GREEN BAY, Wis. -- The 1981 NFL draft was five picks old, and the Green Bay Packers were about to make a colossal mistake. And Lloyd Eaton knew it.

Of course, this was during an era when disappointments were frequent and victories were rare for the downtrodden franchise. Brett Favre was a mischievous 11-year-old running around Kiln, Mississippi. Aaron Rodgers hadn't been born yet, and two men who'd played quarterback for the legendary Vince Lombardi -- Packers head coach Bart Starr and assistant coach Zeke Bratkowski -- were at the front of the room.

And with the sixth pick, they wanted their quarterback: The University of California's Rich Campbell.

"Zeke and Bart had both gone to Rich's workout and come back really liking him," said retired Packers president/CEO Bob Harlan, who at the time was an assistant to the team president. "So I'm sitting at the back of the room with Lloyd, and Bart makes the pick. And Lloyd, who hasn't said anything to me all day, leans over to me and says, 'That's a bad pick.'

"I say, 'What do you mean, that's a bad pick?' He says, 'That's a bad pick.' I can't believe what I'm hearing. I said, 'Why don't you say something?' And he just shakes his head and says, 'They won't listen to me.'

"So we took him, and you know the rest."

Indeed, Campbell and his unorthodox throwing motion went on to spend four forgettable seasons in Green Bay, playing in just seven games -- starting zero -- while backing up Lynn Dickey, David Whitehurst and Randy Wright. The player Eaton had scouted and liked, USC defensive back Ronnie Lott, went two picks later to the San Francisco 49ers and enjoyed a Pro Football Hall of Fame career.

The Packers, meanwhile, would struggle for another decade before general managers Ron Wolf and Ted Thompson would get the franchise the back-to-back Hall of Fame-caliber quarterbacks who delivered Super Bowl titles: Wolf acquiring Favre in a 1992 trade with Atlanta, and Thompson picking Rodgers with the 24th pick in the 2005 draft.

Wolf would also alter the way the Packers conducted business in the draft room, an approach that his protégé, Thompson, still follows to this day. The biggest difference: valuing the input of area scouts, whom Thompson says mean "everything" to the draft process.

"I'd been in the room watching the draft since 1971. It's a totally different draft room with those men in charge," said Harlan, who served as the team's president from 1989 through 2008 and was in the draft room when Starr ignored Midwest scout Red Cochran's pleas to take a quarterback from Notre Dame -- Joe Montana -- in 1979, perhaps setting up the Campbell fiasco two years later.

"I watched the way Ron Wolf and Ted Thompson conduct the draft, and they're going to make the final say, obviously. But they listen to a lot of people. I always admired that about them. Even when their minds were set on somebody, they always listened to everybody."