#402 Packers Unscripted: Recapping the draft

and we're back. Anything from this eight player class for the Packers that stands out to you as kind of the the the over overwhelming trade or trend as far as these players that Brian Gains brought in, I think the entire draft class as a whole. You could use the theme big guys that I mean, it's it's truly amazing. You can just run down the list of each guy there. Forty time is exceptional, their explosion is exceptional, and they're big,

they are taught, they are long, they can run. The linebacker Tye Summers, wow, I mean I had to do a little research of him after the draft, but he is four or five one with twenty seven reps on the bench press. He's a stat sideline to sideline speed with some pops, So I mean top to bottom, they are some explosive uh some players. Yeah, a lot of athletic traits certainly that that applied to this class. I

want to go through. We'll just go through in chronological order here, Day one, Day two, Day three, and what Brian Gudacunsen his personnel staff did here. You look at day one, John, and I tell you if anything speaks to the mantra of best player available drafting, it was this day one for the Packers because two edge rushers and a safety were end in free agency. And then on Day one, with two first round picks, Gudacon's drafted

an edge rusher in a safe exactly. He had players he really liked as he thought the best players in those spots. Obviously made a trade up for Darnell Savage, the safety from Maryland at twenty one. But these are these are two guys who are definitely going to have an opportunity to step in and perform early and often for Mike Petton's defense. Yeah, and I don't think there's a real secret behind what they're trying to do here.

When you look at Mike Patton's defense. You can think of one word savage, A bunch of guys with relentless attack towards the ball. And that's what they're building here. Uh. When you sign three out of four free agents in the off season to your defense, and then five out of eight draft picks again go to your defense, that's showing a dedication and one that we're getting guys who are gonna come downhill at you play after play after play,

and you see that. You see that with Gary, they have the edges covered with the Smiths, which, by the way, how easy is it to say just the Smith's in referring to the edge, Like we don't have to worry about remembering three different we could just say And then you add Gary and and you have three guys here that that are all kinds of versatile, can jump inside, can jump outside. Third down is going to be an

incredible down to watch this defense. And I think also you go to the middle, the interior defensive line, and that was probably the most solid part of our roster. When you look at Tyler Lancaster, Mike Daniels, Ma, Trevius Adams, Kenny Clark, and then you you're throw in the mix that Gary can do that too, and King's Lee Kiki later in the draft. I mean all kinds of options at the defensive line front. Yeah, you said it with the word versatility, because it looks like what's being built

here with this defensive front. And you also said it on third down, it's about mixing and matching different packages, different alignments. You know, you could see Zadarius Smith, Preston Smith. They on a third down, they might be on the edge, they might be on the interior. Rashaan Are he gives you those same options, they'll be What I see developing here on the defensive front is on a week to week a game plan to game plan basis, Mike Patton

looking for specific matchups on certain downs. He wants this guy against that blocker to get after the quarterback. And they're trying to build this defensive front to give him as many options as possible in that game planning sense. And when you used to watch the old Baltimore Ravens or the old Pittsburgh Steelers, they used to run this defense that was really difficult for people to pick it up.

The forty Niners ran it to a certain extent, later on too, and we would just give it the name Summer defense because some guys are here and some guys are there, and they're all just standing up on the prout ready to pounce on the offense when they snapped the ball. I see all kinds of options for the defense to go in this direction this year. Mike Petton is gonna have a grand old time standing at the board right next is and knows finding ways for guys

to come and and an attack. But uh, but I also think that second pick in the first round with Darnell Savage also adds quite a bit of versatility to this defense because he's a guy who in center field. He has an innate characteristic for being able to find the ball hunted down, play that center field and hold the middle of the field down. But what he's also good at doing, and we've seen this at Maryland, he drops down, he can cover the slot, and he can

