Top 10 Draft Busts Since 1980 - Mike Sherman's 2004 Draft

Each was a sin… And a couple were major sins!

Carroll, for one, and, IMO, Sander (who was drafted in order to kick Josh Bidwell down the road).

I still vouch that Sherman was doomed the minute he took the GM job.
First, its a LOT of work for anyone and most Coach/GMs fail out…a few can make it work but its a ridiculous amount of pressure to be both the guy making all the calls on players and being the one expected to coach them up.
Second, we let Holmgren go cause he wanted to do both roles and then we give it to a mediocre coach like Sherman a year or two later…THAT was also almost criminal!
Third, I think Sherman was an okay coach but was such a terrible GM that he never really stood a chance. He destroyed his ability to have a chance at winning it all by poor drafting and even poorer cap management.

Yo uare right thought Stroh, it was a pathetic draft. The fact that he got lucky with a late pick in Williams doesn’t discount the fact that he ignored a proven system to take chances on players that didn’t fit. When they failed, the team had no choice but to move on. He should have stuck with the coaching gig and who knows how long he would have been around.

He probably should have left the guys individual. It would have pushed more of TT’s guys off the list too then. This was a really bad draft and honestly, it should be occupying two spots instead of one on the list.

Unless I missed someone, the only good player the Packers got in that draft was Chris Jacke in the 5th or 6th round. And the draft was longer back then!

Oh we’re more than Happy, we’re exstatic! LOL

Like Brandon mentioned tho, it was the McKenzie debacle that did more to get Sherman fired… And I thought about mentioning the upside in my previous post, but it was already longer than I wanted…

But you can also make the same argument for why we should be happy that we drafted the guy who will obviously be #1 on this list, Tony Mandarich. If we’d drafted Barry Sanders instead, he would’ve lifted us into mediocrity which would’ve saved Lindy Infante’s job for another 5 years. That is exactly what happened in Detroit with Wayne Fontes. So, with Barry hiding all the holes in the roster, it takes longer for Tom Braatz’s and Infante’s incompetence to reveal itself, which means we don’t fire them in time to hire Ron Wolf, so he never hires Holmgren or trades for Favre, which means Reggie White never signs with us, which means… and so on and so forth.

So, in the end, drafting Tony Mandarich was the first, key step in winning the Super Bowl for the Green Bay Packers.

haha new way to look at it. I guess I need to thank Sherman for screwing things up so badly that we had to look elsewhere!

As soon as I read that line in the post, I knew somebody was going to find an example. I even thought of making one up to beat people to the punch. “Actually, in point of fact, the New York TItans traded up in 1938 to take Tits McGee in the 18th round.”

yeah…you are right. I remember looking up the size of the corners and shaking my head knowing it was going to end badly. I really really hoped I was wrong.

“ALL-PRO fullback Vonta Leach, let go after the 2005 season. HE is much better than anyone we have on the roster, and if there is a dispute their, why was Leach All Pro and not one of our guys.”
If he was so good, why was he let go?

By the way…it ignored the Free Agent rookies because it was talking about the DRAFT class of 2004, not the undrafted class of 2004.

It also neglected to mention the veteran free agents signed that year for the same reason (none of them were drafted that year).

Personally, I think ’04 draft was a cop out; should have just said BJ Sander & been done with it.