The Good, Bad And Ugly From The Green Bay Packers’ Draft

When you last saw the Green Bay Packers, they were on the brink of greatness.

Despite being the youngest team in football, the Packers reached the NFC Divisional playoffs and had heavily favored San Francisco on the ropes. The host 49ers rallied, though, prevailed, 24-21, and sent Green Bay to the postseason remarkably motivated for 2024.

“We’ve got to have a championship offseason so everything rolls into the season,” Packers defensive end Preston Smith immediately after that loss to San Francisco. “Coming into this next season, we’ve got to focus on the things that we can improve on, make sure that our weaknesses are our strengths, and we improve on the things we’re good at.”

It appears Green Bay accomplished many of those things on draft weekend.

General manager Brian Gutekunst, who hit home runs with his 2022 and 2023 draft classes, seemingly upgraded the roster in several key areas.

Gutekunst used his 11 picks to take three offensive linemen, three safeties, two linebackers, as well as a running back, quarterback and cornerback.

“I think we had a really good opportunity in front us as we started on Thursday and sitting here right now I feel like we did a lot of good things for our football team,” Gutekunst said shortly after the draft ended. “So we’re excited.”

With good reason.

Here’s a look at the good, bad and ugly from Green Bay’s 2024 draft.Green Bay took Arizona’s Jordan Morgan in Round 1, Duke’s Jacob Monk in Round 5 and Georgia State’s Travis Glover in Round 6. The Packers needed help after Jon Runyan and Yosh Nijman left in free agency, and David Bakhtiari was released.

“I think these guys are not only fits athletically for what we want to do, but culture fits for our room, as well,” Gutekunst said.

Morgan could be an immediate starter at left tackle.

The extremely versatile Morgan (6-5, 311) has terrific feet, outstanding athleticism and ran the 40-yard dash in 5.04 seconds at the NFL Combine.

Since 2022, Morgan has allowed just three sacks in 880 pass-blocking snaps. And of 96 FBS-level tackles in this draft class who played at least 650 offensive snaps, he ranked 14th in pass-blocking efficiency by Pro Football Focus.

The negatives are Morgan has extremely short arms (32 7/8), isn’t as physical as some scouts liked and suffered a torn ACL on Nov., 2022.

“Really athletic,” Gutekunst said of Morgan. “Really feel like he could probably play four positions for us, two-time team captain — just our kind of guy.”

Overall, Gutekunst has fared well when taking three linemen in a draft.

Zach Tom, Sean Rhyan and Rasheed Walker — all selected in 2022 — could each start this season. In 2021, Gutekunst found starting center Josh Myers and reserve guard Royce Newman, but whiffed on Cole Van Lanen. And in 2020, Gutekunst hit it on Runyan, but missed on Jake Hanson and Simon Stepaniak.

While Gutekunst’s philosophy of doubling and tripling up at certain positions in a draft is unique, it’s largely paid off.

“If the highest rated guy is at that position we’re not afraid to stay there,” Gutekunst said. “I think you can make a mistake maybe because, Hey, we just picked a guy at this position. Maybe we should not take him, even though he might be the highest rated guy. But I think we did a pretty good job of staying disciplined to the process, trusting the board.”