Trey Amos in the second round was their only opportunity to find value in this class
Yesterday, we described the sort of decision-making tree that the Green Bay Packers had on draft day at the defensive tackle position and why the team didn’t end up selecting a player at that spot — perceived by fans as a position of need — until Day 3. Today, we’re going to go through the same exercise with the cornerback position.
Unlike defensive tackle, which featured plenty of players who made sense for the Packers. Cornerback is another story, either because of health, experience, size or athleticism. Like defensive tackle, though, NFL teams, despite there not being “value” on the board from a consensus board standpoint, continued to hammer at the position to fill individual teams’ needs.
Let’s get into the Packers’ draft day positions.
Day 1
To no surprise to anyone, Colorado’s Travis Hunter and Texas’ Jahdae Barron were both off of the board by the time the Packers were on the clock with their first pick of the draft. Barron was considered a second-round pick by the end of college football’s regular season, but because of the volume of injuries at the position, he was pushed up draft rankings and ultimate settled in at the 16th spot on the consensus board — despite having questions about whether or not he is going to be able to play outside cornerback at the NFL level.
The only cornerbacks who went off of the board between the Packers’ first and second picks in the draft were Michigan’s Will Johnson, Kentucky’s Maxwell Hairston and Notre Dame’s Benjamin Morrison, so let’s focus on them as potential Day 1 options the team could have taken.
Johnson has a slew of recent injury questions. He was projected to be a top-five talent coming into the year, but missed the second half of the Wolverines’ season with a turf toe injury. Because of hamstring issues, he wasn’t able to run at the combine, his pro day or his private workout at Michigan. More than anything, though, teams were concerned with the long-term health of his knee. We don’t have to pretend here: He was the 13th overall prospect in the draft per the consensus board and fell to the 47th overall pick. A lot of teams were clearly spooked about his medicals, so I hardly blame Green Bay for passing on him.
Another player who was an option here was Hairston, who was taken 30th overall and was ranked the 34th prospect in the class. Hairston has a lot in common with former Packers high draft choices, like Eric Stokes, Kevin King and Damarious Randall. He’s a great straight-line player who is more of an athlete than a cornerback, particularly when asked to tackle players. Hairston was also accused of sexual assault dating back to an incident in 2021, which Bills general manager Brandon Beane was asked about and later stated, “You can’t just take someone’s accounts and think that’s the truth.”
The final player on this list is Morrison, who received first-round hype until he had to pull out of the 2024 regular season with a hip issue. Morrison not only had surgery on his hip this offseason, but it was the second time he’s dealt with a hip problem — the first dating back to high school. As in Johnson’s situation, there were clearly teams who were worried about his medicals, leading to him going a round after his pre-injury draft projections.
Assuming the Packers cleared Johnson and Morrison medically is a stretch, considering how many teams passed on them on draft day. If you want to make the argument that the team should have drafted Hairston, just remember that Matthew Golden was graded at least a half-round better on most public draft boards than the Kentucky product — who also came with off-field baggage.
Day 2
The second round was arguably the best opportunity for the Packers to address either the cornerback or defensive tackle position in the top 100, with Trey Amos of Ole Miss still being available. Amos was ranked as the 38th overall player in the class and wasn’t taken until the 61st pick. He was the next cornerback off of the board after Morrison’s selection.
Amos surprised many with his 4.4-second 40-yard dash, as he didn’t look like a fast cornerback on film, but what was known for sure was that he had tremendous ball skills. The Packers brought in Amos on a pre-draft visit, so he must have been in consideration for the 54th overall pick, but the team went in a different direction: North Carolina State offensive lineman Anthony Belton, another pre-draft visitor.
Beyond Amos, individually, things were really shaky in the cornerback market on Day 2.
In the third round, we saw Darien Porter, Azareye’h Thomas, Shavon Revel, Justin Walley, Jacob Parrish, Nohl Williams, Caleb Ransaw, Jaylin Smith and Upton Stout come off of the board.
Porter started all of a half-season of college football, despite spending six years at Iowa State. Thomas ran a 4.58-second 40-yard dash, well below the average at the position. Revel had concerns about his ACL recovery, which is why he fell from a first-round projection to a mid-third-round pick. The Packers also brought in Revel on a visit, so they were clearly up to date on his situation.
Starting with the 80th overall pick, though, the cornerback market went completely off of the rails. Walley went 106 draft slots above his projection. Parrish, a sub-5’10” cornerback, likely wasn’t even on the Packers’ draft board at all. Williams, Ransaw, Smith and Stout, the third-round picks after Parrish, were collectively “overdrafted” by a combined 273 draft slots versus consensus, an average of over two rounds per player.
There were no top-100 projections at cornerback available for the NFL by the mid-third round, but that didn’t stop teams from taking the next guy on their board. On top of just the value question, Stout was another undersized cornerback who the Packers likely didn’t keep on their draft board at all, and Ransaw only played 15 snaps at outside cornerback over the last two years. The Jacksonville Jaguars, who took Ransaw, have already stated that they’re moving Ransaw from the nickel position to the safety position, not outside cornerback. The last thing the Packers needed, with their current roster, was another nickelback or safety.
So what were the Packers’ options? Let’s walk through them round by round.
- Round 1: Take Maxwell Hairston over Matthew Golden, who was graded a half-round better than Hairston.
- Round 2: The only clean cornerback from a size, speed, experience and health perspective that made sense here was Trey Amos, who I probably would have taken in this scenario. We’ll have to monitor how the Amos versus Anthony Belton debate pans out over the next couple of years.
- Round 3: With teams regularly drafting projected fifth-round players in the third round, the board was absolutely nuked at this point. The league irrationally took cornerbacks, one after another, in the third, allowing talent at other positions to fall into Day 3.
So, while we were able to paint a picture of why a defensive tackle didn’t make sense for any of the Packers’ top-100 selections, cornerback has one exception: Amos could have been their second-round pick. I’m not sure why he fell 23 spots below his draft day projection, as off-field or medical concerns weren’t reported on him during the draft cycle, but the Packers were very familiar with him as a draftable option, as they spent time with both him and Belton as pre-draft visitors.
Beyond Amos, though, I don’t think Green Bay had many realistic options at cornerback. There weren’t many clean cornerback prospects in this draft, and healthy cornerbacks across the board were overdrafted. Beyond Johnson, Morrison and Revel, the players with medical concerns, the nine cornerbacks taken on Day 2 were overdrafted a collective 339 draft slots versus their consensus board rankings, more than a round on average. The only “value picks” were Amos and Thomas, the latter who ran a 4.58-second 40-yard dash.
You can’t stop teams from overdrafting players you’d take later in the draft. The Packers were more than content to let other teams reach for cornerbacks who no one projected going on Day 2 of the draft, rather than forcing a pick at the position. The argument on spending the second-round pick on Amos is valid to me, but that was their only meaningful opportunity to actually turn in a card at the position in the first four or five rounds of the draft.
Here’s a fun hypothetical, though: How high would have Carrington Valentine, the projected starting outside cornerback opposite of Keisean Nixon if the team actually does move on from Jaire Alexander, gone in class? Personally, I think he would have ranked right behind Amos and gone in the late second or early third round before the cornerback cliff hit. Remember, Valentine is only 23 years old, only two months older than first-round pick Jahdae Barron, has 19 NFL starts to his name and isn’t limited athletically. Keep that in mind coming out of this cornerback class.