Packers past offseason success shows good things can be worth waiting for

Making a big splash early can be fun, but the Packers have a good record of waiting for the right deal to come their way.

It sure doesn’t look like the Seattle Seahawks are in a hurry to trade D.K. Metcalf.

Beat-by-beat reporting on the situation reveals — so far at least — a slow-developing market for Seattle’s extra-large wide receiver, and with no cap crunch pushing the Seahawks to get a deal done so they can spend in next week’s free agent bonanza, this thing could drag on for a while. Heck, it may never resolve in a way that involves the Packers acquiring a star player in a trade rather than sending one out of town for once. Who knows? Maybe Metcalf is back in Seattle this year, or off to some other team willing to cough up the bounty of picks the Seahawks seem to want.

Whatever ends up happening, Packers fans should know better than most that patience is a virtue when it comes to offseason success. Just look to history, both recent and not-so-recent, to see what waiting can bring you.

In 2023, Aaron Rodgers announced on March 15 that he intended to play for the New York Jets that season, but Brian Gutekunst held on until April 26 before shipping him to New York, extracting a good deal from the Jets in the process.

Just two years prior, the Packers were still shopping for talent in mid-summer and found quite a free agent hit when De’Vondre Campbell signed on June 9. He was such a late addition that he was barely a factor early in training camp before ascending to the top linebacker job and playing at an All-Pro level that season. Sure, it didn’t work out for the Packers and Campbell (or the 49ers and Campbell, to be honest) after that one magical year, but he was still a signing worth waiting for.

Back in 2016, the Packers had a visit with free agent tight end Jared Cook on March 15, but didn’t come to terms with their eventually playoff hero until almost two weeks later. They finally inked a one-year deal on March 28. (Although maybe they should have taken a little while longer and hammered out a two-year contract, as the team initially wanted. Theoretically they could have then avoided the whole Martellus Bennett debacle.)

And finally, let’s go all the way back to 2006, when Charles Woodson signed so late in free agency that he was practically a footnote to two other big storylines on the front page of the Green Bay Press-Gazette the day the news broke. He signed April 26, 2006, and the sports page the next day featured a single column on the news, focusing instead on Brett Favre’s return to the Packers that season and the upcoming NFL Draft, where the Packers were rumored to be interested in taking future talkshow participant and moderately successful linebacker A.J. Hawk with the fifth overall pick.

The point is, good things can come to those who wait, and if the Packers think Metcalf can be the next big thing in Green Bay, they should be willing to wait out the Seahawks if that’s what it’s going to take.