The Green and Goldilocks Zone: Finding the "just right" fit for the Packers at the top of the draft
The late Al Davis loved speed so much that it became a running joke: the Oakland Raiders would draft the fastest guy in the draft regardless of how good he was playing football.
The Green Bay Packers thankfully haven’t become quite so memeable, at least if memes had been a thing when Davis was running the Raiders. But general manager Brian Gutekunst cut his teeth under Ron Wolf who spent 20 years scouting for the Silver and Black. Gutekunst loves athletes and the team cares about athletic thresholds when it comes to certain positions. While we don’t know them cold, we have a rough idea of the kinds of things they prioritize based on previous draft picks.
So who fits in this draft? It’s not a big list if we’re talking about perfect fits.
We know the Packers love the elite S-tier athletes in the first round. Only Darnell Savage Jr. has a Relative Athletic Score under 9 among position players taken on Day 1 by Gutekunst, and he’s a 9.25 if he’s listed at CB. Even Jordan Love boasts an RAS over 8.
But it’s not just the first round. In fact, since the new collective-bargaining agreement started back in 2011, the Packers’ front office has drafted just one player with a sub-8 RAS in the top 50. In all likelihood, whoever the Packers take at 15, 45, and wherever else they may happen to draft in the first will be upper-quartile athletes relative to their position.
Using The Athletic Consensus draft board, which draws on rankings from around the internet, there are eight players ranked 10-30 who boast an RAS over 9.
Joey Porter Jr. (9.72)
Bryan Bresee (9.61)
Broderick Jones (9.59)
Cam Smith (9.68)
Nolan Smith (9.24)
Lukas Van Ness (9.39)
Darnell Wright (9.67)
Trenton Simpson (9.84)
Alabama running back Jahmyr Gibbs hits 8.05 and though Quentin Johnston comes strong with 8.66, his three-cone drill would be by far the slowest among receivers drafted by either Thompson or Gutekunst. That’s a drill at that position Green Bay appears to value extremely highly.
To that point, RAS isn’t everything. The Packers have a recent trend toward broad jump as a metric as well, preferring 80th percentile broad jumpers or better. Lukas Van Ness doesn’t quite get there though we can give him a pass on the 78th percentile.
Wright would be the heaviest offensive lineman to play for the Packers in the last 10+ seasons and isn’t an ideal fit with their run schemes. Nolan Smith would be the smallest edge defender the Packers have taken in the Thompson/Gutekunst era though he’s only fractionally smaller than Clay Matthews III. Still, Matthews himself was an outlier for the Pack who particularly lately have prioritized size at the position.
In fact, if we take the players who hit all the markers we think we know about projected to the go in the first round regardless of draft spot this is the list:
Anthon Richardson QB Florida
Bijan Robinson RB Texas
Jaxon Smith-Njigba WR OSU
Michael Mayer TE Notre Dame
Trenton Simpson LB Clemson
Richardson has approximately zero shot of making it to 15, though if he somehow did, Gutekunst should run the card to the podium. Unless Quay Walker makes a position switch to edge, Simpson wouldn’t make sense as an off-ball linebacker. That leaves three players as confirmed, no-doubt athletic fits.
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