May
Green Bay Packers 2012 NFL Draft: The Reasons Behind the Picks Part II
So here is part II of the reasons behind the draft picks (see part I here) Again, I’m not assigning grades to the draft or to the players because I don’t believe you can tell whether or not a player will pan out within the first 30 something days. What I am interested in is what the Packers were thinking of when they decided to draft a player; with that in mind, this is what I think the Packers want to accomplish with each draft pick and which player each rookie could be potentially be replacing.
Jeron McMillian – Projected Strong Safety – Round 4, Pick #38 (#133 overall) – Replaces Pat Lee
Rationale: First off let’s be honest here, I don’t think we have the next Nick Collins in McMillian; I was actually very surprised that McMillian was drafted at all by the Packers simply because he doesn’t fit into the mold of what the Packers look for in safeties. The Packers are probably more interested in playing two free safeties (which there really wasn’t one this year in the draft), consider their preferred pairing of Collins and Morgan Burnett (who ironically never really played together): both have good ball skills and the ability to jump passing routes. What McMillian does best is run support, which is almost the exact opposite of a ball hawk. Then again even if McMillian is the next Collins I highly doubt that the Packers can afford to stick him out there in his first year, which is even more reason why I think Woodson will have to make the move to safety.


“I’m convinced the articles I’ve seen like this are written by guys who have no actually gone through the trade value charts. The Packers are going to be in a tough spot trying to trade up and will have to really overpay in number of selections to do it.”
Let’s play devil’s advocate one more time and look at why the Packers should trade up in the NFL draft. This time I will be looking purely at the economics of the draft. The classic example that Packer fans love in the 2005 NFL draft where Alex Smith was given the biggest rookie contract of all time at that point with $45.9 million deal with $24 million guaranteed while Aaron Rodgers only commanded a $7.7 million deal (less than Smith’s guaranteed contract) with $5.4 million guaranteed. I’m not going to go in the relative value of Smith vs. Rodgers as players (as countless writers including myself have beaten the topic to death) but the take home message is that the Packers couldn’t lose economically: if Rodgers is the next Bart Starr, then they’ve got him at a discount for the first 5 years, if he’s decent the Packers paid a fair market value for him and if he’s a bust they can cut Rodgers without much penalty. Smith on the other hand had to succeed; it was the only way to justify his massive contract. 












