Will the Packers commit another Micah Hyde-esque personnel mistake?

A former Packers exec said they "never should have let Micah Hyde out the door" in 2017. Who might make the team feel similar regret after leaving Green Bay?

NFL teams make hundreds of personnel decisions every year. The majority of those don’t move the needle too much in either direction. However, a select few can alter the trajectory of a club in a meaningful way.

The Green Bay Packers made plenty of impactful personnel decisions over the years. Future Hall of Fame general manager Ron Wolf set the stage for multiple Super Bowl teams by trading for Brett Favre and luring Reggie White in free agency. Ted Thompson, a Wolf understudy who took the reins in 2005, followed suit with the selection of Aaron Rodgers in his first draft as GM and signing Charles Woodson the following offseason, helping the franchise return to the Super Bowl a few years later.

But not all consequential personnel decisions involve superstar players, and not all produce positive results. One such error from about a decade ago recently surfaced when former Packers executive Jon-Eric Sullivan, now general manager of the Miami Dolphins, spoke about his time in Green Bay on ESPN’s This Is Football program.

“I think anybody who was involved with this would tell you, we screwed it up with Micah Hyde,” Sullivan said. “We never should have let Micah Hyde out the door. Micah Hyde was a really good football player, could line up in a bunch of different spots, could return punts, and we let him go in free agency.”

Hyde had a solid career in Green Bay. Despite initially joining the team as a fifth-round pick in 2013, he almost immediately earned a major role on the defense, playing both in the slot and at safety. That turned into a starting role by Year 2, with Hyde’s usage increasing each subsequent season.

But by the time his rookie contract expired after 2016, the Packers had used premium draft capital on defensive backs Ha Ha Clinton-Dix (2014 first-rounder), Damarious Randall (2015 first-rounder), and Quinten Rollins (2015 second-rounder). Especially with Clinton-Dix coming off his best season to date, the secondary didn’t appear to have enough room to justify an extension for Hyde. Instead, he went on to sign a multiyear deal with the Buffalo Bills.

Hyde would quickly make the Packers regret letting him walk. In his first season with the Bills, he earned second-team All-Pro honors. He would make the list again in 2021 while forming one of the league’s best safety duos with Jordan Poyer.

Meanwhile, the Packers wound up dealing away Clinton-Dix for a Day 3 pick before the 2018 trade deadline, and neither Randall nor Rollins would earn a second contract with the team. Even if Green Bay’s reasons for not re-signing Hyde seemed reasonable in the moment, the decision looks regrettable in retrospect, as Sullivan acknowledged.

“I don’t think I’m saying anything that anybody else that was involved with that wouldn’t say. We probably screwed that up,” Sullivan added. Micah’s a good ball player.”

Every team has made mistakes like the Packers’ letting Hyde leave, and the list of such blunders would extend longer than a CVS receipt. Still, clubs need to learn from those situations to help avoid repeating them in the future.

With that in mind, could the Packers see another player depart at the conclusion of his rookie contract and then blossom in a new location? A few such candidates exist.