come in the box and fit on runs. That's a huge asset to have on the back end, to be that versatile play all three of those different angles that safety sometimes find niches for now he can do all three. Yeah. Well with certainly with Savage, this was a guy that that Brian Goudacuns targeted and he really liked. He gave up two fourth round picks to the Seattle Seahawks in a trade in order to move up from the thirty spot up to twenty one to get the safety he

wanted on paper. This is the guy who has the biggest opportunity in front of him in terms of potentially being a full time starter right from day on, from the day that he walks in here and uh, boy, Rashawn Gary fot seventy seven pounds, you kind of scratch your head at that. And then this guy Savage four three six in the forty You know, I don't I don't think the Packers have had this kind of speed with a pure center field or safety since probably Nick

Collins was the guy back there. Wouldn't you agree? I would agree, And that to me is what makes him so special. That speed is why he can drop down and cover the slot and uh and make plays on the ball. Impress man. But let's sit him out in center field and he could cover all fifty three yards from sideline to side. Right, It's gonna it's gonna be an incredible thing to watch this defense and how it

grows in year two. Yeah, all right, Well, before we move on to day two, a little bit of sponsor business here, John, the Green Bay Packers get ready for game day with the powerful noise canceling technology of Bo's Quiet Comfort thirty five headphones. To learn more at www dot bows dot com, slash Packers Bows the official headphones of the Green Bay Packers, and at Homer. Here in the stands, we all know that Green Bay fans give it their all and that takes a lot of energy.

So grab a warm bowl of Campbell's Chunky Soup. It's meaty goodness fuels the greatness of Packers fans everywhere. Try the delicious classic chicken noodle soup. Just visit your local supermarket and ask for Campbell's Chunky Soup, Official sup partner of the Green Bay Packers. Okay, John, Moving on to day two. Here in the draft, early on in the second round, there was kind of a run on offensive tackles. The Packers were the twelfth pick up in the second round.

There were four offensive tackles that were taken before the Packers were on the clock, and the Packers did decide to go offensive lineman. But but they went with an interior offensive lineman Elton Jenkins from Mississippi State, a two year starter at center his final two years in the SEC, but a guy who started at pretty much every position at some point on the offensive line. The Packers are going to first look at as a guard potentially to

uh to compete for time there. Yeah, and when you look, when you're six five and you have the arms as long as his, you are not pegged in a spot. You're not a center, a guard or a tackle, you can play all five. And we saw that he did. He did just that back in college. And and and that versatility again, We're gonna go through every single guy. That versatility again is what makes him so appealing. And now I look at this offensive line and I think, wow,

we go across the front. We got David Bucktier, we got Lane Taylor, we got Corey Linsley. Um, we got Billy Turner, we got Brian Bulaga. But we didn't even mention yet Cole Madison coming back last year's fourth round pick. And now you got out and Jakets. This line looks like it's gonna be stout. This line looks really really good. Now, I mean, you've got to be excited about going in running the zone run offense with this with these guys,

and they're all really good pass protectors. It's I mean, I'm really excited about what they did with the offensive line and how that's gonna progress here moving forward. Yeah, and Corey Linsley is a guy who's played every snap at center for the last two years. But if he were to need a backup, the Packers haven't really had a pure experienced center as a as a potential backup

to Lindsley. So if Jenkins is not in that starting lineup as a rookie, certainly it looks like he could be a backup obviously at multiple spots down on the interior. And people don't understand how difficult it is to actually field the roster on game day, and with his versatility the ability. I mean, normally on game day you only dress seven maybe eight lineman, so that means you can't even back up every single position. Sure if you get three guys or god forbid, a fourth guy hurt your

line in tight ends or d lineman. I mean we've seen that happen in the past. Yea. And to have a guy who can literally go in and fill any single spot that that that let you rest easy at night as head coach Matt the floor knowing you have that guy who is a plug in play guy. Yeah. With the third round, then at pick number seventy five, the Packers took a tight end j Sternberger out of Texas A and M. Now, this is a guy he

