A disappointing season has Green Bay Packers fans in a tizzy. But Brian Gutekunst and Mike McCarthy don’t have to get overly-aggressive this offseason.
Maybe it’s the scars of Brett Favre wasting half his career on teams with no chance to win the Super Bowl. Maybe it’s watching Tom Brady showered with praise as the GOAT, going to the Super Bowl seemingly every year and winning it half the time.
Or maybe Packers fans know their run with Hall of Fame caliber quarterback play could be coming to an end sooner than they’d like to accept. There are fans old enough to rent a car who have never seen a preferred starter who isn’t one of the 10 best players to ever crouch under center.
Cheesehead Nation grows restless with the close-but-not-close-enough seasons, the defenses that continually let them down. There’s some solace in the “Rodgers has better numbers across the board and in the playoffs, but his defenses have been way worse” argument, yet in it is the understanding of failure regardless of Rodgers’ play.
Aaron Rodgers is sui generis, the most skilled quarterback to ever play the game and he has one trip to the Super Bowl.
So after a disappointing season, when it became clear Mike McCarthy erred in believing Brett Hundley was the future, when it became clear McCarthy wasn’t the quarterback guru he’s been billed—though he still doesn’t get the credit he deserves for molding Rodgers into what he is today—and when the Packers decided to clean house, change offensive and defensive coordinator, and transition out their GM, fans wailed and gnashed their teeth about big moves.
“Go sign free agent X. Draft player Y. Trade for player Z. We only have Rodgers for some much longer.”
New GM Brian Gutekunst and McCarthy each talked about aggressiveness in the offseason, identifying the need to add talent. This was catnip for Packers fans who believe this roster is closer to the Browns than the Eagles (No, seriously, those people are out there).
That doesn’t mean spend recklessly. It doesn’t mean adding for the sake of adding. Fans want a new tight end, but the Packers don’t need to pay big-time money to Jimmy Graham to be a red zone threat when they have the best red zone quarterback of all time.
Trey Burton might help this team with depth, but he also might cost just a million or two less than adding a speedy receiver who could potentially upgrade this offense in a more impactful way.
Trent Murphy might improve the pass rush marginally, but to paraphrase Al Davis, the Packers don’t need to bring in a seven to replace their 6.5. Spend that money elsewhere. Instead of signing Murphy and Aaron Colvin, just sign Malcolm Butler and roll with Vince Beigel. The blue chip player will always improve your team more than two decent ones.
Many worry Marcus Davenport, the high-upside pass rusher for UTSA doesn’t have enough value in Year 1 to be worth the 14th pick. But if teams concerned themselves with only the players who can contribute as rookies, teams would never draft cornerbacks, rarely draft quarterbacks, and not even think about tight ends.
This isn’t how team building works.
Take the player who improves the team by the greatest factor of the life of his contract and his career. Why take a player who maxes out as a seven because he can be a six as a rookie, when you could have a player who could be a nine in Year 3 when Rodgers is still playing, and likely still in his prime.
Drew Brees as a fluke play away from the NFC Championship Game. Tom Brady just won a Super Bowl. Peyton Manning won one with his arm duct taped to his body. John Elway won two at the end of his career thanks to Terrell Davis and a great defense.
If anything, the Packers should be building long-term assets to become less dependent on their quarterback. Look how the team fell apart without Rodgers and compare it to how the Eagles dealt with losing Nick Foles. Or how the Vikings handled losing Sam Bradford. They have the infrastructure in place to account for those kinds of losses.
Philly drafted Derek Barnett when he wasn’t going to start for them as a rookie. The Vikings drafted Trae Waynes when they already had Harrison Smith and Xavier Rhodes.
Playing the offseason to win never actually resulted in winning for myriad Washington teams, or the Dream Team Eagles. The Patriots won the offseason in 2017, went 18-0, then lost in the Super Bowl.
Green Bay recognized a need for institutional change and made it. They brought in a defensive coordinator to shake up the defense, and their old offensive coordinator from this offense’s best seasons.
“Aggressiveness” is the buzzword of the 2018 Packers offseason, but that doesn’t mean sign players just to sign them, or trading up just to trade up. There still has a be a value add. There still has be a calculation of opportunity cost. If they sign Player X, does it mean they can’t sign Player Y? Should they sign Player X if they can get Player Y in the draft?
Approaching the offseason from a dogmatic standpoint, “We have to get a pass rusher,” is how teams end up drafting Christian Ponder in the first round.
There should be a sense of urgency in Green Bay. This team has underachieved relative to the talent it has at quarterback. They’ve made massive structural changes, aggressively (there is is again) remaking this team, re-tooling it to compete in a loaded NFC.
The biggest reason they don’t have to swing out of their shoes, taking a home run hack being overly aggressive is also the No. 1 reason fans want them to be: they have the best player in football.
Aaron Rodgers makes everyone better. History tells us, however, he can’t do it all.
The slogan of the offseason shouldn’t be “aggressiveness,” it should be “balance.” Balance the offense with the defense, by adding quality players to boost that unit. Balance cost with relative value and the impact a player can have on this team. A player who may be good in a vacuum, may not be worth the money for the Packers specifically because a player like Rodgers can make Jarrett Boykin look like a legitimate NFL player, or dance around in the pocket behind questionable line play.
Balance winning now with winning in 2019, 2020 and beyond. If they don’t win it all in 2018, there’s always 2019, but there are only so many years left when we can reasonably say that.
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This team knows they don’t want another generation of fans saying “we should have won more,” with our generational quarterback. Balance that fear with logic and wisdom, continuing to build this team as its been built, understanding with a player like Rodgers, almost nothing will be good enough for the fans even if they win the next three Super Bowls.
They’ll always been a group saying “See, how much time we wasted with Dom Capers and Ted Thompson?” And maybe they’re right.
But Gutekunst, Mark Murphy and this franchise can’t turn one mistake into two, overcorrecting and throwing balance out the window. Don’t let pressure turn to fear, panic, and myopia.
Build for today and tomorrow, so that tomorrow can be better than today.