History Lessons...

Bruce

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FOR WHAT ITS WORTH, HERE IS SOMETHING I WROTE FOR PACKERCHATTERS

For all of those who want to applaud Ted Thompson and send accolades his way with encouragement to blow up the way things are and to start over completely, they may be wise to look a little deeper into history first.

Yes, Harlan had the wisdom to bring in Wolf, get out of the way and let him go to work – work that produced a NFL Championship and a very questionable 2nd half of play calling away from a 2nd. Fans should always be grateful for that – but should not forget that it was not the first time it was tried.

Remember Forrest Gregg was brought in and given Carte Blanc to do the same. He cleared house and began building a franchise that he thought would take the team to the Promised Land – I probably don’t need to remind most of you how that turned out.

Some will protest with declarations that, “Ted Thompson is no Forrest Gregg.â€
 

JbShell

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I agree Bruce in my summation TT does get an Incomplete and has not shown me a willingness to make this team better other than the Draft. Now some will say well what could he do there was not the cap space. Ok fair enough Lets see what he does with space. But from what I hear in circles he is a fiscal conservative. Just look at what happened in seattle now that he is gone. A dominant team not afraid to throw out a little coin. And for those who think Wolf was very conservative he was willing to spend to make the team better see Favre Reggie White Kieth Jackson so on and so forth Wolf did well in FA so so in drafts. TT needs to make an equal appraoch to ensure 3-13 does not happen next year if it does he will be in he unemployment line just as Sherman will
 

yooperfan

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Man o man this whole thread is ridiculous.
As I stated earlier, who cares who hired him , he is here and the powers that be should do whatever they have to do to keep him.
It' a good thing this forum wasn't around during the 70's and 80's, some of you people would be hunting each other down and slapping leather.
Chill out!
 

CaliforniaCheez

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I don't consider it slash and burn to offer a compromise to Sharper, give Hunt a fair chance (which Hunt blew). Getting Thomas in trade for Chris Johnson rather than cutting him and was salvaging anything out of Morely were good trades.

The 05 cap was very tight and Wahle's contract should have been revised in 04. He only had one month and very little to offer Wahle. Allowing Rivera to leave was a good business decision.

Who was dumped?

7 million for Sharper? multimillion Hunt? Chris Johnson of perpetual injury? The never seen Morely? James Lee? Leigh Torrence? Thurman?
The cutting of Wahle is the only example for a slash and burn approach.

I believe Thompson came into a rapidly deteriorating situation and did well with a small amount of funds to work with. Getting Little, Freeman, Thompson and O'Dwyer for veteran minimum price was good. Gado and Donald Lee were free as was Herron.

I see no starting over.

Now this off season Green, Davenport, Hendderson, Nall, Barry, Diggs, Longwell and Sander may not return. It is up to Ted and the agents.

He isn't Ceasar but he isn't going to trade 2 picks for True Luck, or use 2 picks on, James Lee, BJ Sander, Kenny Peterson, Chris Johnson.

He has earned some trust by not having a big screw up to date and being patient and disciplined on draft day. One thing he does understand is that 50% of your draft picks work out and half do not. It is best to make lots of picks. It is too early to saw he made good or bad picks in 05.

Ted Thompson is better the the old GM. He deserves some time to make up for the drafts of 2001-2004.
 
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Bruce

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I have clearly stated that Thompson deserves an incomplete grade, but when a team goes to battle without an offensive line and downgrades its linebackers it is not awe inspiring -- especially when the results look like this season.

Also could we please dispense with this myth that letting an all pro LG go was such a good move – take a look at the numbers.

Mike Wahle's cap number for the Carolina Panthers in 2005 was 3 million. 1 million in base salary and about 2 milionl from pro-rated signing bonus.

3 million on the 2005 cap.

For Green Bay that could have been even lower because it would be an extension. Right now, we have a dead money charge of 1.25 million because we cut Mike Wahle. That wouldn't be the case in an extension.

So take away the 1.25 dead money and we have a 1.75 millon on the 2005 cap cost for Wahle – who clearly stated he would have loved to have stayed in GB.

Wahle's base salary is 1 million for Carolina. If we really wanted to really push things, we could have made that the minimum instead $550,000. Knowing we had a ton of space in 2006, we could have pushed that back a bit.

So in this scenerio we are down to 1.2 million on the cap. Now look at what, Adrian Klemm, Mike Wahle's replacement cost us -- 1 million hit on the 2005 cap.


So cap wise. The difference between keeping Mike Wahle and not keeping Mike Wahle in 2005... could have been done for as little as about 200k difference. Even if we didn't want to push that money into 2006 when we were slated to have so much more room it could have been done for as little as $750,000. Hell make it 1 million and it would be a steal compared to where we are now -- we'd be a hell of a better team right now with an all pro left guard instead of a guy sitting on the bench with fading confidence.

Add to that Joe Andruzzi was available. He has the Super Bowl rings to show for his talent, is currently starting and he loves Green Bay. Hell, the guy still goes fishing with the Green Bay O-Linemen – tell me he would not have been a better choice.

Beyond that we never even tried to take a look at other quality OG FA’s like Cosey Coleman, Floyd Womack, Keydrick Vincent, Rick DeMulling

Instead he put all of his eggs in the Adrian Klemm basket. We also sent a late 2nd day draft pick who many believed would not be drafted out to be eaten by the wolves -- yeah that is doing wonders for the guys confidence.

