GREEN BAY – Mike McCarthy wanted to watch. He had a feeling what might happen, but he wanted to see it for himself.

So when Julius Peppers walked into a meeting last week at Lambeau Field as the Green Bay Packers kicked off their offseason program, the Packers ninth-year coach surveyed the scene. Never before in his tenure had the team acquired such a big-name player during an offseason and then had him show up on the first day of workouts.

He saw the smiles, the wide eyes. He felt the excitement.

“When a guy [like Peppers] walks into the room, you see the reaction,” McCarthy told a group of reporters after walking the Robert W. Baird blue carpet at last week’s Wisconsin Sports Awards in Milwaukee. “It’s a great fit. We’re glad he’s there. He seems to be comfortable. He’s off to a good start.”

The last time the Packers added someone with Peppers’ gravitas (eight Pro Bowl selections, three-time Associated Press first-team All-Pro) was in 2006, when McCarthy was in his first year and the team signed ex-Oakland Raiders cornerback Charles Woodson, the 1997 Heisman Trophy winner and a four-time Pro Bowler at the time, to a seven-year, $39 million deal.

But Woodson, who’d eventually mature into an elder statesman and leader of the Packers defense en route to the 2009 NFL Defensive Player of the Year award and the team’s Super Bowl XLV championship after the 2010 season, didn’t sign until late April, well into the offseason program.

Not only that, but having developed a reputation as a malcontent in Oakland – and not exactly thrilled to be playing in the league’s tiniest outpost – Woodson showed up for the team’s mandatory minicamp in May but skipped everything else, choosing to work out at home in Houston rather than attend even one of the team’s 14 organized team activity practices or the voluntary extra minicamp the Packers had under their rookie head coach.

At the start of training camp, Woodson was unapologetic about the time he missed (“I just feel like being down there in Houston I'm getting ready for football but I'm away from football”) and even acknowledged that McCarthy was ticked off about him not even trying to assimilate into the team (“I don't think any coach would have been OK with it, but we just had to accept what it is on both our parts”). Years later, given the kind of unquestioned leader Woodson became, those quotes are downright bizarre to read.

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Jason Wilde  wrote: