Gute has taken a TON of shit for the 2020 draft class. While I agree he could have used those first 3 picks on players who may have been more of a help to Rodgers, there's absolutely NO guarantee Rodgers would even used those "Other" possible draft picks. Hell, based on what history with Rookies tells us Rodgers wouldn't have even looked at them. Not with Adams still on the Roster. WAIT, was that Allan Lazard STILL running WIDE OPEN across the middle??? Just in case anyone forgot, Rodgers didn't look especially good in 2018 and 2019 either.

IMO I think we find out lots of things in 2023 and not just about the Top 3 picks of the 2020 draft. I think we find out a shit-ton about our HC too, Mr. Matt LaFleur. I got on the "Maybe MLF Isn't That Good" bandwagon last year but mostly for his failure to stand up to Rodgers and his INABILITY to FIRE Coaches who just plain ole suck!

Nobody saw the 2007 Packers coming, not really. I mean did you see them going 13-3 and playing in the NFCCG? Sure the 2006 team won the last 4 games of that season to give us hope, but I didn't see THAT coming which brings me to MLF.

Kyle Shanahan who I still say is one of the most overrated HC's in the NFL. I mean the dude finally went over 500 after the 2022 season taking 6 seasons to get there. The 49ers sucked for several years before (and after) Shanahan got there being able to stock pile a bunch of high draft picks. MLF, not so much.

LaFleur runs a similar offense to Shanahan so why can't LaFleur do with Jordon Love what Shanahan did with Brock Purdy. OBVIOUSLY having Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, CMC, and Ayuck there helped a LOT. I mean I may have gone 500 with that Defense and those skill players. Now with Watson, Doubs, and Toure in year 2, I think progress follows.

Watson is a stud, Doubs I think can be a very good number #2, or great #3. I think we get out Kittle and Ayuck in this class too. But the running game is the key to this offense, just like it is in SF. Jordon Love won't be undermining every damn thing LaFleur does with his own agenda. I think we see an improved MLF, a READY Jordon Love, a AJ Dillion chopping at the bit and running wild in the 4th quarters of games, and do a little of everything Deguara in 2023. Good thing we had that 4th year eh?

Duplicate

At the time that draft class was seen as one to give LaFleur the pieces he wanted to fully install his O. Gute, LaFleur and Murphy were quite explicit about that regarding certain picks and intent respectively, although the Love pick tended to distract the focus of many it is true. 2020 turned out to be a high water mark in that direction before we retreated from it. It was also the best year for our O by far and the last truly elite year from Rodgers.

We’ve debated the reasons for the retreat from the 2020 offensive approach at length and we all know the unknowable core around which the debate largely centers. With that core now presumably in the past. The question is what O will we see this year? For players like Dillon and Deguara, does that mean use as we anticipated and more in line with perceived attributes? To me that is the pivotal question.

Love stands apart. He wasn’t a system pick. He was an ultra high perceived upside project. As such inherently a gamble, perhaps in the mold of Gary in some senses. We have never seen him with his own game plan or an offense at least part is tailored for him or receivers he’s spent a lot of time with in game like conditions. Now we will.

In a sense that draft will now come into focus, but for me there are two separate issues. The wisdom of belief in Love, the answer to which requires us to give him time is one. The other is what will LaFleur do differently on O, if anything. If nothing then the problem with that draft is it was one giving toys that the recipient then chose not to use for the purpose intended.

If we see a very different O with more motion, complexity and the like that uses the H-back role consistently, does more from under center and thus allows those picks to play as envisaged, only them can we evaluate the drafter and players reasonably and fairly.

It’s going to be a very revealing season for this reason and others, and on D as well as O. In my mind it will speak far more to the wisdom of hiring and then the ability LaFleur than Gute, but I think a light will be shed on many facets. Will people thrive, liberated from constraint or fold without Rodgers keeping the roof from falling?

Bruce, no draft class of any Pckers GM will be announced as superb. Why? Because he will not hit in all 7 rounds. Many fans expect all drafted players to be rookies of the year and immediate contributor to the team.

But the main objection will come from situation when Brian will not draft their draft crush player. It will be the moment where many fans will declare bad draft from GM.

Despite we all knows that, no matter how good this or tjat player is, young players rarely excells in all categories. And GM knows what are the plans from HC and his coordinators which the type of players will suit the best for their psylosophy of O or D. And logic says that when you pick between similar players, you should take the one who excells in strategic plans for the season.

Players who can do everything on specific positions are rare (like Davante Adams, young M. Lewis, Aaron Jones etc) and you can find them only if they fall to your position on draft day (like Aaron Rodgers).

You may interview as much players as you want, but, especialy in late rounds (day 3) you can only guess will that player be the one who will reach his potential.

26 QB Jordan Love
62 RB AJ Dillon
94 TE Josiah Deguara
175 LB Kamal Martin
192 OT Jon Runyan Jr.
208 C Jake Hansen
209 OT Simon Stepaniak
236 S Vernon Scott
242 OLB Jonathan Garvin

Now’s the time.

I agree that Top 3 will finally get an opportunity to shine. We might want to get some shades. It’s possible Rodgers skewed the timeline of all 3 players, to varying degrees.

There’s a chance we really don’t know what we have with any of our top 3 from 2020. With more reps, and employed differently, the results could surprise us.

None of us can say with any certainty what we’ve got outside of Dillon & Runyan.

Runyan is the big prize from R5 in illustrating the importance of every pick, every round.

Garvin showed promise.

Does Hansen become a player? That would be a commendable bit of work by Stenovich.

Find out what we already knew?
"That this was the worst draft class ever."
That it never filled any missing pieces.
A status Que; insert plan B.
That it was designed to move on from Rodgers.
And make Gutey greater than Lombardi.
All the while directing the pressure from himself?
We have 1 priority now.
To make the first rd pick be a success.
The rest are just hyped.
A good GM and class, is judged by All-Pros.
Something missing; from a guy who's been
in the packer organization for 25 years.
Not one pick will be a All-Pro.

I hope Kamal Martin can come back. He was plagued by injury last season but I think he's an important depth piece at ILB and important STer.

What can you say about Runyan. ONE penalty in the last two seasons! Runs in the family.

The Love pick paid for itself in the first two seasons. He caused (or at least because of) 2-MVPs. The rest is icing on the cake. He's going to hit the ground running.

The 2020 draft was a pivot point in GB.

The decision to draft Love changed the direction of the franchise and put us on the path we are currently on. I can't help but wonder what would our last 3 years have been like had they decided to not draft Love. I am going to go down this rabbit hole for a minute of what our team would be like had we chose not to make this move.

Instead of Love what if they drafted Patrick Queen? Queen was a player that a lot of packer fans wanted. Our starting ILB's were Christian Kirksey, Krys Barnes and Kamal Martin. Queen started all 16 games as a rookie and finished 3rd in DROY behind Chase Young and Jeremy Chin. Queen has started every game he has played in and has averaged over 100 tackles per season. Had they drafted Queen, would they have signed Campbell the following year? Would they have drafted Walker this year? Had they drafted Queen it likely would have changed what our current ILB looks like.

Instead Love what if they drafted Tee Higgins. Higgins rookie year he put up 908 yards on 67 receptions and 6 TD's. Since then he has posted back to back 1000+ yards on 74 receptions in each year, and 13 TD's. Obviously those numbers would look different in GB, but can't help but think he would have been an almost instant upgrade in the offense. Our WR's in 2020 we had Adams, Lazard, MVS as our main starters. Higgins easily would have been our number 4 if not higher. If Adams left last year, Higgins likely would have been our number 1 receiver and I have a hard time believing we have the same record as last year (if everything else played out the same way).

The decision of taking Love will show soon enough if it was the right one or the wrong one.

The rest of the draft included Dillon, Deguara, Kamal Martin, Jon Runyan, Jake Hanson, Simon Stepaniak, Vernon Scott, Jonathan Garvin.
Martin, Stepaniak and Scott are no longer with the team. I liked Scott his rookie year, but with the change of DC's he didn't really fit into the defense.
Runyan was a great 6th round draft pick. He has started in 33 of his last 34 games.

I believe Dillon and Degaura are primed for bigger years. Dillon struggled a bit last year and I believe the OL issues were part of it. That part has worked itself out now. With Love taking over I believe they will be even more focused on the run game. Deguara found a nice role as an H-back and I think he will have a bigger role in that position this year. With no Lewis and Tonyan, i think Deguara is primed for a much bigger role. Runyan was a very good find.
But this whole draft class hinges on what Love becomes as a QB. If Love becomes a top tier QB, it doesn't matter what the rest of this class is. If he is a flop and struggles, this class instantly looks bad. No pressure Jordan.

What kind of rating would've been given to the 2005 draft after year 3? Sometimes patience is needed, in our instant gratification world..

I honestly am not sure we will see more runs with Jordan Love. Everyone says that AR was part of the problem and did not run ML's offense at times and didn't run the ball as much as ML wanted to. The Packers ran the ball 44.7% of the time last year and passed the ball 55.3% of the time. That is a pretty balanced percentage. That tells me AR ran the plays that ML called or when he audibled, he was still calling runs when he was supposed to.

In 2021, we ran the ball 42% of the time and passed 58% of the time so we actually ran more this year than last.

The other thing to realize is if the defense is stacking the box and has 1 high safety, you need to pass. If a defense has two safeties back and have not stacked the box then you run the ball. Zone and man to man coverage can also come into play on when to run and pass.

The thing that may improve is if Love can go through his progressions quicker and throw on time then this offense could improve later in the year. AR was struggling this year on throwing on time it seemed.

My point is this is not as cut and dry as everyone thinks it is.

I guess time will tell.....

The offense is in trouble if Deguara's role in the passing game expands.

Rodgers was not great in 2017,2018, and 2019. In 2018 and 2019 Rodgers was starting to miss passes he always threw perfectly before. He was the most accurate QB I ever saw. Drafting Love pissed off Rodgers and he played way better again. Close to the Rodgers of old but still not as accurate as he used to be. Having an All Pro WR who catches everything also makes you look better.

Since Rodgers is pissed now off again, I would be surprised if he doesn't play great for the Jets for 2-3 years. I hope he does. Then the Jets will be a good trade partner in the future. Hopefully they are a good trade partner now and we get this debacle done without screwing this trade up too.

I am not a fan of trading up in the draft in the 1st round. It usually cost too much as teams trading up are desparate and teams know it. I will always wonder if Love would have still been there 4 picks later. And who else had the hots for him that would have jumped ahead of us.

The big misses were Patrick Queen and Tee Higgans in the 1st. A trade up would have been needed for Queen but we could have stayed right there for Higgins. Both would have been game changers which is what you need from a 1st round pick. Another big miss was Jeremy Chinn-S in the 2nd. He has been a stud and also would have been a game changer for us. A great safety would have helped more than a good RB.

I get the Deguara pick would fit the coaches "system" but the jury is out on that one. A much better pick would have been Denver TE Albert Okwuegbunam out of Missouri. He has been rumored to be available by trade the last 2 years. We could still fix this mistake by trading a 7th round pick for him or better yet trade Savage to a safety needing team (Denver) and get back a 6'5 260lb TE who ran 4.49 @ the combine. He had 27 TD catches @ Missouri. We could really use him and we also trade $5 million for $900,000. I would be disappointed if we didn't try to make this happen when we need a TE and salary cap relief so badly. No brainer!

The 2020 draft wasn't that strong and later picks would be nitpicking. Antonio Gibson-RB from Memphis was a draft crush but he went early 3rd. I don't know that Love playing good for Green Bay this year would be a huge surprise for everyone, but he is in the mold of modern QB's now. If he ended up somewhere between Mahommes and Hurts performance wise, I guess I would be OK with that. HA HA

Stop regurgitating these 5 second sound bites you hear from the espn talking heads. ‘Rodgers undermines MLF”.
BS! How do you know?

You obviously bought into Rodgers is the problem. Just wait until they roll that supposed Rolls Royce out on the field and find out it’s another Pinto!

You and all the Rodgers haters might experience the hell other teams feel YOY of trying to find a great QB. Packer fans have been spoiled like no other team in history for 30 years of excellence at QB.

RODGERS AND FAVRE WILL NEVER BE SURPASSED

Ron you need therapy. You and about 5% of the Packers fans who think we should keep Rodgers until he is 49 years old and using a walker to get on the field need to accept the fact that Green Bay wants control of their team back, now. Not in 2 years. Do you really think even if he plays for us this year that he won't pull the same sh$t next year? The front office is done with Rodgers holding the TEAM hostage year after year. The mistake they made was letting Rodgers con them last year into that anti team building contract and missing the kings ransom of a trade.
What a colossal mistake that will haunt us for years with massive dead cap hit for Rodgers and all the contracts we have had to extend to stay afloat. Not to mention we can't bring in free agents that would help the team because we have no money.

Now back to the thread. I was going to talk about a player that we missed in the 2020 draft that would have helped us, Denzel Mims. And that we have a golden opportunity to get him now by just telling the Jets we want him included in the trade. He is way down their depth chart and they want to move on from him anyway and his very low cap hit of $1.4 million. He still has untapped talent, 6.3 210lbs. and 4.3 40 at the combine. A potential star there for the asking. At a position of need and he fit the Packers thresholds then and still does now.

pretty sure people are going to be very disappointed after the upcoming season is over....then it will be amusing to read all the posts..."he needs more time" "MLF has to go" "its Gutes fault"....

The 2020 draft is a point of view draft. I wanted to win a Super Bowl. I was looking for quick impact and shoring up weaknesses. I might have a different analysis if I just wanted to have a good team. So, with production as the criterion:

1. Love: F+. No impact. GB has never won a game he played in.
2. Dillon: B. Pretty solid player. Never the clear starter, though.
3. Degaura: D+. Belongs in the NFL. 656 snaps. 371 rec. yds.
5. Martin: D-. Played just 16 games and was promising in them.
6. Runyan: B. Average or a little better starter.
6. Hanson: F+. 75 bad snaps so far.
6. Stepaniak: F. Liked the pick, but we're doing results.
7. Scott: F. 89 bad snaps.
7. Garvin: D. Occasionally semi- useful reserve. Not good enough.

If the criteria are more normal, Love looked promising. He was not ready in 2020 or 2021. He can turn the grade around.

Dillon is interesting. Does break some tackles, yet I prefer Jones or Jamaal Williams to pick up a yard. OTOH, catches the ball really well. Doesn't seem to run much of a route tree, just vanilla RB routes. His Yds/rec and Yards per target are good. While his stats are good for yards after catching passes, he isn't explosive. He is pretty fast, but he doesn't make the cut that leads to big gains on running plays or on his catches.

Deguara also could go either way, but is more likely to be a role player. He is a better athlete than he is given credit for, but I don't think he is a plus player. He isn't good as a lead blocker. He can't play in-line. He has good hands, but runs routes only as well as a normal TE. He has to be schemed open. He can run drag routes but doesn't seem to be able to threaten the seam. He is compared to Kyle Juszczyck, but despite playing 16, 17 and 16 games, Juszczyk only played 43%, 56% and 50% of snaps in the last three seasons. It remains to be seen whether given more snaps - say 500 snaps - whether Deguara can maintain his efficiency. I doubt he ever plays more than 600 snaps in a season. That would be fine for a 3rd round pick, and for a GB 3rd rounder, one of our better ones.