Georgia's Christen Miller has everything the Green Bay Packers need, but one key detail may keep him off of Brian Gutekunst's radar at No. 52 overall.
An elite run defender and ascending as an interior pass-rusher, Miller checks almost every box for the nose tackle-needy Packers. And we know how much Green Bay loves to draft Georgia Bulldogs.
However, Gutekunst would have to go against a major tendency to draft him with his top choice. According to Peter Bukowski of The Leap, Miller skipped the athletic testing at the Georgia pro day. Gutekunst was there in person. It's not necessarily a deal-breaker for the Packers, but history suggests that it significantly reduces his chances of wearing green and gold.
Recent history suggests the Packers won't draft Christen Miller
As Bukowski points out, the Packers rarely use top-100 picks on prospects who don't participate in the athletic testing.
"The Packers don't have a first-round pick, which puts even more pressure on the 52nd pick," Bukowski writes. "The only top 100 pick without an athletic profile they've taken was Josh Myers, who was hurt."
It's deflating. Miller could be a game-changing addition to the Packers' rebuilding defensive line alongside Devonte Wyatt and free-agent signing Javon Hargrave. His elite 88.1 PFF run-defense grade ranked 10th among 887 interior defensive linemen last season. Truly incredible.
Miller can take on double teams, which would create room for Wyatt and Hargrave to wreak havoc up front. And we haven't even talked about Micah Parsons yet.
But the Packers, quite understandably, value athletic testing. While they likely have their own system, there's a strong correlation between high Packers draft picks and elite Relative Athletic Scores.
Over the past five years, five of the Packers' six first-round picks earned an RAS of at least 9.25 out of 10, falling into the elite category. Matthew Golden was the only first-round choice without a full RAS score, but he stole headlines at the NFL Combine in the drills he did participate in, including a 4.29-second 40-yard dash.
In the second round, Christian Watson (9.96) and Luke Musgrave (9.78) received near-perfect scores, while Jayden Reed (6.74) was the outlier and only selection without an elite RAS.
The Packers may not use RAS specifically, but they clearly have a similar system and care about athleticism early in the draft.
Miller is talented enough that they could still draft him. Some view the Georgia standout as a first-round talent, so if he's still on the board at No. 52 overall, the value could be too much to ignore. But Gutekunst's track record tells us it would be a rare exception to his typically strict rules.
Could Miller become a star along Green Bay's defensive line? Absolutely. But without athletic testing, it becomes a far greater gamble for the Packers.
And it's not a risk Gutekunst is usually willing to take.