a player arrives at the combine or his pro day how he’s likely going to test. A slew of companies provide tracking data during the season and at pre-draft showcases like the Senior Bowl.
College programs also hold their own mini-combines for internal use. Scouts know what the schools tell them about those testing numbers, which always tend to surface somehow through the media for players who either forego testing or who are hurt through the pre-draft process.
East Carolina standout cornerback Shavon Revel tore his ACL last fall and while he’s expected to be recovered in time for next season, he can’t put together an athletic profile. Green Bay had him in for a visit, but there’s only so much they can learn while he’s not 100% healthy. They can’t put him through his paces even if they wanted to.
Of course, now we find out he ran 4.4 at an ECU camp with an 11-foot broad jump. Those would be elite numbers for a 6-foot-2 cornerback.
But it’s not just that he doesn’t have an athletic profile. Again, the team knows he’s athletic. It’s the reason he doesn’t have one. The injury adds to his risk as a draftee. And particularly in the first round, managing upside while mitigating risk is the whole aim.
For other players, digging through the reasoning ends up murkier. Why did Oregon defensive tackle Derrick Harmon blaze a 40 at 313 pounds but not do any other testing? Why did J.T. Tuimoloau run a shuttle but not a 3-cone, particularly when the rest of his testing was stellar?
Green Bay likely knows the answer: if they thought they’d run a good time or jumped high, they would have done it. On the other hand, agents and players have become hip to the league’s preferences, and even players who might do well don’t risk a bad run. They’d rather leave the mystery and hope the tape speaks for itself.
Is there some old-school scout mentality that would say they’re scared to compete? You can bet that is happening around NFL facilities right now. But if everyone is flying a little blind, then the only competitive advantage is finding a way to use the new generation of tracking data, even if it can sometimes be difficult to compare across companies.
This is the new reality, and there’s a way to see it as a better one. The times were always meant as a proxy for athletic ability on the football field, but what better data to mine than the actual data on the football field? Some players truly are faster in pads.
That said, teams can and do find players who don’t play to their timed speed — whose athletic ability doesn’t always show up on the field — and that’s the whole point of the appeal. Finding out they are freaky athletes has a way of demonstrating an upside to teams. Untapped potential. Those players may be harder to locate, though then again, those are precisely the kinds of players who should be doing a full battery at their pro days.
Luckily, those players also tend not to be first-round picks. Green Bay likely has enough information this year to make an informed selection, but with the way the NFL landscape moves, it may be one of the last relying on historical methods. They have to evolve or risk being left behind by those who do.