I wanted to believe it would work and I could see the potential in the guy, but it was a big risk to bring in a guy who had a long injury history and did not even play the position as you only solution after letting two great guards move on to other teams.



I said it in the beginning of this thread and I will repeat it one more time – I have not given up on Ted Thompson. I want to believe Ted has a plan and the ability to turn things around. He deserves an incomplete grade as we watch what transpires.

But before I go along with sending accolades his way we need to look at this point: he took us into the season shooting blanks at both the Guard positions and did nothing but downgrade our LB player. He has COMPLETE CONTROL over roster decisions and the team fell from division champs at 10 – 6 to 3 – 11 (so far). He showed no capacity to be able to find solutions as the season progressed -- like Sherman did when he went out and got Grady Jackson to plug the leaky ****. Hardly the kind of thing that makes me want to put a crown on his head.


CaliforniaCheez said:
I don't consider it slash and burn to offer a compromise to Sharper, give Hunt a fair chance (which Hunt blew). Getting Thomas in trade for Chris Johnson rather than cutting him and was salvaging anything out of Morely were good trades.

The 05 cap was very tight and Wahle's contract should have been revised in 04. He only had one month and very little to offer Wahle. Allowing Rivera to leave was a good business decision.

Who was dumped?

7 million for Sharper? multimillion Hunt? Chris Johnson of perpetual injury? The never seen Morely? James Lee? Leigh Torrence? Thurman?
The cutting of Wahle is the only example for a slash and burn approach.

I believe Thompson came into a rapidly deteriorating situation and did well with a small amount of funds to work with. Getting Little, Freeman, Thompson and O'Dwyer for veteran minimum price was good. Gado and Donald Lee were free as was Herron.

I see no starting over.

Now this off season Green, Davenport, Hendderson, Nall, Barry, Diggs, Longwell and Sander may not return. It is up to Ted and the agents.

He isn't Ceasar but he isn't going to trade 2 picks for True Luck, or use 2 picks on, James Lee, BJ Sander, Kenny Peterson, Chris Johnson.

He has earned some trust by not having a big screw up to date and being patient and disciplined on draft day. One thing he does understand is that 50% of your draft picks work out and half do not. It is best to make lots of picks. It is too early to saw he made good or bad picks in 05.

Ted Thompson is better the the old GM. He deserves some time to make up for the drafts of 2001-2004.

BTW Why did we need to cut Chris Johnson??? -- To keep Joey Thomas who we cut weeks later? Johnson obviously would have been a better return man than what we but back there. As for Thomas -- he could have been had on waivers instead.
 

DePack

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Pack66....I was thinking the same thing as I was reading your post. To think you ganged up on me with chase...........I accept your apologies!
 

JbShell

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Thanks for the FYI Bruce. The way I look at it any one who blasts someone elses opinion without reason or ryhme has no solutions themselves
 

CaliforniaCheez

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If a Forest Fire is occurring in Green Bay there it is either not ruthless or not evident to me.

The classic example of the forrest fire theory are the 49'ers. Last year over 25%of their cap was dead money. They lost more players and a lot of games. They got Alex Smith and rather than have him learn on the sidelines he is being force fed game experience. Bad for fans and player morale. Only Bryant Young remains from their last Super Bowl. It is interesting to contrast their classic situation to the Packers condition.

1) Usually franchises turnover coaching staffs and bring in a new staff to rebuild from the ashes of the old one. The 49'er's have a new coach but the Packers extended the old one.

2) During slash and burns the highly salaried are cut. Are the highly salaried being cut? Brett Favre has an 8 figure salary cap figure and remains. The only cap casualty likely in 06 is Diggs. Thompson has mostly turned over the bottom 40% of the roster in terms of salary.

3) During the transistion there are politics involved. The old coaching staff is blamed and the older higher priced players are released because they fit the old scheme and not the "new" one. Some players and coaches are scapegoated. Is that happening?

4) The defense was a problem area. This offseason it was adressed with an improved coaching staff and elimination of bad attitudes(Hunt, Sharper). Anyone else notice an improvement in Carroll after Thomas was cut?? Boxing gloves didn't do that.

It is too early to judge whether a good job or bad job is being done. Has anyone accused Ted Thompson of poor drafting in 2005? Regardless of an uncapped year or more approaching the Packers are much better positioned. January to April 2006 are going to be the most critical few months of Ted Thompson's career. He still rates the benefit of the doubt.
This time next that benefit of the doubt will be much thinner.
Greater responsibility requires greater accountability. Let's give it time.
 

dhpackr

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great imangination. to me we lost that second super bowl b/c our defence got it handed to them by an athletic denver offensive line. gb could not stop terrel davis.

and sorry i don't think watching the packers win the last 10-12 years has made me the least bit ignorant to history either

i do feel TT gets an "F" for drafting aaron rodgers and selling out brett favre.

i feel we should have signed whale, drafted G logan mankin, and concentrated on getting #4 back to the superbowl.
 

Greg C.

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Thompson came in to an organization that had the clearly stated philosophy of trying to win as many games as possible every season. There was a lot of hole-patching going on with the roster every year--trying to get veterans to fill spots or drafting players largely according to positions of need and rushing them onto the field. The result of all this was a team that consistently made the playoffs but never had the firepower to make it very far once it got there. So Thompson took a different approach. I think he is gearing up for a run at a title beginning in his third year as GM. It will be interesting to see what happens.
 

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