Ron Wolf will always be known as the brains behind the rebuild of the greatest franchise in professional football, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t make mistakes from time to time. For instance he didn’t re-sign Bryce Paup, he hired Ray Rhodes over Andy Reid but I think his biggest blunder was drafting Bubba Franks over Tom Brady in the 2000 draft.
Bubba’s Stats vs Brady’s Stats
There’s no doubt that Bubba was a fine player for many years and even made three pro bowls but this pales in comparison to the 15 Pro Bowls for which Brady has been selected. Tom Brady has 649 touchdown passes which is 648 more than Bubba Franks has, although Franks does have a better career completion percentage (100%), passer rating (158.3), and yards per attempt (31) while also throwing 0 interceptions compared to Brady’s 212. Still, I think that Brady was the better player.
2000 Draft Grade and Selections
Overall, I think Wolf’s draft grade for 2000 was about a B+. In addition to Franks, some of his other draft picks include Chad Clifton, Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila, and Mark Tauscher. Wolf was in a tough position because of Mark Chmura’s “age is just a number” philosophy to life which made the Packer seek out a tight end. I know some people would say that it would be crazy to draft Tom Brady because the Packers already had 3 time MVP Brett Favre at Quarterback and he was only 30 years old at the time but how do you pass up on the greatest quarterback of all time? Even if they don’t select Brady in the first round, they could have taken him with pick 74 in the third round but instead they chose Steve Warren, a DT out of Nebraska, who ended up with just 19 tackles and one sack. This way you have the greatest quarterback of all time backing up the gunslinger. Even if he never plays a down for the Packers, we at least wouldn’t have had to live through the agony of seeing the Patriots in almost every AFC title game or Super Bowl every year for almost 20 years.
Re-draft and What Might Have Been
I don’t know why Tom Brady wasn’t drafted higher but I think if there was a redraft that Brady probably goes number one overall so it hurts that the Packers could have selected him many times. If we had a do over and the Packers drafted Tom Brady, Mike Sherman would be thought of as a genius to this day instead of Bill Belichick and the Packers would have won no less than 9 Super Bowls during this time.