Packfntk wrote: ↑10 Sep 2020 14:20
Are people just spouting this stuff because it is in their heads that we didn't take a big step forward because most did not like our draft?
yes.
I love the draft and it's maybe my favorite football event of the year, which I know is weird considering there are, ya know, 256 + playoffs actual football games.
But it is NOT the primary tool to improve a team from one year to the next, but longer-term. It's become SUCH a big event, though, that people view the offseason through that lens more and more.
The Packers had, quite literally and quantitatively, the least popular/lowest-graded draft class in the league--maybe in the league in quite some time. The drafting of Love has convinced everyone that the team is giving up on the end of the Aaron Rodgers era and simply preparing for the next phase of the franchise. EVERYTHING I've seen about the team this offseason is painted by that, even the quant guys who show good reasons for regression from the 13-3 record can't write their columns without mentioning "perhaps this wouldn't be so bad had they not chosen a backup QB, a backup RB, and a FB in the first three rounds" somewhere in the piece.
Conversely, the Vikings had like 14 draft picks and the early gets into "need" positions like WR and CB got everyone feeling like THIS is a team that aggressively filled their holes and therefore must have improved. So their personnel losses are minimized. But they filled those holes... with rookies. And especially this year, that is a super risky move that likely results in a short-term downgrade.
For some reason, the entire sports media has lost their minds a bit about what makes a football team good, better, or improving. Continuity is huge, in any year not just this year. Player development is huge. People have lost their minds about what it means to "help your QB." Assembling a team that can play well in all phases is a great way to help your QB, to stop forcing him to make something out of nothing. But putting together a strong running game and beefing up the defense are being spun as insults to Rodgers. I'm all about the passing game being more important than the running game; and all about finding a better #2 WR than Lazard, MVS, and EQSB even though I like them just fine as players to have rostered. But the backlash has jumped the shark.
If people step back from the draft buzz and Love-reactive narratives, and actually evaluate the players, the position match-ups, the talent, the recent results... the Packers are a better team than the Vikings. They were last year, and they're in very solid position to be again this year. There is no objective argument against that. But everyone has spent 8 months in narratives with zero football news to counteract the football speculation, and so no one has re-grounded their season outlooks through the lens of actual football, instead of through the lens of offseason narrative. It happens every year, but this year the circumstances seem to have exacerbated it.
Florio's been doing too much of this: 
