Green Bay Packers: 3 recent Draft booms and busts

The Green Bay Packers, like any professional sports team, have had their share of times when they looked like geniuses in the draft and also their share of draft duds. With the 2019 NFL Draft fast approaching, we’ll look at a few of each.

As I’ve said in multiple draft articles before when talking about safeties and quarterbacks, no draft in any professional sport is an exact science. The Green Bay Packers are no exception to this rule. You can see a player’s physical tools, you can do tests for personality and football IQ, and watch hours of film to look for system fit., but at the end of the day, some players will find success in this league and others will not.

Everyone knows about the Packers historic success of finding star talent in late rounds with guys like Donald Driver and Mark Tauscher. We all know about blunders like Tony Mandarich being taken before three Hall of Famers in Barry Sanders, Derrick Thomas, and Deion Sanders. Now, we’ll dive into the last few drafts and see where the Packers got it right and where they whiffed on early round picks.

For the busts portion, I will not include anyone drafted on the third day of the draft, fourth round and later, because these players come in without tons of expectations and cannot really be considered busts. It is worth noting, to the Packers’ credit, that none of their first round picks from recent years are on my top three bust list. While it took getting out of Green Bay for Demarious Randall to find high-level success, his contributions to the Browns in 2018 can’t be dismissed. Also, I did not include anyone from the 2018 draft on my bust list because many of them are on the “too early to tell” list. Oren Burks and Josh Jackson did not have overly impressive seasons, they could certainly both turn it around and cant be given the bust tag quite yet.

In terms of the boom portion, these players can come from any round. Because the draft is so volatile, finding a great player, even if they are in an early round, is a big win for any organization. While Jaire Alexander and Marquez Valdes-Scantling had intriguing rookie campaigns, they have not done enough quite yet to qualify for full boom status, so they’ll also get my “too early to tell” distinction.