Mike Pettine

[3irty1]

There is no such thing as an alternative to draft and develop. When you have to follow a salary cap like everyone else, the path to a better team than everyone else is to hit your draft picks. Get great players on ridiculously underpriced rookie contracts. Every good team has this working for them.

Furthermore the free agency of Ron Wolf's day is very different from early Ted's day and starting to change again right now. Players like Reggie White will only hit free agency again in the rarest of circumstances. That was a different world. By Ted's day FA was something that bad teams did to get to the salary cap and good teams to put fingers in the dike. In this time period one of the best signings ever was Woodson and he was considered a major risk. Today FA is still retreads and risks but what's changing is the salary cap is exploding faster than contracts can keep up. Teams have money so might as well get some mercenaries to sure up the ranks.

[Anti-Polar Bear]

There is no such thing as an alternative to draft and develop.

"Draft and develop" is nothing but a lame excuse incompetent GMs/coaches use to buy time. NFL stands for "Not for Long," doesn't it?

Quarterback is possibly the only position in the NFL in which further "development" is necessary. College is for development. The NFL is for improvement. In other words, players develop in college and in the NFL they seek to get better. As Wolf liked to say, you either can play or you can't in the NFL. An NFL player has to continue getting better, or more likely than not, he will get replaced. You draft a Deshawn Wynn, you get a Deshawn Wynn. You're not gonna "develop" Wynn into a Adrian Peterson.

[pbmax]

"Draft and develop" is nothing but a lame excuse incompetent GMs/coaches use to buy time. NFL stands for "Not for Long," doesn't it?

Quarterback is possibly the only position in the NFL in which further "development" is necessary. College is for development. The NFL is for improvement. In other words, players develop in college and in the NFL they seek to get better. As Wolf liked to say, you either can play or you can't in the NFL. An NFL player has to continue getting better, or more likely than not, he will get replaced. You draft a Deshawn Wynn, you get a Deshawn Wynn. You're not gonna "develop" Wynn into a Adrian Peterson.

College's do less development than ever before as practice time has dwindled. Also hurts when college schemes don't match the pros.

NFL relies more and more on younger players as salary cap make the young ones much less expensive.

Develop is more important than ever.

[texaspackerbacker]

There is no such thing as an alternative to draft and develop. When you have to follow a salary cap like everyone else, the path to a better team than everyone else is to hit your draft picks. Get great players on ridiculously underpriced rookie contracts. Every good team has this working for them.

Furthermore the free agency of Ron Wolf's day is very different from early Ted's day and starting to change again right now. Players like Reggie White will only hit free agency again in the rarest of circumstances. That was a different world. By Ted's day FA was something that bad teams did to get to the salary cap and good teams to put fingers in the dike. In this time period one of the best signings ever was Woodson and he was considered a major risk. Today FA is still retreads and risks but what's changing is the salary cap is exploding faster than contracts can keep up. Teams have money so might as well get some mercenaries to sure up the ranks.

I guess you're too young to remember back in the day George Allen and the Redskins trading away virtually their entire draft almost every year. They were pretty successful at that alternative method of team building. I don't necessarily advocate that or even a modern version of it, but just saying ......

I would argue that the steadily increasing - you say exploding - salary cap makes quality free agent signing more feasible, not less than in Ron Wolf's day. Wolf of course, was way more draft and develop than most GMs - just not nearly to the extent that Ted Thompson was.

The current plight of the Packers is a direct result of Ron AND Ted's flawed way of doing things. It was masked for over two decades by the greatness of Aaron Rodgers and Favre before him, but it caught up with us last season.

What's this stuff doing in a Pettine thread instead of a Gutekunst thread?

[mraynrand]

The current plight of the Packers is a direct result of Ron AND Ted's flawed way of doing things. It was masked for over two decades by the greatness of Aaron Rodgers and Favre before him, but it caught up with us last season.

As always, this is a very stupid take. Success and draft position are inversely related, so that the greater are Favre and Rodgers (and the schemes developed by the coaches who train them) the lower the draft status, which is more responsible for the quality of players than the GMs. Success with draft picks and success with FAs are not guaranteed, but FA failure is literally more costly, making it inherently more risky.

I'll say it one last time - based on overall success, relative to the rest of the NFL, anyone who thinks that Wolf and TT are flawed GMs is a fool.

[pbmax]

I guess you're too young to remember back in the day George Allen and the Redskins trading away virtually their entire draft almost every year. They were pretty successful at that alternative method of team building. I don't necessarily advocate that or even a modern version of it, but just saying ......

Edward Bennett Williams: I gave George an unlimited budget and he exceeded it.

You couldn't do George Allen these days without rebuilding as often as the Florida Marlins. He once traded a draft pick he did not control.