Brian Gutekunst said all the right things, yet is making all the wrong moves – or lack there of. The Green Bay Packers went into the offseason with the focus of addressing their pass rush deficiencies.
Yet, Gutekunst has been inactive at addressing. He’s been so slow to get reinforcements, even Jerry Jones was able to steal a potential pass rusher off the Packers shortlist. Myles Garrett was taken off the list after re-signing in Cleveland, Jones came in to swoop Dante Fowler Jr. and now the sack leader last season is closing in on a new deal in Cincinnati as well.
There aren’t many options left for the Packers to address their biggest need. All that’s left is to hope you hit on one in the draft, which hasn’t been the Packers’ strength in terms of evaluating rookie pass rushers.
Gutekunst’s patience is already costing him elite options to fill that hole, where do he and the Packers go from here?
Brian Gutekunst, Green Bay Packers can’t rely on NFL Draft to address pass rush vacancy
Simply put, Gutekunst has to get aggressive now. That starts with exploring some trades. Maybe you don’t land an elite pass rusher at this point, but there’s certainly options out there that could help Green Bay in the interim.
If there aren’t any suitors, there are still some decent veterans out there that could at least stop the bleeding for now. That would give them the chance to develop a rookie draft pick. The good thing is this draft class is deep enough, the Packers shouldn’t have to worry about missing badly like they have in the past.
Whatever the Packers do, missing out on Trey Hendrickson should be the moment Gutekunst realized he went about this all wrong. The Bengals weren’t supposed to figure out a way to lock up their entire offense and still have money left over for Hendrickson.
He had a year left on his contract and had already demanded a trade for the second-straight season. Gutekunst should have been aggressive in bringing Hendrickson in. Instead, he stood by and watched as another player on the Packers shortlist got scratched off.
If the Packers aren’t careful, they’ll end up scrambling and making the wrong move. Which, to be fair, there probably isn’t a wrong move for them to make at this point.