A guy in my fantasy football league loves to draft Green Bay Packers. I don’t think it would be a stretch to say he’s drafted Randal Cobb more times than Randal Cobb has drafted himself. And honestly, it’s not a horrible way to experience fantasy.

Make no mistake; it is not a winning formula. In the past decade, he’s finished in the top three positions four times and in the bottom three a total of five times, so we’ll call it feast-or-famine at best. But he gets to cheer for the same players in pretend football as he does in real football, and there has to be something cathartic about that.

As another fantasy draft approaches, I got to thinking; if you put together an all-decade Packers’ fantasy team, what would it look like? Would there be any surprises? Would I even want to play a defense or just leave the slot open? Who the hell is the tight end?

Thanks to records provided by FantasyPros.com, we can answer these questions and more, compiling a team of Packers from the last decade that would make for a solid fantasy squad.

The rules are as follows:

• Standard scoring. (I’m a fan of half-point PPR, but FantasyPros didn’t start recording for half-point until 2015. Our first year on record is 2013, so in the interest of consistency, we’ll stick with standard because full-point PPR does weird things like make Jarvis Landry a fantasy football god.)
• We’re looking to build a “normal” team comprising these positions:
  • (1) QB
  • (2) RBs
  • (2) WRs
  • (1) TE
  • (1) D/ST
  • (1) K
  • (2) Flex (can be WR, RB, or TE)
• No duplicating players. Everyone wants twin Davante Adams and Aaron Joneses, but that’s physically impossible and, therefore, a no-go.
• Finally, every year needs to be represented. That’s ten years and ten slots to fill, so no duplicate years are allowed.

Now let’s crack a beer, wipe the wing sauce off our fingers, and get to work…

Round 1: Conventional wisdom is to go for a running back or, if you’re further down the board, a wide receiver. That said, there’s nothing conventional about this game, so we’re breaking the mold and grabbing the man formerly known as 12.

It’s hardly a surprise that Aaron Rodgers has been the Packers’ top-performing quarterback every year since 2013. Brett Hundley made a valiant(?) push for the crown in 2017 after Anthony Barr gifted Vikings’ fans their lone Super Bowl victory by breaking Rodgers’ collarbone in Week 6. Still, despite appearing in only six complete games, Rodgers managed to edge out his backup by six points on the season. (I’m sure the 6-6-6 there is merely a coincidence.)

We’re not drafting an injured star, though, we’re looking for points, and 12 racked them up in 2016, scoring 380 en route to being the season’s best fantasy quarterback.

Surprisingly, 2016 wasn’t actually his most productive year as Rodgers tacked seven more on to that total in 2020, finishing third behind the legs of Josh Allen and Kyler. (The league was noticeably less mobile back in ’16 with Matt Ryan, Drew Breese, Andrew Luck, and Kirk Cousins rounding out the Top 5.)

To keep things clean, we’ll use the chart below to keep track of the years and players selected.

Round 2: Okay, now we can get a running back, and it’s pretty clear who the pick is; Aaron Jones.

He’s been Green Bay’s top-producing back since 2018, and his 2019 season was the best on the books, with a total of 265.8 points. That was good for third at the position behind Derek Henry and Christian McCaffery, who put up a mind-boggling 90-more points than Jones. Still, we’re happy to take that year’s number three as our number one.

Round 3: Davante Adams circa 2020. He led all wideouts in fantasy points and brings 243.4 to the team. Total no-brainer. Welcome back, ‘Tae, we missed you.

Round 4: You know how it is once someone takes the first receiver, there’s always a run on them which is why we’re going to snag 2014 Jory Nelson.

Saying the Green Bay offense was good in 2014 is like saying water’s wet or that having a dome on your stadium is the coward’s way out. Rodgers paced all fantasy QBs, Eddie Lacy was mowing down defensive fronts, and Jordy Nelson and Randal Cobb were both top-ten producers.

Nelson racked up 229.9 points, tying for second in the league with the late Demariyus Thomas. (Cobb finished in sixth.)

Round 5: We already mentioned him, so let’s call his number: Eddie Lacy. In 2013, Lacy was a rookie and the sixth-best fantasy back in the league. The names before him? Knowshon Moreno, Marshawn Lynch, Matt Forte, LeSean McCoy and Mr. Fantasy himself, Jamaal Charles.

Round 6: To say we’ve been avoiding tight end is an understatement. As much as the position has felt like a black hole in real life, it has been twice that in fantasy.

Robert Tonyan had a breakout year in 2020 as the third-best tight end in the league. Unfortunately, 2020 belongs to Davante Adams, so Bobby is not going to make the cut.

Instead, we turn to the only other top-ten tight end performance of the last decade, one spurned on by a play that has its own surprisingly beefy Wikipedia page, the 2015 season of Richard Rodgers.

It turns out catching a 60-yard touchdown is good for the fantasy stats and more than good enough to land a spot on our roster.

(If you’re a true masochist, the rest of the decade is bleak; Jimmy Graham represents the next best stat line.)

Round 7: We are now down to our two flex spots. Despite the glowing review of tight ends above, we’re going to stick with running back and wide receiver here.

First off the shelf is the happiest back in all the land, Jamaal Williams.

The year was 2017; Rodgers was hurt and Aaron Jones was a rookie. The previous year’s rushing leader, Christine Michael (yeah, remember that experiment?) was no longer with the team, so Williams served as the primary back. He put up a modest 117.8 points, suitable for 29th overall among backs.

Let’s be honest, Round 7 is for a locker room guy as much as anything, so this feels right.

Round 8: The years are flying past, and we only have a few left. Jones and Adams were the best options at their respective positions in both 2018 and 2021, and your tight end options are Jimmy Graham and Josiah Degura, respectively, so we’re going to skip those years for now.

It’s time for a youth movement as last year’s rookie breakout star makes the roster. In the face of a rollercoaster season, Christian Watson still managed to put up 123.1 points, good for 25th in the league. If this is a dynasty league, he’s the clear choice to be tagged as the keeper.

Round 9: Kicker, much like quarterback, isn’t exactly a surprise in this exercise. It’s less a question of who you’re taking and more a question of how grey Mason Crosby’s hair is in his team picture.      

We’re going with 2018 Crosby. He scored 145 points, good for sixth in the league, which is also his best finish in our timeframe. As Bob Ross would say, there are no mistakes, just happy accidents.

Round 10: Uhgg fine, we’ll pick a defense.          

While the putrid tight end crop managed two top-tens in a decade, the defense only did it once, and that was in 2014.

I know defensive stats are unpredictable year-to-year, and fantasy football relies heavily on turnovers and defensive touchdowns for success. Still, a defense headlined by the likes of Julius Peppers, Clay Matthews, Morgan Burnette, Tramon Williams, and Sam Shields should have been better, right? (Not to mention Casey Hayward, Micah Hyde, and a pretty darn good rookie Ha Ha Clinton-Dix.)

I digress; they are our defense, and like your third kid that you didn’t actually plan for, we shall love them.

There it is, the Green Bay Packers All-Decade Fantasy Football Team. Here’s to hoping that tight end situation gets better the next time we do this…