After watching some draft coverage over the last two days and pondering our moves, I decided to pop over to good old Packerforum.com and see what the good people of Packer Nation had to say about what's gone down so far. Needless to say, I was pretty shocked and appalled at the lack of confidence in our team and the downright ignorance some of you have shown. Time for an education, friends. Open your eyes and ears.
I see the main issue that's got everyone in an uproar is the drafting of Justin Harrell. At the time of the drafting, I was pretty shocked, and initially disagreed with the decision, but the more I looked into it, the more I realized that it was a very good selection. Here's why.
Our main positions of need are considered to be RB, TE, DB, WR, and DT. At RB, there was obviously no player of considerable value that you could justify taking at 1.16. At TE, Greg Olsen would have been a gigantic reach, and as our organization has stated, they don't feel that TE is as big of a need as we do.
At DB, any corner we would have selected would have been relegated to Nickle duty next season. If you have 1 and only 1 1st round draft pick, and you're a mediocre team, you don't use it on a player that won't be an every down impact guy. At S, all 3 available players with 1st round grades did not fit our needs. Michael Griffin, Reggie Nelson, and Brandon Merriweather are all smaller, quicker coverage Free Safeties. We already have that taken care of with Nick Collins, what we need is a Strong Safety. The SS has to be a big, hard hitting player in our system, and none of these 3 or Nick Collins fit that billing. This need was addressed later with the very large Aaron Rouse.
WR is the only position, then, that you can legitimately debate we should have taken instead of DT where we were selecting. If you are going to debate anything, debate that we should have selected Bowe or Meachem instead of Harrell. The fact that we didn't select either of these players shows you the faith that our staff has in Greg Jennings, a player who most of you love, and a pick that was highly scrutinized by most of you idiots last season. We did add 2 WRs later on, in Jones and Clowney. One is a tough guy, one is a burner.
Obviously, Harrell was drafted because we felt that the DT position was not nearly as deep in this draft as the WR position, which I agree with. There is no 5th-7th round DT that has nearly the value of a David Clowney, who led his team in receptions 2 straight seasons and is a track star, literally.
As for Randy Moss, he wasn't coming here, end of story. If you have the choice between New England and anywhere else, you would be stupid to pick the other option. Not getting Randy Moss does not make Thompson a bad GM or the Packers a bad team. It just means that Thompson is not as good as Pioli and the Packers are not as good as the Patriots. Right now, Thompson and the Packers are in that club with 30 other GMs and teams. Moss wasn't coming here for less than the $9.75 M salary we would have had to paid him, and even then he might have refused a trade to GB because he wanted to play for the Patriots so bad. Being worse than Scott Pioli does not make Ted Thompson bad.
In closing, all I have to say is this. 3 1st Team All-Rookie selections in 2006 for the Packers, more than any other team, and 4 wins improvement.
I see the main issue that's got everyone in an uproar is the drafting of Justin Harrell. At the time of the drafting, I was pretty shocked, and initially disagreed with the decision, but the more I looked into it, the more I realized that it was a very good selection. Here's why.
Our main positions of need are considered to be RB, TE, DB, WR, and DT. At RB, there was obviously no player of considerable value that you could justify taking at 1.16. At TE, Greg Olsen would have been a gigantic reach, and as our organization has stated, they don't feel that TE is as big of a need as we do.
At DB, any corner we would have selected would have been relegated to Nickle duty next season. If you have 1 and only 1 1st round draft pick, and you're a mediocre team, you don't use it on a player that won't be an every down impact guy. At S, all 3 available players with 1st round grades did not fit our needs. Michael Griffin, Reggie Nelson, and Brandon Merriweather are all smaller, quicker coverage Free Safeties. We already have that taken care of with Nick Collins, what we need is a Strong Safety. The SS has to be a big, hard hitting player in our system, and none of these 3 or Nick Collins fit that billing. This need was addressed later with the very large Aaron Rouse.
WR is the only position, then, that you can legitimately debate we should have taken instead of DT where we were selecting. If you are going to debate anything, debate that we should have selected Bowe or Meachem instead of Harrell. The fact that we didn't select either of these players shows you the faith that our staff has in Greg Jennings, a player who most of you love, and a pick that was highly scrutinized by most of you idiots last season. We did add 2 WRs later on, in Jones and Clowney. One is a tough guy, one is a burner.
Obviously, Harrell was drafted because we felt that the DT position was not nearly as deep in this draft as the WR position, which I agree with. There is no 5th-7th round DT that has nearly the value of a David Clowney, who led his team in receptions 2 straight seasons and is a track star, literally.
As for Randy Moss, he wasn't coming here, end of story. If you have the choice between New England and anywhere else, you would be stupid to pick the other option. Not getting Randy Moss does not make Thompson a bad GM or the Packers a bad team. It just means that Thompson is not as good as Pioli and the Packers are not as good as the Patriots. Right now, Thompson and the Packers are in that club with 30 other GMs and teams. Moss wasn't coming here for less than the $9.75 M salary we would have had to paid him, and even then he might have refused a trade to GB because he wanted to play for the Patriots so bad. Being worse than Scott Pioli does not make Ted Thompson bad.
In closing, all I have to say is this. 3 1st Team All-Rookie selections in 2006 for the Packers, more than any other team, and 4 wins improvement.