Judging Ted's moves...

And no, not his dance moves....


But in all seriousness, I have been reading a lot of articles saying Ted should trade down this year.  At first, I was on board with the idea.  Then I started to really think about it and wanted some more concrete reasoning behind the idea. So, I went back and looked at all of Ted's previous drafts.  


I tried to keep the criteria as general as possible.  I looked at only a few things: Round player was drafted in, if they are currently a starter on any team, if they are a Pro-Bowler, if they are still with the Packers, and if they are still on any roster in the NFL.


I'll skip the individual classes and just post the totals from 2005 - 2009:

Basically, Ted done a pretty good job drafting NFL-caliber players and a pretty good job retaining those players.  He has also done fairly well finding starters in the first two rounds. In fact, those starters have a good chance of becoming Pro-Bowl caliber players.  If you look at the first two rounds, just over half of the starters are drafted there. If you incorporate the third round, almost 75% of Ted's starters are from rounds 1-3.  The other thing about this is that players that are drafted in rounds 1 and 2 are very likely to remain with and contribute to the team.  Ted does a much better job grabbing good players in the 1st round per quantity of players drafted than even in the 2nd. The 3rd is tough due to the small sample size. 


Another thing to note here (and this is seen more from looking at the individual classes), is when Ted trades back, he's managed to add good depth to the roster.  However, when he has retained his first round pick or traded up into the first again, he has done a good job of getting starting caliber players.


Ted has at least one starter per class. In 2007 and 2008 Ted traded back heavily and only produced 3 current starters, one being Mason Crosby.  Last year, when trading up, he produced 3 starters.


So what is the bigger need for the Pack this year? Starters or depth? The age old debate of quantity vs quality. This is a very important year as the Pack tries to make the ultimate "Lambeau Leap".


Also, I'd be more than happy to email anyone the .xls document with my findings if you want it.