5 draft mistakes that continue to haunt Packers in 2024

5. TE Jace Sternberger

There was seemingly a curse on Green Bay Packers third-round draft selections for a stretch of time, and Jace Sternberger may have been the biggest disappointment of them all.

What Sternberger has in common with someone like Amari Rodgers, for instance, is being somewhat of a one-year wonder in college. Sternberger had an impressive 2018 season at Texas A&M, but did virtually nothing before that and didn't test very well in the pre-draft process.

But the Packers bought into his 2018 tape as a member of the Aggies' program where he caught 48 passes for 832 yards and 10 touchdowns. He would only end up playing 18 games in Green Bay and caught just 12 passes.

What makes this pick even worse for the Packers? Terry McLaurin went just one pick later to Washington. Yikes.

Luckily for the Packers, they did really well in the first two rounds of this draft, landing Rashan Gary and Elgton Jenkins, two franchise cornerstones. But the Sternberger selection loomed large for quite some time as the team had to sort of pick up the pieces over the next handful of years, and frankly only just rectified the situation at the TE position with the selections of Luke Musgrave and Tucker Kraft in 2023.

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