Mark Murphy Is On Course for the Pro Football Hall of Fame

Mark Murphy said last week that he’ll be retiring in the summer of 2025, complying with the Packers’ team bylaws that require his retirement by that date. Mandatory retirement, by and large, is a good thing, and it’s especially good for the Packers. Changes in leadership can be delicate times, and forcing a retirement forces the team to plan to plan for post-Murphy life well in advance.

Who that successor will be is anybody’s guess, but no matter who takes over for Murphy, I think it’s important to talk about how the current Packers’ president will be viewed years from now. And I think there’s a good chance we’ll be hearing about Murphy as a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame someday.

Murphy has a strong case as a contributor given his long connection to the NFL as both a player and executive. He appeared in two Super Bowls as a player, winning one, and he won one Super Bowl as an executive with the Packers. He has overseen a period of unprecedented financial success in Green Bay, and he shepherded the Packers through not one, but now two major quarterback controversies as an executive.

He's also put the Packers in a position to make a lot of money and to be stable long-term, keeping them in good fiscal health at every turn. That’s the goal for any executive in football, even ahead of winning, though we are conditioned as fans to believe that winning is not just everything, it's the only thing.

And that's exactly what Murphy has done. Sure, it helps to have a good team on the field to make money, but he has done a lot to put the Packers in firm financial position for the future, a crucial move because the Packers, obviously, don’t have a deep-pocketed owner to give them an infusion of cash should they need it. Murphy is a big part of the financial insulation the Packers have built in case of a crisis — or just in case they need to write a big check to bring a new free agent on board.

If you want to knock him for struggles in the late Ted Thompson era, that's fine, but I'm not sure that criticism is entirely justified. Rewind the clock to 2014. I know it's not comfortable to remember that game, but the Packers were an onside kick recovery away (among other things) from heading to the Super Bowl for the second time in five years. You wouldn’t make a change after that season, no matter how you dislike Thompson.

Neither are you going to make a change after 2015, given how injuries affected that season. In 2016, the Packers were back in the NFC Championship — though more due to the otherworldly hot streak Aaron Rodgers went on to close that season than the strength of their roster, if you’re inclined to criticize Thompson.

And then in 2017 the end came — so when would you have made the change? Should Murphy have been more involved with the football side of things? Perhaps, but the model under which Thompson was working had been in place since 1992. Hiring and firing people down to the coordinator level wasn’t Murphy’s job. Are you going to deviate from that because Mike McCarthy hangs on to Dom Capers too long? I don’t think so, because that sets a bad precedent and Murphy is aware of how precedent can work long term.

In any case, the Thompson era ended in 2017. How does Murphy come out of the Thompson era? Well, he decides he needs to be more involved in football operations, and he starts that process by hiring Brian Gutekunst and rearranging the Packers’ management structure. That proven to be the correct move, and the reworked power structure has worked since.

He also fired Mike McCarthy midway through the 2018 season, which also turned out to be the correct move. He was also deeply involved in the hiring of Matt LaFleur which, too, turned out to be the correct move.

He also repeated his correct move from 2008 and helped the Packers navigate through a tough situation with their star quarterback. Sure, he may have been one of the targets of Rodgers’ frustration, but Rodgers is still in Green Bay — and won an MVP after his issues with the team were resolved.

Murphy has been involved in a string of great decisions in Green Bay. He has a Super Bowl ring as both a player and as an executive. He’s kept one of the league’s marquee franchises financially healthy and stable. History is going to look kindly on his tenure with the Packers, and he’s likely on a path to Canton and football immortality.