(Graphic credit: National Football League via NFL Communications
Excitement mixed with some confusion, remains as the dust settles around the 2015 NFL Draft with rookie mini-camps finished and the start of off-season workouts. Players have been drafted, players who were undrafted have been signed to teams and NFL teams continue to rebuild, or strengthen their rosters for the upcoming NFL season.
In this draft, there was not too many trades, or crazy moves that many had predicted, or had hoped for. Myself included. That is fine though because it shows that many teams were calm, cool and collected and did not want to mortgage their future in favor of getting better right away. As history has shown, sometimes making those moves are not very beneficial. (i.e the Ricky Williams trade) For the most part, I enjoyed watching the draft, even if I was confused at first by some moves that some teams, mainly the Green Bay Packers, made.
Going into the NFL Draft, it was thought by many that the Packers biggest weakness was the inside linebacker position and to a lesser extent, the defensive tackle position as well as the cornerback position. So it was assumed by a lot of people, myself included, that the Packers would draft an inside linebacker with their first round pick but we all forgot one critical piece of information. Packers General Manager Ted Thompson generally does not have the same thoughts that most fans do.
Thompson prescribes to the “take the best player available” theory, which means he will draft the best player that is currently on their draft board. He’s used this method to great success with the most notable time being in the 2005 NFL Draft, when he drafted Aaron Rodgers, with the 24th pick. For his first round pick this year, the highest player he had on his board was safety/cornerback Damarious Randall so he took him. I was pretty surprised Thompson had taken a defensive back that high and even more surprised when he drafted another defensive back, Quinten Rollins in the second round.
Thompson then followed up those two picks by taking wide receiver, Ty Montgomery, in the third round, inside linebacker Jake Ryan in the fourth and quarterback Brett Hundley in the fifth. In the sixth round, Thompson selected his last three players which were fullback Aaron Ripkowski, defensive lineman Christian Ringo and tight end Kennard Backman.
In my opinion, this ended up being a solid draft for the Packers as they have filled the holes at the cornerback position and drafted a potential starter at inside linebacker. I also believe that many of these players could help improve the special teams unit, which was terrible last year so that is a major plus. We won’t really know how this draft will turn out until the players have been in the NFL for at least three years but for at least right now, it looks like Ted Thompson, once again, stayed cool, calm and collected and led another solid draft for the Packers.