Ted Thompson's Legacy Still Looms Large in Green Bay

The Packers’ 2019 playoff run made me think about Ted Thompson.

In a handful of ways, this year’s playoffs were a lot like those that followed the 2014 season. That year, the Packers had a first-round bye, defeated a strong but flawed team in the divisional round, then had a meltdown in the NFC Championship game. Broadly speaking, that’s what happened this year, too.

The offseason that followed Green Bay’s meltdown in Seattle could have been Thompson’s worst. After a successful season, albeit one that ended in heartbreak, Thompson responded to being denied a trip to the Super Bowl by doing...basically nothing. He added no free agents of consequence, reached for a pair of defensive backs, and injected essentially no new blood into his offense.

The consequences were far reaching and exacerbated by decisions made the next few offseasons. Fair or not, those decisions have become a large part of his legacy, Super Bowl be damned.

But it’s not the only part of his legacy, and even now Thompson’s work is making life both easier and more challenging for his successor.

Thompson’s hits are still paying dividends

A big reason Brian Gutekunst was able to rebuild the Packers so quickly was that a lot of crucial core players were already in place. That’s due, in large part, to Ted Thompson’s excellent work. 60% of the Packers’ starting offensive line this season (David Bakhtiari, Corey Linsley, and Bryan Bulaga) were drafted and re-signed by Thompson. Likewise for Davante Adams. Each of these four players has been among the best at their respective positions for years now, and they’ve done their best work while being paid comparably modest salaries among their peers. 

Thompson also added Aaron Jones, Kenny Clark, and Kevin King, each of whom played significant, and in some cases starring, roles for the Packers this year. Admittedly, your opinion on King could go any number of ways depending on how much you weight certain stats and how you view his selection in light of a certain edge defender in Pittsburgh. But King was better this year than ever at one of the defense’s most important positions. As with Thompson, you take the good with the bad.

Thompson’s misses are still weighing down the Packers

And there has been some bad. Perhaps more than even the staunchest Thompson defenders might like to admit.

Thompson’s misfires on defense are a big reason the Packers had to spend so heavily on that side of the ball last spring. It’s also why Gutekunst has had to spend all three of his first round picks so far on defense, including two in the secondary, which Thompson repeatedly tried and failed to fix. Perhaps Gutekunst would have made some of those moves anyway, but Thompson left him virtually no choice if he wanted to squeeze anything out of the tail end of the Rodgers era.

Gutekunst’s forced investment into the defense also meant a paucity of resources could be devoted to the offense, which, in turn, left the Packers short on fresh, young playmakers this season. This has been a consistent trend dating back to basically the entire back half of Thompson’s tenure. The Packers haven’t spent a first round pick on offense since Derek Sherrod in 2011 and have only taken three skill position players in the first three rounds (Adams, Ty Montgomery, and Richard Rodgers) since 2014. That’s a big reason the Packers have few high-end options on offense outside Adams and Jones.

Each of these stories individually (the legacy of Thompson’s good picks, the far-reaching consequences of his bad ones) could be a defining narrative for the Packers headed into the 2020 offseason. But it’s hard to isolate just one. Is Thompson a pariah for keeping the Packers from reaching their full potential? Is he a saint for keeping them in contention while picking from the dregs of the first round every year? It’s a little of both, and the Packers will deal with a good portion of each this year and for the foreseeable future.