2009 NFL Draft one year later: Green Bay Packers

This is how the draft is supposed to work. Use your first pick to take a player at a position of need, and then make a strong move to move up and get a player in the bottom half of the first round. Six of their 2009 draft picks played in at least nine games. It looks like they netted at least three starters, and quite possible a fourth in the 7th round. This draft looks just as good as it did one year ago , and if Brad Jones can take over the OLB spot for teh departed Aaron Kampman it looks even better.

A quick look at the 2009 Green Bay Packers draft class:

Round One (9)- BJ Raji DT Round One (26)- Clay Matthews LB Round Four (109)- TJ Lang OT Round Five (145)- Quinn Johnson FB Round Five (162)- Jamon Meredith OT Round Six (182)- Jarius Wynn DE Round Six (187)- Brandon Underwood CB Round Seven (218)- Brad Jones OLB

How good was this draft? Well Matthews stepped n and started nearly from day one. Raji was added to a rotation of DT, TJ Lang played in every game. Johnson played in nine games, Meredith was cut in training camp but not every pick can work out, Wynn played in 11 games, Underwood played in 11 games, and we talked about Jones already. In a word awesome.

They traded away their second and third round picks to get a legit started for their LB corps. This was important since the Packers moved from a 4-3 defense to a 34 defense before the start of the 2009 season. Then they found a contributor in every round, and almost with every pick. When you draft that well, we can overlook the one that did not work out.