The Green Bay Packers moved up four spots in the 2020 draft in the back end of the first round to select quarterback Jordan Love. To do so, the Packers parted with the No. 136-overall pick.
The Packers won’t be in the market for a quarterback in the first round of this draft, but they can still get involved and benefit from the Jaxson Dart sweepstakes.
There’s a universal belief that the Tennessee Titans will select Miami’s Cam Ward with the first-overall pick. After that, Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders is expected to be the next QB to come off the board. Mock drafts have Sanders going anywhere from No. 2 overall to the Cleveland Browns to No. 26 overall to the Los Angeles Rams.
Mississippi’s Dart is the wild card in the quarterback race. He’s a polarizing prospect whose draft stock has skyrocketed since the Senior Bowl.
If Sanders goes somewhere in the Top 10, the clock will really start ticking on a team aiming for a quarterback in Round 1.
So, how do the Packers factor in?
For one, general manager Brian Gutekunst has never been shy about his strategy of adding as many picks as possible. With Green Bay sitting at No. 23 overall and several mock drafts believing Dart will go somewhere late in on Day 1, the Packers could get involved and help facilitate a trade.
If you don’t have a quarterback, you don’t have much of a shot in the NFL. As a result, teams will extend beyond normal parameters in times of desperation to try and snag a franchise-altering signal caller. The most prominent spot for this to happen is late in Round 1.
Look at recent history.
In 2018, the first wave of quarterbacks were taken by the time the tenth-overall selection was made. Four quarterbacks went in the top 10, and then there was a gap.
That was until the Baltimore Ravens traded back into the first round to select Lamar Jackson at No. 32. To accomplish this, the Ravens had to part ways with three picks.
We saw this twice in 2014. Cleveland had to give up a third-rounder to move up four spots and select Johnny Manziel. Ten picks later, the Minnesota Vikings used a second- and fourth-rounder to trade back into the first round to scoop up Teddy Bridgewater.
It doesn’t always work out for the team moving up. As the desperation sets in for the quarterback-needy franchises, a team like Green Bay has more opportunity to pounce.
The Denver Broncos have been burned twice with this method in the last 15 years. In 2010, they parted with a trio of picks to trade up for Tim Tebow and then traded up late in Round 1 of the 2016 draft to take Paxton Lynch.
Green Bay has its own needs to address, but quarterback isn’t one. The franchise has a heavy financial investment in Jordan Love and believes in his trajectory.
For other teams, that’s just not the case.
The New York Giants are in a peculiar spot. They added Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston in free agency but are still on the prowl for their franchise QB of the future. The G-Men have the No. 3-overall pick. However, if Ward and Sanders go with the top two picks, the Giants could try to trade back into the first round later for Dart.
On the flip side, if Sanders starts to slip — as some suggest will happen — the Packers could be in trouble, with multiple teams calling and wanting to move up for either Sanders or Dart.
Having options isn’t bad, and Gutekunst has maneuvered his way around plenty of first rounds. Gutekunst has even moved back, only to shift up again into the first round when the Packers selected Jaire Alexander in 2018.
Reporters have asked Gutekunst about the strategy in the past. Last April, he noted the pros and cons.
Whenever you trade back, you have to expect to lose the players that are on the board that you might be willing to pick at that spot. That’s part of it. It’s why we work so hard at getting the value right of the players on the board, so that you can read it.
The balancing act is done by looking at the overall board and determining how the process could take shape by moving back to accumulate more picks.
Gutekunst elaborated:
If you feel that it’s strong and you can move back and still get someone you have the same kind of value on, you do. I think you gotta be very careful too in love with individual players. You gotta be careful of that. You have to think of these things not emotionally, but hey we do a lot of work to try to get this value right. If the board is telling us we can move back, then we will.
This draft is no different from others in the past, with quarterbacks splitting into tiers. Ward and Sanders seem to be in one tier, and Dart follows after that. With teams that don’t have a franchise quarterback always searching for the solution, the Packers could be involved in the effort to land him and stock up on picks.
