Packers built their identity on draft and develop but the develop part has quietly stopped working

There is no phrase more connected to the Green Bay Packers than “draft and develop.” It was born from necessity as much as philosophy. Playing in the smallest market in professional sports, without the financial muscle or glamour of a major city to attract elite free agents, the Packers built their identity the old-fashioned way — identifying talent, bringing it to Wisconsin, and turning raw prospects into long-term starters.

For a long time, it worked. But somewhere along the way, the second half of that equation started to erode. And when development fails, it creates a domino effect: holes appear across the roster, the team is forced into reactive decisions in free agency, and some of those decisions create problems of their own. That is the cycle Green Bay has been living inside for the better part of the last five years.

Ted Thompson’s Packers turned late-round picks into franchise pillars through patient development

To understand how far the standard has slipped, you have to go back to the Ted Thompson era and the production line of talent that flowed through Green Bay’s facility on a near-annual basis.

The Thompson years were defined by taking players that other franchises had overlooked, undervalued, or simply did not know what to do with, and turning them into something more. Donald Driver was a seventh-round pick who became the franchise’s all-time leading receiver and played 14 seasons in Green Bay. Greg Jennings was a second-round pick who developed into one of the most dangerous receivers in football. Aaron Rodgers sat behind Brett Favre for three seasons before stepping into one of the smoothest transitions at quarterback the league had ever seen. That patience produced a Super Bowl in 2010 and a decade of sustained excellence.

The story continued through the next generation. Davante Adams arrived in 2014 as a second-round pick who most scouts viewed as a project — athletic but raw, with questions about his route precision and ability to separate at the NFL level. Green Bay’s coaching staff saw something different. Over seven seasons Adams evolved into arguably the best receiver in football, making five Pro Bowls and setting franchise records.

Jordy Nelson’s career arc followed the same track. A second-round pick out of Kansas State in 2008, Nelson was not an overnight sensation. He was methodically developed into a possession receiver with elite hands and an extraordinary understanding of the route tree, eventually becoming one of Rodgers’ most trusted targets and a Pro Bowler.

Clay Matthews arrived in the first round of 2009 with questions about his frame and pass-rushing repertoire. He left as a franchise icon and six-time Pro Bowler. Tramon Williams was not even drafted — he signed as an undrafted free agent in 2007 and developed into a Pro Bowl cornerback. The list extends further: Morgan Burnett, Bryan Bulaga, the offensive line continuity built through smart late-round identification season after season.

Gutekunst has hit on several picks but Green Bay’s broader draft record has slipped significantly

When Brian Gutekunst took over as general manager in 2018, he inherited the identity and the expectation that came with it. And to be fair, he has had real successes. His first pick — trading up to select cornerback Jaire Alexander 18th overall — was excellent, and at his peak Alexander was one of the best corners in the league. Jordan Love, the controversial 2020 selection that made Rodgers furious and baffled most of the football world, has proven to be a legitimate franchise quarterback.

Tucker Kraft, taken in the third round of 2023, emerged as a dynamic tight end before a torn ACL cut short what was shaping up to be a breakout season. Elgton Jenkins, a second-round pick in 2019, quietly became one of the game’s elite interior linemen. Zach Tom, a fourth-round pick in 2022, developed into a reliable starter. Edgerrin Cooper in the 2024 class showed real promise at linebacker. Christian Watson, when healthy, has shown he can be a legitimate weapon — electric with the ball in his hands and capable of the kind of big plays that change games.

The 2024 defensive backfield picks deserve specific recognition. Evan Williams, taken in the fourth round, earned All-Rookie honors in 2024 and followed that with an A-minus grade in 2025 according to one major grading publication — finishing with 100 tackles, a team-high three interceptions, and growing into one of the better young safeties in the conference.

Javon Bullard, a second-round pick from the same class, was initially expected to start at safety before Williams overtook that role, forcing Bullard into the slot. He responded by earning the 11th-best passer rating allowed among defensive backs who played at least 175 coverage snaps in 2025. Those two represent what happens when Green Bay finds the right fit for a player and commits to developing him.

But the broader picture is harder to explain away. One study examining draft performance over the last decade ranked the Packers dead last in the NFL. Another from Pro Football Focus found Green Bay’s defensive picks since 2020 ranked 24th in the league by PFF grade. Gutekunst has made ten first-round picks. Of those, three can be considered clear successes. The others have ranged from disappointing to outright busts.

