GREEN BAY − In case there were any doubts, the Green Bay Packers are all-in on their rebuild.
General manager
Brian Gutekunst wasn’t looking to
trade Rasul Douglas this week, and he reportedly called around about acquiring a running back as Tuesday’s NFL trade deadline closed in.
But in the end, he was willing to pull the trigger on moving Douglas and unwilling to pay the price to bring in a back. Which tells a lot about the mind-set of the key football decision-makers at 1265 Lombardi Ave.
If Gutekunst was concerned about losing his job at the end of this season, he wouldn’t have made it tougher to win games now by trading one of his solid defensive players for future assets (an improved 2024 draft pick and extra salary cap space). Trading Douglas didn’t rise to the level of something that Mark Murphy, as the head of football and the team’s president and CEO, would have needed to sign off on. But last February, Murphy did give the OK for trading Aaron Rodgers and rebuilding around Jordan Love with the youngest corps of receivers and tight ends you’ll ever see. He also was surely aware Gutekunst was trading Douglas before the deal was done this week. Gutekunst and Murphy also know they’d put coach Matt LaFleur in tough circumstances going into this season and made things even tougher for the struggling coach this week by dealing Douglas. To think Murphy would turn around and fire LaFleur for not winning this season just doesn’t make sense.
So if you’re thinking there will be a house cleaning at the top of the Packers food chain this offseason, well, think again. The Douglas trade confirms that Murphy is strongly inclined to stick with the plan, which was to live through some tough times in 2023 for an expected payoff in ’24 and ’25.
Now, nothing is a sure thing in this league. Nobody’s job but a team owner’s is completely safe. But from everything we’ve seen and know about Murphy, it would take something drastic, a complete season-long meltdown on the field and in the relationship between Gutekunst and LaFleur, to cost either or both their jobs.
Really, could Murphy in good conscience make a change at GM, coach or both going into 2024, his last season before mandatory retirement, and saddle his successor with someone at one or both jobs that the successor didn’t choose?
For that matter, could he attract the best candidates for either job, since they’d know the boss who hired them would be gone in only a year?
This subject comes up because, with four straight losses and horrendous performances on the offensive side of the ball, there’s a world of disgruntled Packers fans out there who won’t be happy with the prospects of this GM and coach still being at the helm in 2024. They’ll point to missed draft picks and the current offensive problems as reasons to move on from one or both.
And it’s true, Gutekunst has missed on his share of picks, and LaFleur to this point has failed to prop up Jordan Love and his young running mates.
But to change this rebuilding plan at the first sign of trouble would be the height of folly in the NFL. If Murphy didn’t like the plan, he should have nixed it last February.
The Packers still have 10 games remaining, and it’s true the playoffs are already a pipe dream. But the stakes for this franchise over the next couple of months remain huge. Gutekunst was on the money at his post-trade-deadline news conference this week when he said, “These are going to be very important 10 games."
Things could go a few ways.
The Packers (2-5) could improve and decide Love is good enough to roll with. Then it would be full steam ahead for the rebuild plan and 2024.
They could show improvement but still have a bad record and a high draft pick. Then drafting a quarterback would be very much in play.
Or they could improve minimally in the final 10 weeks, which would be a huge red flag. If that’s accompanied by fissures between the coaching and scouting staffs, there’s no telling what might happen or what changes might come.
Their schedule features its toughest stretch coming up soon, too, with games against the Steelers, Chargers, Lions and Chiefs. But the Packers also face a Rams team this week that might not have its quarterback (Matthew Stafford, thumb injury), and close out their season against the Giants (2-6), middling Buccaneers (3-4), Panthers (1-6), Kirk Cousins-less Vikings (4-4) and Bears (2-6).
Trading Douglas hasn’t made things any easier for winning games going forward. He was a solid player and locker-room leader. But it’s a deal that makes sense for where the Packers are now.
Douglas is an older (29 years old) cornerback who probably would have been a salary casualty ($9 million in 2024 pay) in the offseason anyway. As a waived player, he wouldn’t have garnered a compensatory draft pick for signing with another team next offseason.
The trade clears about $7.4 million in cap space this year and next combined, and it swaps the Packers’ fifth-round pick for the Buffalo Bills’ third in next April’s draft. Depending on final records and compensatory picks, that’s moving from probably somewhere in the mid-140s to the upper 80s, assuming the Bills have a good season.
On the Jimmy Johnson trade chart, that’s the equivalent of a late-third-round pick. On the Rich Hill chart, it’s an early fourth-rounder, and on the Harvard chart it’s a seventh-rounder.
“It’s the value of a fourth-round pick for a 29-year-old low-end starter who was overpaid,” said a scout for another NFL team who liked the deal from the Packers end.
Gutekunst framed it a little differently. He sees it as gaining another pick in the top 100, which likely means another pick from the top-50 players on the Packers board. That math works out because the 32 teams have very different draft boards.
“That’s something I think was too good for us to pass up,” Gutekunst said.
But no matter how you frame it, this is a football brain trust willing to suffer in the here and now in hopes of a payoff in 2024 and beyond. Whether it will work remains to be seen. But trading Douglas is a sign that only something drastic could knock that plan offline.
