Yoop wrote: ↑14 May 2021 11:04
well he was upset when Guty didn't move up for either Jefferson or Ayuik but moved up for his replacement.
I also don't buy into Gutys comment about taking LOve because all the receivers where gone, since he checked into taking Lock the draft prior and after Rodgers forced the front office to get rid of McCarthy, seems like Guty and Murphy where ready to move on from Rodgers then because he forced them to do there job, why check out a QB you'd have to sell the farm in a trade up to get? doesn't make sense unless you intend to dump Rodgers as soon as they have a ready to play replacement.
heres the thing, if Rodgers is so pissed with Guty that he wants him fired, then there has to be some truth that he favored taking Rodgers replacement versus trading up for a receiver, Rodgers has to know his best chance for a SB ring is here, but his distrust for Guty bothers him so much that he's willing to fore go it and move on.
I mean multiple (admittedly unnamed) league sources seem to indicate the Packers were looking to acquire Justin Jefferson.
Draft day trades are a little complex, right? You want to safeguard your preferences and information, but you also have a limited time on the clock to work things out. Teams have, for as long as I can remember, reached out to each other IN ADVANCE of the draft and chatted through hypotheticals, like "if our guy is there at your pick, we're prepared to offer X to move up; is that something you'd be interested in?" and the responding team would say "if our board looks good for moving down, then we're amenable at X (or Y) level of compensation."
And then on the clock, when your guy is there, you reach out to teams on the clock and say "hey, are we good with that deal we talked about?" and the team will be like "sure, let's do it" OR like "actually we like our board where we are" OR "the board is a little different than we expected, so we could move back, but it'll take a little more than we discussed originally."
Ron Wolf talked about this process ages ago when discussing how often they traded with the 49ers at the time. Wolf's last draft, they did a deal with the 49ers the week prior to the draft and he openly answered a lot of questions about those mechanics.
But you can see it continue to play out in other, more recent news stories. For instance, the tv feed picked up a scene in the Bengals' draft room in which the Lions GM was on the phone and the Bengals guy said something along the lines of "The same deal we discussed? No, then we'll go ahead an make our pick."
So when you look at what happened in 2020, the Packers had obviously reached out in advance to teams ahead of them and talked about what it would take to make the trade up. But when teams were on the clock, either the WR run happened before Gutey thought it would, or the teams who had discussions pre-draft answered "no, then we'll make our pick."
Having already missed out on Jefferson and Reagor, the team was probably talking to the Dolphins about moving up to take Ayiuk at 26, when the 49ers jumped ahead of them and took him at 25. At that point, the Packers could have said "hey, nevermind, no deal." But they looked at their board, and their QB situation--and they had OBVIOUSLY talked about drafting a QB, given the Lock flirtation and given the February press conference referenced in the timeline in which he specifically was asked about it and openly did not rule it out--so instead they saw a guy they probably had a full tier or two above the other remaining players and said "hey, we'll go ahead with the deal we discussed and take this guy instead."
Gutey is not a patient drafter. He has moved up in 3 of the 4 first rounds he's participated in (though one after moving down). So he made his move. It wasn't a
whim, exactly. But it also was highly unlikely to be "the plan," considering not only that HE said they had been trying to move up to get a WR in that range, but also that other sources around the league seemed to corroborate that, in terms of having an idea who "their guy" was when they were trying to make the move on the clock. Maybe they wouldn't give out specific names, but they were giving out positions, because teams don't want to trade back with you if you're going to take a guy or a position that they themselves are hoping to acquire.
That happened to me with 23 in a dynasty draft once, where I moved back and he took the player I myself was targeting, and I was so mad at myself because didn't ask anything before agreeing to the trade.
So there's no reason to doubt that the team was focusing on WRs--the same way a few league executives have indicated their belief that the Packers were ready to take Bateman this year in round one, had he not gone 2 picks earlier to the Ravens.
That the team had looked into QBs they found to have high upside and potential late round 1 or early round 2 availability does not mean they were locked into a QB or any particular QB. It means they had reached the point in Rodgers' career in which it was time to start doing due diligence on the top QBs in case one falls. Famously, the team had done less research on Rodgers in 2005 because they thought he wouldn't be available. That has been vastly overstated and exaggerated in the press--the team had scouted him a reasonable amount--but TT allegedly had the Packers calling sources as Rodgers fell to make sure there wasn't something they had missed before taking him.
The Packers are at a point where they won't allow themselves to be caught off guard again because they know they might need an heir and they might be in a position to take one, so their QB evaluations are going to be as thorough as the position demands now. That's what it means that they visited with Lock and that they drafted Love. That they were no longer in a "QBs are off our board early" stage of team building. That's it. By almost every account, the team PREFERRED to take one of the WRs last year (and Jefferson was their favorite in that draft range) and that they were open to it again this year (and that Bateman and Toney were their favorites this year).
I've seen all of those rumors from multiple people who do more
reporting than parroting, and I have no reason to disbelieve them.
Sorry, this was long.