Rashan Gary’s production disappeared after his ACL tear despite being paid like an elite pass rusher

If one player encapsulates the gap between Green Bay’s development reputation and its recent reality, it is Rashan Gary. Taken 12th overall in 2019, Gary was the number one recruit in the entire country out of high school — a physical specimen with a combination of size, speed, and athleticism that rarely comes around. For a stretch, it looked like the investment was paying off. Gary posted 9.5 sacks in 2021 and appeared to be evolving into the elite pass rusher everyone had projected.

Then came the ACL tear midway through the 2022 season. The Gary who came back was never quite the same player.

Despite being paid like a top-tier edge rusher, Gary’s production plateaued. The explosiveness that made him a top prospect never fully translated into the sustained, game-wrecking presence the Packers needed on the edge. His departure now looks increasingly likely, and when it comes, Green Bay will be left reflecting on a first-round pick and a massive contract that produced a single memorable season before injuries and stalled development combined to severely diminish the return.

Lukas Van Ness has not developed into the every-down pass rusher his 13th overall selection demanded

Van Ness was taken 13th overall in the 2023 draft at a position where the Packers were already desperate for answers. The pick raised eyebrows because Van Ness had just one season of significant production at Iowa, but the Packers believed in his raw athleticism.

Two years later, that belief has not been rewarded with anything close to what the draft slot demands. Van Ness has shown flashes — moments where you can see why Green Bay spent a premium pick on him — but he has never developed into the every-down pass rusher the position requires. He has spent too much of his early career as a rotation player rather than a presence that opposing offensive coordinators need to scheme around.

The pattern connecting Gary and Van Ness matters. The Packers have poured enormous first-round resources into the edge rusher position and for the most part gotten back not the bookend pass rushers a contender needs, but a group of players who have collectively underperformed their price tags. That gap is what ultimately triggered the Micah Parsons trade.

Parsons trade was a direct consequence of Green Bay’s failure to develop edge rushers in-house

The Micah Parsons trade was sold — correctly — as an aggressive, win-now move by a franchise that believed its window was open. There is truth in that framing. But it was also, in large part, a consequence of the Packers’ own developmental failures along the defensive front.

When your first-round edge rushers in Gary and Van Ness have not developed into dominant forces, and you are trying to compete at the highest level with Jordan Love at his peak, you go and spend major assets acquiring one of the best pass rushers in the league. The Parsons trade was necessary precisely because the draft-and-develop approach had failed Green Bay on defense.

An ACL tear during the 2025 season cut short what could have been a transformational run, making the whole situation feel even more painful. The Packers traded premium capital for an elite player, and injuries stole the return before it could fully materialize.

Aaron Banks contract displaced Elgton Jenkins and created a structural problem Green Bay cannot easily undo

The development failures have not just cost the Packers draft capital. They have forced Gutekunst into free agency spending that a true draft-and-develop franchise should not need to rely on. Some of those moves have been excellent. Xavier McKinney, signed to a four-year, $67 million deal, was first-team All-Pro in 2024 and second-team All-Pro in 2025. He transformed a safety room that had been a real weakness into one of the best units in the NFL. Josh Jacobs, brought in as a free agent running back, rushed for over 1,300 yards in 2024 and gave the offense an entirely different dimension.

But the Aaron Banks situation stands as perhaps the most consequential misstep of the Gutekunst era. Banks was signed to a four-year, $77 million contract before the 2025 season, making him the fifth-highest paid left guard in the NFL. The contract immediately forced the team’s hand in a way that made no football sense: it displaced Jenkins — a two-time Pro Bowl left guard who had been one of the best interior linemen in football — from his natural position, moving him to center to accommodate the new arrival.

The results were damaging at multiple levels. Jenkins, understandably unhappy about the move and with no guaranteed money left on his deal, skipped voluntary workouts before the season in what became a contract dispute. He struggled at center — finishing 2025 with a 62.0 PFF grade and a season-ending leg injury — producing what one analyst called the worst season of his career while playing a position he never fully settled into.

Meanwhile, Banks ranked 57th out of 63 qualifying guards in PFF pass-blocking efficiency for the season. By every meaningful measure, he was not worth what the Packers paid or what it cost them structurally.

Now Green Bay is stuck. Jenkins, who is the better football player and would almost certainly cost less going forward, is widely expected to be released to save cap space. The team will pay a massive contract to a guard who underperformed while losing a Pro Bowl talent who was playing out of position because of that same contract. Had the Packers kept Jenkins at left guard and developed from within, they could have had Sean Rhyan at center — who, when he stepped in after Jenkins got hurt, did a perfectly serviceable job in that role, as he typically does whenever called upon.

Nate Hobbs, signed as a cornerback in the same offseason to stablize the group, has also raised questions about his fit. Brought in at $12 million per year, Hobbs has found himself in a battle for playing time with Javon Bullard, who is younger, cheaper, and increasingly effective.

