This year, more than most, the Packers should adopt a "wait and see" approach to the NFL Draft

I love trade scenarios in the NFL Draft. I find the valuation of draft picks fascinating, especially since you’d be correct far more often than not to assume that any single selection you make will be bad. That’s how this works: most players picked in the NFL Draft don’t work out!

But that’s why trades are so interesting. You can look at them from two angles. First, there’s the obvious step of maximizing your odds by getting as many draft picks as possible. If you’re going to miss on most of them, you might as well get as many swings as you can. That’s just working the math in your favor.

But then there’s the other approach to draft trades: moving up. Everybody knows the draft is an inexact science. I hesitate to call it art, because even the most abstract art seems to make more sense than this. But every so often — okay, pretty frequently — a team determines that they’ve figured out something nobody else sees. Or, at least, nobody sees it quite the same way that they do. And accordingly, they spend multiple picks just to get one guy. 

And that’s wild! Everybody knows the math of the draft. Everyone knows that one player won’t fix their team. Everyone knows they’re probably wrong even about what they think they’re right about. But they do it anyway! That’s amazing!

All of that leads me to this piece by my Acme Packing Company colleague Tex Western. Tex carefully outlines the scenarios in which the Packers could reasonably trade up in the first and second rounds. There are some good deals here, but it crystallizes something for me that I’ve been thinking about since I read this piece by Ben Solak at ESPN.

Solak gives the most apt description I’ve heard of the Packers’ draft situation: “The Packers are one of the toughest teams to nail down in first-round mock drafts. They have several medium needs -- none pressing enough that they must be addressed, but all intense enough that a first-round pick would be a warranted investment.”

Isn’t that just it? The Packers don’t have a screaming need anywhere. Nothing even as pressing as their safety situation a year ago. But they have a bunch of places where they could really use some help: edge rusher, defensive line, cornerback, wide receiver. None of these positions are going to break the Packers if they’re left unaddressed in the draft, but it would be nice to upgrade all of them. Medium needs, as Solak artfully put it.

And that’s where things come together for me. I harp on the math of trading up often. I’m skeptical of the idea of nailing just one pick, however confident you might be. Even if the best player available in the whole draft was available at 20 (and who is that, exactly?) I’d have a hard time pulling the trigger to move up with so many other medium-sized needs affecting the Packers.

That’s why I think this year, more than most, is a “wait and see” year for the Packers. I’d never rule out trading up. Say Arizona’s Tet McMillan made a prodigious slide down the draft boards, you’d at least have to talk about moving up to get him. But there’s no reason to be overeager about any position or player. The Packers have too many soft needs to go all-in anywhere. It’d serve them well to wait. 

Let the draft come to you, and fill in what needs you can. Maybe the Packers can’t get to them all, but at least they won’t be chasing one.