The main job of an NFL general manager is to build a perennial contender. And that’s exactly what Brian Gutekunst has done since taking over in 2018. After a fast retool in his first year, the GM has frequently put strong rosters together, and that allowed the Green Bay Packers to have a bye in the first round of the playoffs in each of the past three seasons, including two trips to the NFC Championship Game. However, another aspect of being a good GM is the ability to understand the moment of the team and how to maximize windows. That part hasn’t been as fruitful for Gutekunst.
In 2018, Gutey did a good job identifying the roster wasn’t good enough. When many people expected he would acquire reinforcements near the trade deadline, he did the opposite, trading Ha Ha Clinton-Dix for a fourth-round pick and Ty Montgomery for a seventh. The extra capital allowed him to move up in the 2019 first round to select safety Darnell Savage.
Gutekunst was aggressive in the 2019 free agency and made risky financial moves in the last two years to keep a strong roster together. But this year, there isn’t a clear timeline established.
Plan for this season
In February, when there was still no clarity if Aaron Rodgers would be back, Packers fans had hours of conversation if the right move was to be all-in to explore the window of Rodgers’ final years in Green Bay or if it was time to move on, trading him for significant draft capital, which would allow the Packers to start building the future version of the team. Few people would expect a middle ground there, but that’s what ended up happening.
The Packers are clearly not all-in. There are obvious reasons and justifications for that. When a team goes all-in, the future salary burden is real — look at how the New Orleans Saints have a difficult time keeping a strong roster together, or how the Atlanta Falcons need two years to clean up the mess created after the 2016 season.
But when Rodgers is your quarterback, there is also a clear path to win a championship, and the current NFL allows a fast rebuild — a team can clean the salary sheet in two years and move on from there. The Denver Broncos were all-in for the final years of Peyton Manning’s career, won a championship and the recent failures were much more connected with the misses at quarterback than lack of capital or cap space. The Los Angeles Rams are another example of sustainability, even without their high draft picks.
The idea of rebuilding wasn’t absurd either. The Packers would probably have received more for Rodgers than the Seattle Seahawks did for Russell Wilson — it was Wilson and a fourth for two firsts, two seconds, a fifth, Drew Lock, Shelby Harris, and Noah Fant. Jordan Love would be the presumptive starter with two cheap years left on his deal, plus the fifth-year option if needed, and Gutekunst would have the draft capital and financial flexibility to put a strong roster around him.
The timeline makes little sense
The Packers, though, decided to take a middle of the road approach. It is basically what they have always done, to be fair. The Davante Adams trade was not a plan, but a circumstance, so it’s impossible to criticize the front office for that decision.
Nonetheless, Green Bay decided to keep Aaron Rodgers and extended him as the highest-paid player in NFL history. Besides that, though, there weren’t moves to make the team better now.
Green Bay extended Jaire Alexander, which was always a probable outcome, and re-signed De’Vondre Campbell, Rasul Douglas, Allen Lazard (as a restricted free agent), and Robert Tonyan. But the only veteran addition to the offense was a small contract given to wide receiver Sammy Watkins. The other additions were defensive lineman Jarran Reed and punter Pat O’Donnell, plus some other inexpensive players who were added more to be special teamers than anything else. Even the first round of the draft was used to reinforce the defense, not the offense: Quay Walker and Devonte Wyatt were chosen.
Later in the draft, the Packers made smart offensive picks in Christian Watson, Romeo Doubs, and Zach Tom, but even if they pay off, it’s hard to plan for immediate contributions from rookies. A much fairer expectation is that they will have ups and downs, good moments and growing pains in 2022 and maybe through 2023, until being at their peak level.
Roster for Rodgers
The problem is that the timeline doesn’t fit Aaron Rodgers’ one. He has one, two, at most three seasons left in his career, and each year that goes without a championship means that the chance of a decline is closer.
The point here is not that the Packers should have traded a bunch of draft capital or bombed their future salary cap to bring in veteran players. But there were moves to be made — the Philadelphia Eagles, for example, traded for AJ Brown and CJ Gardner-Johnson and the value was really good, the Cleveland Browns traded a fifth-round pick for Amari Cooper.
The Packers roster-building approach has its merits. The team is competitive now, especially in a weakened NFC, and also has several pieces for the future. But maybe neither the present or the future is as good as it could be if Gutekunst had made a strong decision to establish his timeline.
