We all wondered what the title senior advisor to football operations meant. We knew it meant Ted Thompson was no longer the Green Bay Packers’ general manager. We also knew, although no one would say it, it was a demotion.
Well, now we know what it means. It means Ted Thompson is just a scout.
While Packers’ general manager Brian Gutekunst — and his entire personnel department — were in Alabama for the Senior Bowl this past week, Thompson was nowhere to be found.
We now know where he was. He’s been watching tape and took a scouting trip to Dallas. Everyone says this is what Thompson is best at — scouting players and identifying talent. He obviously wasn’t very good at some of the aspects that come with being a general manager, so perhaps this is a blessing in disguise.
“He’s one of the best evaluators that has ever done this,” Gutekunst said. “So he’s going to be part of our meetings, he’s going to be part of our evaluation, he’ll be a pretty big deal. Hopefully it will free him up to watch more tape. He is exceptional at that part of it.”
Gutekenst will obviously rely on Thompson during the draft.
“I think he’ll have a big role,” Gutekunst said. “With his experience and doing this for as long as he’s done it at a high level, I’m going to lean on him tremendously.”
If Thompson is heavily involved in the draft, it makes plenty of sense and not just because this is Gutekunst’s first draft in charge. The Packers also lost senior personnel executive Alonzo Highsmith and directory of football operations Eliot Wolf to the Cleveland Browns.
That’s a lot of personnel evaluation experience out the door.
Gutekunst has decided not to make hires to replace those losses until after the draft. Instead, he is relying on director of pro personnel John Wojciechowski and director of college scouting Jon-Eric Sullivan. Gutekunst and Sullivan were inseparable in Alabama.
Ultimately, you should be excited for a fresh perspective and a fresh approach this offseason. We sure as hell are.
7 Comments
Fresh perspective? I don’t follow. I mean, BG is ultimately making roster decisions but it seems TT still is going to have a lot of influence. Unless BG is just paying him lip service
My thought exactly, isn’t it the same players involved, minus Wolf and Highsmith.
That’s what concerns me the most. As i have said previously, the disease is still in the building. Time will ultimately be the final judge. But if i have cancer, and instead of removing it, they just reassign it to other body parts, i’m going to believe i still have a problem.
Murphy was forced ( most likely by the Executive Committee) to actually do his 1st job concerning football operations in 9 years. I believe that 100%. Yet….when straddled with that responsibility, Murphy looked out of place, in over his head, and generally weak, not to mention dishonest and evasive..
“Reassigning” Ted was the equivalent of the 70, 80’s, taking care of the good ole boy’s club.
I’m starting to think that Murphy maybe just as big, or even a bigger problem than Ted was. The lack of accountability started at the top with Murphy, he set that pace, and it flowed downhill.
Now, through in house reassignments, and one coordinator change, everyone is puffing out their chest, talking tough and demanding changes and accountability and better communication. What the fuck have they been doing the last 4-7 years? Doing fucking nothing.
But now all of a sudden……they care.
Whatever.
I just wish TT would go away. But you know the saying, wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first. I have some hope with BG, but that is mostly because I don’t have a choice. I hope I am dead wrong, but I can’t help but think they fucked up bad by not hiring Schneider.
Sure makes sense to prop the cadaver up in the draft room since he’s so good at evaluating talent. Maybe he’ll uncover a DL we convert to an edge rusher in the second round after we move out of the first and get a bunch of picks he’ll help fuck up. Then we can take another pile of shit nobody’s ever heard of. Pretty much like Teddy’s done since day one! I’ll believe this circus will feature a new ringleader with new strategies when I see it. Sounding more and more like the same old shit. The white rat’s supposed to be back in his double wide listening to Johnny Mathis LP’s.
In the recent years, the NFL website would talk about players that are lighting it up at their positions, sometimes names that I hadn’t heard before. And I would ask where the eff did those guys appear from? The answer was often “they drafted them, plain and simple”. So in theory it should be possible to draft something better than “OK-guys at best”. But with Ted we were stockpiling picks that would go nowhere or at most be average. That, unless you have NE’s coaching staff, equates to a very brief playoff run (and that’s only if we have Rodgers playing at the top of his game, if not, forget about playoffs).
Needless to say, we didn’t have NE’s OC or DC.
Contuinuig the discussion regarding Ted and his glorious talent evaluation: after having a series of so-so drafts, we are then forced to overpay for good-but-not-great talent as if they were prime players. Adams, Linsley come to mind recently. Sam Shields got a heap of cash because we had no depth behind him (I don’t blame the concussion incidents as poor evaluation, that part was bad luck). Players can stretch our budget if they know that even when they are not precisely earth-shatterers, we have even worse options waiting in the wings. And that leads to overblown and underperforming contracts, and a stretched cap situation even when we shouldn’t, as a draft-and-develop team.