RECAPPING PACK DRAFT ON PACKERWIRE

The Green Bay Packers made 10 picks in the 2017 NFL draft, with the first four coming on defense and the final six on offense. General manager Ted Thompson traded out of the first round on Thursday night, but later made seven picks on Saturday.

I asked draft analyst Justis Mosqueda (@JuMosq) to help recap and review what Thompson and the Packers accomplished during the draft.

Mosqueda has brought refreshing new ideas to the draft process, such as his Force Players metric and his deep dive into Ted Thompson’s size and athleticism thresholds at every position.

Here is our Q&A:

1. Appraise the Packers’ draft as a whole. Are you pleased with how Ted Thompson used his 10 picks?

I don’t think it’s really surprising. Kevin King is a project cornerback, and I think fans don’t want to hear that, but he was a combine riser. In my opinion, it’s Damarious Randall and Davon House as the starting cornerbacks in 2017, with the long-term options being Randall and King. My question there is which one plays in the slot, because the team never really added a slot guy. They kind of got jumped by Dallas on both Chidobe Awuzie and Xavier Woods, who would have fit that Micah Hyde role perfectly.

The second pick was Josh Jones, and he’s a true high safety. That’s the interesting one to me. Since Dom Capers has been in Green Bay, and Capers is the most tenured defensive coordinator in the league, they’ve really only drafted Ha Ha Clinton-Dix in that role. My question there is if they want to keep playing a bunch of two high, which they did last year because of their cornerbacks, on purpose. That’s not really Capers’ M.O., but they adjusted to it last year. That would free up Morgan Burnett into that Hyde role. If not, Jones really only makes sense as Clinton-Dix’s backup/replacement.

Montravius Adams is going to be Mike Daniels’ backup. The team hasn’t really been functional on the two-deep at three-tech for a while, and Adams is real close to Khyri Thornton. Vince Biegel is a stud, and he’ll see the field immediately with how Green Bay uses their pressure packages.

Jamaal Williams breaks Green Bay’s mold for their two backs, but Aaron Jones (sub-7-second three-cone) and Devante Mays (230ish-pounder) are exactly what the Packers usually look at for running backs. Breaking the mold might not be a bad thing.

DeAngelo Yancey was a visitor and fit Ted Thompson’s mold for receivers over the last decade, so that pick was about as predictable as possible. Kofi Amichia was a college tackle who projects inside and was a visitor. What I think is interesting is that the Packers announced him as a center on the card they turned in to those kids outside of Lambeau. Bet he’s a swing interior lineman either way. Malachi Dupre is kind of surprising, based on Thompson’s tendencies. Nothing real shocking here. The line of scrimmage defenders and running backs will get into the rotation early and the others will likely redshirt to get adjusted to the scheme. We’ve seen this story before.

2. Kevin King fit Ted Thompson’s thresholds at cornerback, but does he have any historical comparisons? In terms of his size/athletic measurables?

He does indeed. I didn’t think he was going to be around at No. 29 based on recent mock drafts, let alone there for if they traded out of the first round. This graphic explains why athleticism matters for defensive backs, and why we shouldn’t be so quick to judge Damarious Randall after a season in which he played injured:

We’ve seen Patrick Peterson and Darrelle Revis go from hero to zero and back to hero in a three-year span because of injury or losing a step to weight issues. You live and die off of athleticism at defensive back. Any injured season should really be striked.

3. Explain why Packers fans should love Vince Biegel at No. 108 for reasons other than his school.

I wrote a piece on Bleacher Report about sleepers and Biegel was included.

Here’s a thread of why I like him on video:

Here’s where the nerdy stuff comes up. I run numbers on athleticism for pass-rushers because I think that it’s the most instantly projectable trait that has a high correlation for success at any position from the college to pro transition. I call it Force Players and it has a really quality hit rate.

Biegel just missed the cut because of his 10-yard split, but I’m willing to look over that in terms of how I emotionally invest myself in this pick. The only players with his 40-yard dash time and three-cone time at 245 pounds since 2005 drafted in the first three rounds are:

Von Miller
Vic Beasley
Anthony Barr
DeMarcus Ware
Bruce Irvin
Connor Barwin
Cliff Avril

We very well might look back at this draft and view Biegel as the most talented player that Thompson selected. I’d probably bet that when second contracts come around, he’s netting at least the second-most out of this group.

4. Any players you think the Packers missed on? Rephrased, were there any players you think the Packers shouldn’t have passed on but did?

Just missed on Awuzie and Woods. I think that Derek Rivers of Youngstown State would have been a great pick for them at some point. Both of them were in my top-50, non-Packers specific. I think it’s really interesting that the New England Patriots moved up five spots to jump one pick ahead of Green Bay to take UCLA’s Conor McDermott, who fits their mold on the offensive line. Green Bay then immediately picked Amichia. I would think that if picks landed one slot earlier, Awuzie and McDermott would be Packers instead of Jones and Amichia, but that’s in the past now.

Maybe they messed up by allowing themselves to sit on picks, but if you listen to Thompson’s pressers, he clearly talks about how the plan was to move around in the draft, but situations just never landed. Historically, they use those invites to recruit undrafted free agents, but they picked the first one in Yancey in the fifth round, and followed that up with Amichia and Mays in two of their next three picks. I’d be willing to bet that they looked it as a premium to land bodies at positions of need that they were comfortable with rather than trying to sway them post-draft and use those picks in trade ups.

Thompson also talked about how the rooms got stale recently, and he wanted to add competition to positions. Think the message was clear there: They needed bodies and wanted to swap picks to move up, but weren’t willing to risk the volume of picks to do so. Did it bite them in the butt? Who’s to say right now. On the outside it didn’t work for say the potential Awuzie, Woods and McDermott drops at the end of runs at their positions, but it did for Biegel.

5. Favorite “under the radar” pick for the Packers? I’d go with Aaron Jones.

Aaron Jones is basically Thompson’s second shot at Johnathan Franklin. I think that’s really cool. After Biegel and Williams went on Day 3, I really don’t have any strong feels on these prospects off video other than that Jones is a really quality change-of-pace back. Real bad Saturday for Christine Michael and co. Writing on the wall here.

NMU PACKER WEEKEND XXVIII (-I)

Monday, May 1, 2017