started out at Kansas, things didn't work out there. He went to a junior college, then gets an opportunity to play at Texas A and M in the SEC and as a one year player there seventeen point three yards per catch and ten touchdowns in the Southeastern Conference. Those are numbers that that jump out at you. Now with only one really year as a full time starter as a college player, there's a lot of development here to go with Sternberger, but you can't ignore those numbers that confidence. No,

absolutely not. Uh. He I'm so excited and and he is probably the most out of all the draft picks to one, I'm most excited about because there is so much unknown and yet the ceiling is so high with this guy. He just said, one year of Division one football is really alwa played. But he had great numbers in a great conference. That conference, by the Way had forty nine guys drafted this weekend, which is I think they said the highest. I think that was a record for one and so what he was able to do

in that one year was quite exceptional. And and then you go and you think, man, he gets to come in and learn how to run routes behind Jimmy Graham, and he gets to learn how to block with technique from Mercedes Lewis. He has everything right at his fingertips to become a great player. And in Matt Lafour's offense, the key is getting separation for the tight end. You can run them on over routes, you can run them on stick routes. There's all kinds of combinations that they run.

And this guy showed he's able to create separation at the highest level in Division one, and that's why he's here. Yeah, And the biggest investment the Packers have made in the draft in a tight end in five years, having used a third round pick on Richard Rogers, so Um and Sternberger. I think, in my opinion, West and I had talked about this in shows leading up to the draft. If you don't have those two Iowa tight ends, which was very unusual to have those guys rated as high as

they were in both coming from the same school. These other tight ends that were taken in the second, third, and fourth rounds would have potentially been much higher picks in other years, so I find that interesting as well. With Day three, Packers had four picks ended up sitting and picking at all, all four spots for all the trading that was going on, and I believe that was another record in this draft overall, was the number of

trades that were executed. No trades from the Packers. Gouda Kuns ends up taking three defensive players, Kingsley Kiki, defensive lineman from Texas A and m Kadar Holman, a cornerback

from Toledo and Ty Summers, inside linebacker from TCU. With Holman, I tell you, I don't know what exactly your path was to get to Shippensburg University, but what Holman had to do just to get an opportunity to play in college football, to to to get a chance at Toledo, and then now for him to be drafted, it's quite a story, it really is. And people forget to play college football it's scholastic athlete. You still have the scholastic first, and his struggles were trying to make sure his S

A T scores were good enough to get in. And he grinded for a year until he got him at a level where he could get in it. I mean, now he has his college degree, he's working on a masters. It's just the biggest three sixty story that you could imagine. And then he gets drafted. And he not only gets drafted, he gets drafted to the Green Bay Packers, where he can come in, he can develop, he can flourish. The guy's tall, he's six ft tall, he runs a four three.

I'm all kinds of excited about a guy with those measurables on the outside, and he's a three year starter. You can't take anything away from a guy a three year starter in Division one. You have it. You have toughness, you have leadership, you have those in eight characteristics that were gonna lead you to excel. Yeah, I mean it's not at this point. It's not quite the you know, bagging groceries and ending up in the Hall of Fame

like kurb Horner. But a guy who's unloading trucks for Dunkin Donuts and then, uh, suddenly then becomes a sixth round draft pick of the Green Baby's email in his game film to college, somebody give me a chance and he bring him in as a walk one and he makes the team, and yeah, yeah, it's a it's an incredible it's an incredible story. Can't wait to meet this guy when when he arrives later this week. Um, you talked about Kingsley Kiki earlier. He kind of falls into

that same versatile defensive lineman thing. And then with Ty Summers now an inside linebacker. But you know this is this is a guy, another one with a lot of the measurables, tested really well and strikes me as one of these guys that if he can make the fifty three, is one of these guys that you that you plug in on special teams, on almost all those units and say, use those athletic traits, go get it. Yeah. You know the first thing with with Kingsley kick is I saw