Jordan Morgan has been shuffled across the offensive line instead of being settled into one position to develop

Beyond individual player development, there is a legitimate organizational mismanagement story around how the Packers handle some of their picks after they arrive. Nowhere is this clearer than with offensive tackle Jordan Morgan, taken 25th overall in the 2024 draft.

Rather than settling Morgan into a defined position and developing him with continuity, he has been shuffled around the line based on injury and circumstance — playing guard as a rookie when Jenkins went down, then bouncing back into the tackle conversation. The same ESPN report that outlined the Jenkins situation noted the team was still trying to “find a way to get Morgan into a starting role” without a clear plan for where that would be.

For an offensive lineman, repetition and consistency are everything. Footwork, hand technique, leverage angles — these things are built through thousands of snaps at the same position against the same type of rusher. Moving a first-round lineman from tackle to guard and back does not just disrupt his rhythm. It delays his development timeline considerably. If Morgan is ultimately judged as a disappointment, a meaningful share of that responsibility will belong to an organizational process that never gave him a stable foundation to develop from.

Sean Rhyan keeps performing when called upon and keeps getting moved aside for the next option

Sean Rhyan has become a quiet symbol for a peculiar organizational tendency. A third-round pick in 2022, Rhyan has done something remarkably consistent throughout his time in Green Bay — he has shown up when called upon, performed solidly, and then been quietly moved aside when the next option came along or when circumstances changed.

It happened when Jenkins returned from injury. It happened when Banks arrived and reshuffled the entire line. It happened when Rhyan moved to center as an emergency replacement for the injured Jenkins in 2025 and was, by all accounts, solid in that role. And yet each time the organizational reflex has been to look elsewhere rather than fully commit to a player who keeps clearing the bar whenever he is asked to.

This is a telling symptom of the development problem. When a team is committed to developing its own players, it rewards reliability with opportunity. Rhyan’s situation suggests an organizational restlessness — a tendency to distrust what is already in the building even when what is already in the building keeps doing the job.

Rhyan playing serviceable center in an emergency is precisely the kind of thing you point to as a development success, and yet the broader organizational response has been to treat him as a placeholder rather than a building block. The decision to sign Banks to $77 million and displace Jenkins when Rhyan could have held down center is the most glaring example.

Green Bay’s development gap has widened even as the franchise keeps calling itself a draft-and-develop team

The core issue with “draft and develop” as an identity is that it only works if the organization is actually developing players. The Packers have been operating in the space between those two realities for several years now — drafting with reasonable instincts in terms of raw talent identification, but failing consistently to close the gap between what players are when they arrive and what they could become.

When that development gap widens, everything downstream gets harder. The team spends big in free agency. Some of those moves work — McKinney and Jacobs have been excellent. Others, like Banks, create structural problems that outlast the original issue they were meant to solve.

Gutekunst said it himself after the 2024 season: “stalled development and a growing lack of top-end talent” were the primary culprits for the team’s struggles. The Packers closed the 2025 regular season losing five of their final games, a collapse that ended what had looked like a legitimate Super Bowl-caliber roster. They were one of the youngest teams to make the playoffs in league history just two seasons prior. The talent has been there. The development of it has been the problem.

Love, Kraft, Williams, and Bullard form a real core but the Thompson-era standard demands more

Jordan Love is a franchise quarterback. Tucker Kraft, before his knee injury, was trending toward becoming one of the better tight ends in football. Jayden Reed has become a dependable weapon. Zach Tom quietly became a quality starter. Edgerrin Cooper could still be a star. Evan Williams and Javon Bullard are developing into one of the better safety duos in the NFC, with Williams in particular earning an A-minus grade in just his second season. Matthew Golden flashed real ability when given opportunities. There are legitimate pieces here.

But for a franchise whose entire competitive model depends on turning draft picks into cornerstones, “there are real pieces here” is not the standard that was set in the Thompson years. The development infrastructure that turned seventh-round picks into franchise legends, that transformed a raw Davante Adams into an All-Pro, that built one of the great offensive lines in football through mid-round selections — that infrastructure has to be rebuilt with real organizational discipline.

The Packers will tell you they are a draft-and-develop team. They have been saying it for decades, and for a long time those words carried weight. The challenge now is closing the gap between the philosophy and the practice — settling players into positions and keeping them there, trusting the players already in the building, and resisting the urge to spend big in free agency to solve problems that better development could have prevented in the first place.

You can draft all you want. But you have to develop. And when you do not, you pay for it — sometimes in more ways than one.