It’s still hard to believe that the Green Bay Packers turned Damarious Randall – a former first-round pick coming off a bounce-back season, on a cheap contract at a premium position – into nothing more than a few improved draft slots in the later rounds and a backup quarterback, regardless of how much untapped potential DeShone Kizer may or may not possess.

Really, it was the perfect ending to an organizational misstep that kept compounding into a bigger and bigger mistake.

Somehow, the Packers managed to use a first-round draft pick on a player at a position of strength and then play him out of position – something coach Mike McCarthy admitted last week – for the next three seasons, all while letting an All-Pro cornerback walk out the door and then employing a broken secondary that produced one of the worst passing defenses in football.

Randall was a safety at Arizona State. He’ll be a safety in Cleveland. He probably should have been a safety in Green Bay, but that wasn’t possible, for two reasons.

First, the Packers already had safeties Morgan Burnett (who had recently signed an extension) and Ha Ha Clinton-Dix (a first-round pick in 2014), plus Micah Hyde, who – like Randall – should have been playing more safety. He made the All-Pro team as a full-time, playmaking safety for the Buffalo Bills in 2017. There was no room for Randall to play safety, and that was perfectly obvious in 2015.

Secondly, the Packers had no other option than to play him at cornerback, especially the last two seasons. Injuries ravaged the position in 2016 and 2017. Randall had his moments as a cornerback, but he was also inconsistent and unpredictable, and he clearly wasn’t in the team’s long-term plans at the position. It was another example of the Packers trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

However, Randall was able to produce a strong, promising rookie season in 2015. So did Quinten Rollins, the team’s second-round pick. That led to former general manager Ted Thompson allowing Casey Hayward to walk in free agency, and he’s since become a two-time All-Pro cornerback for the Chargers, who freed him from full-time slot duties and gave him an opportunity to thrive on the perimeter.

The decision to let Hayward leave, no matter how defensible it was at the time, is one of Thompson’s greatest blunders. It cost the Packers wins, and potentially a shot at playing in the Super Bowl in 2016.

And it was, for the most part, pushed along by Randall playing cornerback.

The Randall situation looks like a clear example of how the “silos” in the Packers’ organizational structure wrecked havoc on the team’s performance. In hindsight, the disconnect was so obvious.

Why would the Packers take a safety in the first round, given the personnel in the secondary in 2015? Why wouldn’t the Packers have done more to bring back Hayward, knowing Randall’s best position was at safety? Why weren’t more resources spent to fortify cornerback the last two years, in an effort to give Randall more opportunities at his best position?

Once again, the Packers are in a position to look really bad.

The team didn’t realize Hayward’s ability as a perimeter cornerback and let him go. The team wasn’t able to play Hyde more at safety and let him go. Now, the team traded away a first-round pick after three years of playing him out of position. Could Randall enjoy a Hayward or Hyde-like revival in Cleveland? It’s certainly possible.

The Packers took a good football player with the 30th pick in the 2015 draft. But the mistakes made after that pick kept compounding, creating a colossal error that cost the Packers dearly over the last two years. Randall is no longer in Green Bay, but the impact of his three-year presence will be felt for several more years, as new general manager Brian Gutekunst tries to rebuild a broken secondary.