Originally Posted by
wist43
The Packers have invested a ton of high draft picks and money in the front seven - of course we rarely play seven in the front, so it's really the front six.
Raji, Perry, Jones, Matthews, and Hawk were all 1st round picks; Worthy and Neal were 2nd's; Daniels was a 4th; Pickett was a former #1; and they thru wasted $millions at Brad Jones.
That's 10 players who were high draft picks or overpaid playing in our defensive front - and yet we're garbage, and have been for 3 years running.
I'm not the only one pointing out that, with the exception of Matthews, all of those guys have been misused - especially Raji. I said a couple of years ago that if I were Raji, I'd just play out my contract and beat a hasty trail out of town as soon as I could.
Everyone knew when Raji came out that he wasn't a 2-gap player. His strength was penetration, and on the move, he was a load and difference maker who had to be accounted for. After his second year, Capers stopped using him that way, and his career tanked. His career tanked, and our defense tanked.
Either TT sucks at evaluating defensive talent - and I do think the Packers as an organization are dismal evaluators of defensive talent - or Capers is a complete idiot... which he obviously is.
I put almost all of the blame on Capers. I'm happy for Raji that he is leaving for greener pastures - as I'm happy for Mike Neal and Sam Shields. All 3 of those players should get pretty decent contracts and be much more productive with other teams.