two and and I saw or right. I thought this guy's an interi your linement, he's an interior alignment. But they said he played some defensive end and made a transition in college, and but I still thought interiorlignement until I went back and watched his forty at the combine. He is an athlete. He is a speedster. I mean he was trucking on the forty yard dash, and he's he can show that versatility. He will be able to

do that with that type of speed. He'll be able to bounce around at three or four different defensive line techniques. And that again is a manage from Mike Petton. Yeah, he made a transformation with his body because he started out as a nose tackle at A and m then drop somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty pounds. They move him out to defensive end for his final year, and

he gets seven sacks in the SEC. That you know, when you jump out and play that position for the first time and you get seven sacks again in that type of conference, that's a guy that looks like, you know, it's it's an arrow that's pointing up and you don't necessarily know how high it might go. Yeah, and and and let's be let's face it, most starting tackles in the SEC end up playing in the NFL at some point in time. It's just that's how good that conference is.

And and again I just go back to his forty time, the way he ran, I think he was a train coming down. Yeah. Well, the the other pick we haven't talked about yet, the one offensive selection that was made on Day three in the sixth round. Dexter Williams of running back from Notre Dame. Another interesting story in terms of his mother and some illnesses that she's dealing with, and she moved from Florida up to Notre Dame to uh to be with him. A really close, obviously tight

knit family. He was dealing with a suspension, suspended for the first four games of last season. Then he comes off that suspension. The first time he touches the ball, he runs for like a forty five year old touchdown, and then it was I think a week or two later he breaks off a ninety seven yard touchdown, which is the number two longest touchdown running Notre Dame's record books. Now, this is a guy his forty time was in the high four fives. But then you look at the film

and the big playability. This is a guy who runs a wave. People does not correlate what Now. I love running backs. I love running backs, and and the thing that excites me about him is he is perfect for this Matt Lafloor zone run game. He has a one cut downhill and run away from people type back. Uh. He's he's larger, but he's not the biggest guy, but he's still fast enough that he can take off. He

had a ninety yard touchdown in college. And what really excites me about him is the fact that when he touches the ball, what he's able to do on the second level make guys miss. It's not just one cut into the traffic. Boom bang bang, we got five yards, you got the last two. He's taking it to the house. He's a home run hitter in this offense, where if you think about it, going back to the days of Mike Shaner, Mike Shanahan and Denver when they had trilled Davis one cut to the house. He was a late

round draft pick. I'm not making comparisons other than the fact of the offenses, but it's pretty exciting to see. Yeah. Well with William the thing that's interesting now the one year last season was his first opportunity as the as the full time number one running back at Notre Dame. He rushes as I said, he sat out the first four games because of a suspension that was for undisclosed reasons. It was a suspension imposed by the school. He gets in the lineup, and over nine games he rushes for

nine yards and twelve touchdowns, I believe. So you wonder if he had played all thirteen, you wonder what numbers he would have put up. But the other thing that jumped out at me, you look at the previous year when he was in a part time role, he averaged nine point two yards of carry. He only had thirty or thirty six carries because he was a part time guy. But every time he got the ball, he's getting a first down. I mean, you can't ignore that kind of No,

you can't ignore that. And and his knock was a little bit of off the field issues that he had. But man, when you talked to him in his interview, he seems like he's come full circle. He seems like he's really focused. He's addressed these things in the past. The fact that he's bringing his mom up here to live with me. He calls her his guardian angel. I just think his fantom. I mean, my mom did move up here into I had kids. I wish I had my mom taking care of me, making me dinners and

I'm launching for me. But that's why I just think it's so great. He seems so focused, he's got his vision straight, and I see nothing but upside with him. All Right, Well, we could talk about this draft class probably all day long, but we're running out of time here, so I'm gonna call it a wrap on this edition of Packers Unscripted. A big thanks to our newest member of the Packers digital team, John Kon, for sitting in

and rapping with me about the draft. West will be back for our next show, and until then, we'll see you next time.