Obtained via: Four-year contract worth $67 million.

If you know a free agency skeptic (someone who thinks the only way to build a true winner is to draft players smartly and develop them over time) point them to the Packers. Once known for their allergy to open market spending, this year they dove in with gusto, emphasizing offense (Josh Jacobs) and defense (McKinney). Sometimes I think about team building is as easy as paying the right price for a ball dynamo. The Packers haven’t finished higher than eighth in any of Matt LaFleur’s previous five seasons, but so far this year they’ve stayed in the NFL for five weeks with fourteen, largely fueled by McKinney’s top five picks in the league (plus one fumble). recovery). When it comes to making a strong first impression, you really can’t do better than becoming the first player in the Super Bowl era to record at least one interception in each of your first five games with a new team.

Watching McKinney soak up everything that comes his way, whether it’s a bad pass or a contested catch, it’s easy to see why coordinator Jeff Hafley has such strong feelings about him. According to Next Gen Stats, McKinney has been targeted seven times and has only one reception, good for a passer rating of 0.0 and an above-expectation completion percentage of -42.4. With the lead he’s built, McKinney has a chance to be the first Packers player to lead the NFL in draft picks since Charles Woodson (who did it twice, in 2009 and 2011) — a vintage home run asset whose success at the franchise, by the way, could serve as another data point in our imaginary debate about the merits of free agency.