The Green Bay Packers finally ended their losing streak with a thrilling overtime victory over the Mike McCarthy-led Dallas Cowboys. In vintage fashion, Mason Crosby nailed the game-winner to send the Cowboys home.
While you couldn’t have scripted a more exciting final act, the game didn’t need to be that close. After the Packers’ defense held the Cowboys to a three-and-out, Amari Rodgers, in his own vintage fashion, fumbled the resulting punt. The Cowboys recovered the ball and shortly found the end zone. When a game starts start going well, the Amari Rodgers Experience reminds us that we can’t have good things.
Despite his recent release, the fact that Amari Rodgers was still returning punts after showing no aptitude for it in the past season and a half is representative of a bigger problem. Green Bay values players drafted early far too much, especially their own picks. The Packers will keep struggling players in roles they aren’t suited for simply due to their draft pedigree. The Packers fall victim to sunk-cost fallacy in their roster building far too often.
What is sunk-cost fallacy? Oxford Languages defines the fallacy as “the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial.”
We’re reluctant to give up on something when we’ve invested time, money, energy, or other resources. This fallacy is most commonly applied to gambling. “I spent so much money, it’s gotta pay off.”
What are draft picks if not gambles? Teams always want the players they’ve invested in most heavily to do well, which is why they’ll be given more opportunities than other players that might be better.
In 2022, Amari Rodgers is the perfect example. Not only was he a top-100 pick, but Gutekunst used a fourth-round pick to trade up for him. Rodgers has failed to find a role on offense despite multiple opportunities, and his performance on special teams is fully sabotaging the team.
In terms of pure playing ability, there was no role for Rodgers on this team. But even with the constant fumbles and muffed punts, he still had the job. At a certain point, the blame falls on the coaches.
The coaches claimed Rodgers looked good in practice, but that didn’t translate. While a change was finally be made he likely held on to the job for so long because the team needed to justify some way to keep their investment on the field. There had to have been a better answer, even if that answer isn’t currently on the roster.
Rodgers is the easiest to point to as the prime example this season, particularly this week, but he’s far from the only one.
Earlier this season, Royce Newman was a regular source of frustration thanks to his poor play and consistently being the weakest link on the offensive line. Yet it took multiple weeks to finally shake things up, and the first choice the Packers made was to go to Jake Hanson—another previous draft pick who probably shouldn’t be starting. Green Bay was afraid to throw in their promising young players like Zach Tom because they’d already invested in Newman and Hanson and wanted to justify their role on the team instead of playing their best five.
Packer Nation has recognized Darnell Savage was playing poorly at safety for a while, and that the most constructive option was to play him in the slot and give those safety snaps to Rudy Ford. It took a season-ending Eric Stokes injury for the coaches to try a different lineup in the secondary. And, while the sample size is small, the realignment worked! Rudy Ford had a breakout game while Savage looked more comfortable in the slot.
This isn’t the first time the Packers have stubbornly refused to move their players around into better roles that suit them. Regardless of the defensive coordinator, the team has a history of playing defensive backs out of position. Casey Hayward, Damarious Randall, and Micah Hyde are all notable recent examples. The team went with their initial analysis of these players and refused to deviate. Just last season, it took injuries in the secondary for Stokes to get more snaps than Kevin King.
Of course, the counterargument is that a team can’t overreact and give up on a player for a few mistakes. Davante Adams struggled as a rookie, and Packers fans famously clamored for Jeff Janis to take his snaps. Many declared Christian Watson a bust because of his health struggles and drops, and he had a beautiful breakout game on Sunday. Patience is a virtue, but the team needs to recognize when those strides aren’t being made. Adams got better every week; Amari Rodgers costs the team games.
We know Packers’ general managers traditionally love their draft picks, and Brian Gutekunst is no exception. Gutekunst highly values draft pedigree, and the coaching staff prefers to give veterans the benefit of the doubt over rookies.
But things change quickly in the modern NFL. You need to make adjustments to win or you’ll find yourselves trending the wrong way. It’s taken the Packers multiple weeks to make changes that were obvious to the rest of the world. And while the Packers shouldn’t listen to me, a confirmed idiot, they need to reevaluate their processes. Sunk-cost decisions lead to an even greater opportunity cost down the road. Green Bay must become better at dissociating from draft pedigree when evaluating their roster.
