The draft is coming to Green Bay in 2025, but hosting the major offseason event won’t change how Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst approaches the most important selection during one of the biggest team-building efforts of the year.
In fact, Gutekunst said he has no restrictions on his use of the team’s first-round pick — despite some outside theories on the Packers wanting to avoid a trade out of the first round or trading of the pick for a veteran player because the draft is in Green Bay.
“Having the draft in Green Bay really doesn’t change anything for how we go about that,” Gutekunst said from Indianapolis on Tuesday. “We’re going to do what’s best for the Green Bay Packers. If that’s trading out of the pick, we’re going to do it.”
More specifically, Gutekunst said team president and CEO Mark Murphy has given him explicit permission to trade the pick.
“Mark actually made a joke the other day,” Gutekunst said, via Tom Silverstein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “He said, ‘I want to make sure you know you can trade that pick.’”
The Packers currently hold the No. 23 overall pick in the first round.
Murphy has given no directive on the first-round pick process and Gutekunst will have the option to trade down from No. 23 if he feels adding picks can help the Packers or trade the pick to another team in exchange for a veteran player.
Gutekunst’s revelation makes good sense from a football operations standpoint. Altering a team’s decision-making process based on the location of the draft or desire to maximum exposure for the host team would be foolish. Murphy has already secured the draft for Green Bay, and the event is going to be a spectacle — a true celebration of a place Gutekunst called football’s “mecca” — regardless of whether the Packers make a pick on the first night of the draft or not.
Gutekunst said he wants more than his current number of seven picks in the draft, so trading down from No. 23 is firmly on the table.
Also, let’s say the Packers traded their first-round pick for a veteran player. Let’s say, for instance, Maxx Crosby. The team could easily turn the event into a showcase of their new Pro Bowl addition.
Note: Since hiring Gutekunst in 2018, the Packers have made at least one first-round selection every season.