hughes, add the 6 starters he's acquired via trade with draft picks to the 8 starters he's drafted and he's way above average and right on par with ted thompson, inarguably one of the best GM's in the league.
now lets look at the actual talent
* - a 25 year old franchise QB. one of 3 guys in NFL history to throw for 5k yards. has a 40 TD season to his name. oh, and did I mention he just turned fucking 25 years old today!!!
* - two young stud defensive tackles! say what you want about them but one almost has no peers throughout the entire league and the other is a top 10-15 talent in all of football. arguably the most talented duo of starters in the league.
* - a super solid TE. I know you hate on em but ask anybody who knows anything, Grew is solid
* - a safety who, injuries aside, is fucking good! sucks about his knees but when healthy Delmas is def in the top 25% of all starting safetys in the NFL and is a game changer for us when healthy.
* - Reiff is still to young to pigeon hole as LT for the next decade or just a good RT but his ceiling/floor is undeniable. he's worst case scenario a Bulaga clone.
* - Leshoure, Broyles, Levy, SLH, Will Young have all proven to be solid football players. Every single one of them aside from maybe Levy still has upside. Leshore is coming off an injury that even 10 years ago was a career ender and he still had a relatively decent year. in terms of his situation, I think it was pretty damn good one. the dude couldn't even practice most weeks after game days because his achilles was so sore. never once complained. dude was a warrior this year and should be much closer to 100% next. if his numbers are similar then, then you have all the right in the world to bitch.
* - Bentley and Green showed there's some good talent there. Maybe or maybe not #1 or #2 CB talent but these guys absolutely deserve spaces on this roster and can contribute right now to a 4 man rotation.
* - Ronnell and Travis Lewis, Greenwood, Whitehead, Fox the jury is still out on. May end up sticking, may not.
All the rest is either depth or gone. This is the return of our last four drafts as of today. Now lets look at the packers biggest impact players the last four drafts.
Hawyard, Cobb, Bulaga, Raji and Matthews. These are their studs. Sure Perry has a ton of upside, Burnett has been an average safety for them and they have some other guys like Sherrod, TJ Lang and Newhouse who have played but these guys aren't world beaters. Compare the list of their impact players with ours and we stack up just fine against them.
We still have guys with lots of upside just like they do. We still get some depth out of picks just like they do. And all this is without factoring in the starters we've traded for which Thompson hasn't done so he's had a lot more darts to throw and has, imo, had less to show for with those picks than what Mayhew has for the trades he's made.
Why is any of this so hard for you to understand? As much as you want Mayhew to have been a failure he hasn't. His numbers have been at least average in pretty much any area you want to measure him vs an average NFL GM's and above average in most categories over the small sample size of only 4 seasons and 20 draft picks. It's just a shame that owners, pundits, and most fans don't realize how small of a sample 4 years and/or 20 picks is and that expecting this size of a sample to be even an semi good indicator of a NFL GM's true acumen at drafting is fucking retarded. The standard deviation alone means you could literally lay out 7 hats and put the names of all of Mel Kipers rankings per round in each hat, pull randomly and have better success than any GM in the entire fucking league if you were on the high side of variance over the span of a 20 pick sample size.
When and if the lions ever win.....ill be very very happy.
