Aaron Rodgers makes the 2005 draft one of the best. (Photo: Nic Antaya, USA TODAY Sports)
By Mark Eckel
When you get a Hall of Fame quarterback near the bottom of the first round it's a pretty good draft.
That's what the Green Bay Packers and Ted Thompson did in 2005, thus making that draft the best the Packers have had over the past 30 years.
Some research here at Packer Report went back and looked at every draft since 1996, and then went back and looked at 1992-96 when Ron Wolf took over the team and the turnaround began. The analysis concurred that '05 ranked the best of them all.
Not only did Thompson get Aaron Rodgers, out of Cal, with the 24th overall pick he came back and got safety Nick Collins, out of Bethune-Cookman with the 51st pick.
Collins was almost as essential to the Packers 2010 Super Bowl title as Rodgers. The second-round pick was an All-Pro three times and went to three Pro Bowls in six years before a neck injury in his seventh season ended his career.
Speaking of career-ending injuries, the Packers also took wide receiver Terrance Murphy in that draft whose career ended before it started because of a neck injury. A healthy Murphy and this draft would have even been better.
There were a few misses in that draft. However, linebacker Brady Poppinga, a fourth-round pick out of BYU, had a nice six-year career with the Packers, three of those years as a starter at left outside linebacker.
With Rodgers and Collins at the top it won out as the Packers best draft in that time span.
Here are the runners-up.
2000 — Tight end Bubba Franks, out of Miami, and tackle Chad Clifton, out of Tennessee, at the top started the draft off rather well. Franks played eight years for the Packers and went to three Pro Bowls. Clifton payed his entire 12-year career in Green Bay, was All-Pro once and also went to three Pro Bowls.
Where this draft really paid off was in the later rounds where GM Ron Wolf found Kabeer Gbaja-Biamilia, out of San Diego St., in the fifth round and tackle Mark Tauscher, out of Wisconsin, in the seventh round. KGB became one of the team's top pass rushers and Tauscher was a solid right tackle for nine of his 11 NFL seasons.
2009: This was the middle draft of three very good ones (2008-10) from GM Ted Thompson. Defensive tackle B.J. Raji, out of Boston College, was the first, first-round pick and then Thompson traded back into the first-round to take linebacker Clay Matthews, out of Southern Cal. Raji and Matthews were cornerstones of that 2010 Super Bowl defense. Another good pick in that draft was offensive lineman T.J. Lang, out of Eastern Michigan in the fourth round.
The 2009 draft edged out both 2008 (wide receiver Jordy Nelson, tight end Jermichael Finley, guard Josh Sitton, QB Matt Flynn) and 2010 (tackle Bryan Bulaga, safety Morgan Burnett, running back Ryan Starks).
None of these drafts compare to the greatest Packers draft of all time which came One Year BL (before Lombardi) in 1958. That year under head coach Ray "Scooter'' McLean and GM Verne Lewellen the team took linebacker/center Dan Currie, out of Michigan State, in the first round.
Then in rounds 2-3-4 the Packers selected running back Jim Taylor, from LSU, linebacker Ray Nitschke, from Illinois and guard Jerry Kramer, from Idaho.
That's three Hall of Famers in one draft. Go ahead and try to top that one.