In honor of this weeks draft

[Jimx29]

.........ouch...again

[Bretsky]

.........ouch...again

still painful to look at

[Fritz]

still painful to look at

As bad as it was, it might've been the move necessary to get the Packers to finally clear out the detritus of the old regime and hire a real GM.

And remember, it wasn't a big surprise. Lots of teams loved Mandarich. But somehow his steroid use got past everyone. And I wonder: as big of an ass as he was, didn't anyone glom onto the character issue?

[smuggler]

The shame of it is, if we'd drafted Derrick Thomas, he'd almost certainly still be alive today.

[Guiness]

He fooled everyone. I remember that draft, and the talking heads said that Dallas was the one that made a mistake, going for the glamour pick instead of the sure thing, a plug and play dominating LT for the next decade. Man did he fool everyone! He blamed his poor work ethic for years as a way to cover up his steroid use. He never did get caught using them, AFAIK.

And I wonder: as big of an ass as he was, didn't anyone glom onto the character issue?

Picks were not scrutinized 24/7 back then the way they are now, and there wasn't Facebook/twitter/youtube that invited people to make fools of themselves. I know he had some alcohol and pain killer issues, and ended up in rehab, but that hardly makes him unique among NFL players. Was there more?

[Fritz]

He had a reputation at State for being a ginormous a-hole, a real narcissist, and there were rumors of steroid use even back then.

But then again, Green Bay wasn't the only team he fooled. You wonder if Green Bay would've been better off with the # 5 pick, since you wonder if one of the other teams might've taken Mandarich, too.

And if I remember correctly GB was in the running for the #1 overall pick which would certainly have been Aikman - all they had to do was lose their last game. But no. They won. All they had to do was to lose, on the road, to the Phoenix Cardinals. But they won, and won the right to flub up the 1989 draft. Doh!

[Joemailman]

He had a reputation at State for being a ginormous a-hole, a real narcissist, and there were rumors of steroid use even back then.

But then again, Green Bay wasn't the only team he fooled. You wonder if Green Bay would've been better off with the # 5 pick, since you wonder if one of the other teams might've taken Mandarich, too.

And if I remember correctly GB was in the running for the #1 overall pick which would certainly have been Aikman - all they had to do was lose their last game. But no. They won. All they had to do was to lose, on the road, to the Phoenix Cardinals. But they won, and won the right to flub up the 1989 draft. Doh!

But do we know if they would have done anything differently if they had the #1 pick? Did they think enough of Majik (this was right before his best year) that they would have taken Mandarich, or would Aikman have been the pick?