What Ted Thompson's Departure as GM Means for the Packers
In a bombshell announcement, the Packers have moved on from Ted Thompson.
According to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, Thompson will not return to the Packers as general manager in 2018, instead moving to a different role within the organization.
Team president Mark Murphy will now have to hire a new general manager for the first time since 2005.
What this means for the Packers
Even though Thompson was under contract through next season, the Packers likely had a short list of candidates in mind as possible replacements. At 64, Thompson was no doubt closer to the end of his career than the beginning, and the Packers certainly had some sort of plan in place for his eventual retirement, whenever that came.
Murphy’s decision about a possible replacement likely starts with that short list of candidates, which certainly includes several in-house names.
Brian Gutekunst and Eliot Wolf, two high ranking personnel men in Green Bay, are probably near the top of Murphy’s list.
Gutekunst has been with the Packers for 19 years and has been in the running for several GM jobs in the past few seasons. Gutekunst has been the Packers’ director of player personnel for nearly two years and has a scouting background, working as the Packers’ east coast regional scout for 13 years.
Wolf is the son of legendary Packers’ general manager Ron Wolf and has also been with the team for quite some time, serving in a variety of roles for the past 14 years. He first joined the team when he was just 22 years old. Like Gutekunst, Wolf has a scouting background and cut his teeth in the football business writing scouting reports for his father.
Other internal candidates could include Russ Ball and Alonzo Highsmith. Ball is the team’s financial expert and could be seen as a “business first” general manager candidate. While the Packers have traditionally sought out a scouting expert to run their football operations, Ball has an exemplary record of contract negotiations, keeping the Packers in good financial standing even with a hard salary cap.
Highsmith, meanwhile, has been with the Packers for nearly two decades and now oversees a large portion of their scouting operations. He formerly served as an area scout and has a strong scouting background, having been hired by Ron Wolf as a scout for his first non-playing job in professional football.
What does this mean for Ted Thompson?
Thompson has long been considered a “scout’s scout,” so he’ll likely move into some sort of senior scouting role with the Packers. He has no family to speak of, having remained unmarried even into his early 60’s, and frequently spoke of a desire to remain involved in football as long as possible. The Packers are giving him such an opportunity, although the particulars are yet to be revealed.
Beyond Thompson’s official role, though, it’s hard to read this situation as anything other than a stern indictment of Thompson’s management of his roster since the end of the 2016 season. Beset by injuries, the Packers still advanced to the 2016 NFC Championship Game before being annihilated by the Atlanta Falcons.
Since then, Thompson’s personnel strategy has come into question. He mishandled negotiations with tight end Jared Cook, and his backup plan (in the form of Martellus Bennett) flamed out spectacularly.
He also drew a hard line with free agents Micah Hyde and T.J. Lang, who both went on to have success with new teams, as did Casey Hayward, who departed the team a year earlier.
Thompson also drew the ire of fans after passing on hometown draft prospect T.J. Watt in favor of trading down. Though that move is still in the evaluation phase, it didn’t win him much support at home, especially after top pick Kevin King spent much of the season injured.
Additionally, many of the Packers’ failures this year can be attributed to a lackluster season from Brett Hundley, a player for whom Thompson traded up to draft in 2015. As the hand-picked backup to Aaron Rodgers, Hundley was a spectacular failure, failing to throw a single touchdown in five home starts and generally not looking the part of an NFL quarterback.
Compounding Hundley’s failure was a further mishandling of the quarterback position, as promising backup Taysom Hill was exposed to waivers and claimed by the New Orleans Saints. Though Hill may not have saved the season, he would have at least have given the Packers another possible option.