Love him or hate him, Packers general manager Ted Thompson does things his own way.  Fans are often infuriated with his complete disregard to free agency (especially towards top tier free agents) and drafting players who no one knows about in the “wrong spots” (at least according to Mel Kiper Jr.).  Plenty of fans will gripe about the best player available strategy, which often leaves perceived holes in the roster while creating log jams in others.  But perhaps worse of all is that fans know Thompson is stubborn and will do things the way he wants and given how successful the Packers have been under his tenure, he likely gets to set his own terms for retirement. 

CheeseheadTV wrote:

This draft definitely seemed more weighted toward "need" than others have been in the past.

Originally Posted by: nerdmann 

Gaping holes can be filled via free agency, in theory.

Originally Posted by: DoddPower 

This draft definitely seemed more weighted toward "need" than others have been in the past.

Originally Posted by: nerdmann 

What exactly determines who is the best player? What determines that player A is better than player B and perhaps as important who gets to determine which player is the best player available? Is there some master list created by a committee of college football guru's, or maybe its just one guy, that determines where each and every player falls on the BPA spectrum? Or does each GM determine his list of "best" players based on his own research, the research of his scouts and the needs and best fits for his own team? If the GM doesn't take the best player according to you or I does that mean he is not taking the best player? I'm pretty sure GMs don't make a list of 1 to 500 (or however many players are eligible for the draft) and say "this is my list, I'm going to cross names off as they are taken and when it comes to my turn I'm going to take the highest one left. According to us fans that would be taking the best player available but I really doubt that is how GMs approach it. We get hung up on "best player" as meaning the "BEST" player, that is which one is more talented when in reality it is probably more like best player for our team at this time and I can't believe that need doesn't factor into it.

A strict BPA list would be akin to a writers top 100 prospects list. The best players, from 1-100 regardless of position, or team need. If you look at those same writers mock drafts they never follow their lists 100 percent and that is because they factor in team need as well. I'm sure GMs do the same thing. At least I hope they do because a true BPA drafting GM could conceivably draft 7 straight players at the same position and no matter how much we say we WANT or GM to draft the BPA we all know we would go ape shit if they did that.

So if we agree to all this then who is to say that Ted is lying to us about taking the best player available? I'm sure he is takingthe player he thinks is the bet one and I am sure need does factor into what makes that player the best one. I'm also pretty sure if a cornerback would have been the highest player rated on Teds draft board when his pick came around in the 3rd round last year he would have though long and hard about going with a different position.

Originally Posted by: sschind 

I think at least part of that were the dynamics of where we were picking and the players available. I thought there were a number of guys of about the same level when our turn came up in the first round. I was hoping we'd trade back (like the team before and after us did) as I felt we could get the same quality a few picks later in round 1/start of round 2.

When you're picking and there's not a huge difference in the players available, I felt we went with the one that fit best to our needs, but I didn't feel that we had abandoned the BPA approach--there just wasn't a huge difference in players available when our picks rolled around.

When there became a difference in value, Ted traded up IOT draft Spriggs.

Originally Posted by: macbob 

Ted has a whole team of scouts dude.

They create a board that is based on BPA, for OUR team. They're not making an abstract list of "players who are good." Although when they draft guys on defense who don't fit our scheme, it makes me wonder.

Originally Posted by: nerdmann