Backup quarterback Brett Hundley had one good preseason (pre-season), played 0 meaningful regular season snaps, then was hurt for most of his second preseason.
Naturally, fans think he’s a hot commodity and articles are popping up all over wondering if we should trade him before he “gets away” in free agency.
Now, I like Hundley and think he’s a valuable backup, but I’m not ready to say teams should be salivating over him. All we can really go off of is how he looked in meaningless games where starters were trying (and unfortunately, failing) to not get hurt.
The game has changed too much since the days of Matt Hasselbeck, Mark Brunell, and Aaron Brooks to keep listing Green Bay as a quarterback factory. Matt Flynn is the only guy to leave in the last decade, and his only success came when he returned to Green Bay to hand off to Eddie Lacy and salvage a .500 record.
With Hundley having such a small sample, even a really good small sample, and that small sample coming only in the preseason, it’s hard to get too excited. The league is littered with guys like Derek Anderson and Nick Foles, who made noise in the regular season for a year and then flamed out into nothing. It’s hard to judge quarterback and doing so based only on meaningless PT is almost impossible.
If some team were to make a big push for Hundley when he goes free agent, it would probably mean a 3rd round pick for the Packers, which is the highest comp available. OverTheCap.com currently predicts the 3rd round threshold to be around $9.5M per year. That’s 30 year-old guard money, so it stands to reason that a young starting QB prospect (if that’s in fact what Hundley is) would get that. I’m sure some team is willing to give him two-thirds of what Mike Glennon is getting.
So, if we think Hundley is worth anything, we would assume we’d get a 3rd rounder after using him as a backup for a couple more seasons.
That’s it – there’s your mark.
If you can get more than that, you take it. If you can’t, you leave it.
Sure, you can let teams get in a bidding war, but we don’t really need to gnash our teeth over the potential value and wonder about what magnificent scenarios could play out.
We all miss football, but we don’t need any more Hundley trade articles until someone is actually interested in trading for him.
The end.