GREEN BAY — It's decision day for the Green Bay Packers on Colt Lyerla — and the other 27 tryout players who took part in the team's rookie orientation camp over the weekend.
Packers general manager Ted Thompson said after Saturday's final practice that he intended to take the rest of the weekend to consider those tryout players — including Lyerla, the troubled ex-University of Oregon tight end — and if any of them merited signing, those moves would be made on Monday.
"It'll be a couple days before we settle on that," Thompson said Saturday. "We'll probably have that by Monday."
The Packers entered the rookie camp with 88 players on the 90-man roster, so they would only have room to sign two players without having to release others to make room.
Two years ago, the Packers found a couple of keepers in their tryout players. Although they signed five players on the Monday after the camp — tackle Shea Allard, wide receiver Jarrett Boykin, guard Grant Cook, wide receiver/running back Curenski Gilleylen and cornerback Otis Merrill — they signed a sixth player a few weeks later: Tight end Brandon Bostick.
Boykin, of course, went on to win a spot on the 53-man roster in training camp and last year had a breakout season after Randall Cobb's leg injury. Bostick spent the 2012 season on the practice squad before making the team coming out of camp last year.
Last year, the Packers also signed five players who tried out during the rookie camp: Washington fullback Jonathan Amosa, New Mexico State linebacker Donte Savage, Arizona State cornerback Brandon Smith, Illinois State wide receiver Tyrone Walker and Prairie View A&M linebacker Jarvis Wilson. Walker spent the final 11 weeks of the season on the practice squad, although he wasn't brought back this offseason.
In an effort to decide which tryout players deserve a longer look, Thompson said the scouts who attend practice actually ask the coaches to run certain drills so they can evaluate the players more effectively.
"But from a coaching standpoint they're trying to get them ready and caught up with our veteran players who some of the fellas are going to be here," Thompson said. "You look for whatever you look for in scouting. All these guys, we've done a lot of tape work on, all of them we've done research before we even actually invite them to camp, so we know the things we're looking for, we know the things that maybe aren't so good that we're hoping we don't see.
"In some cases [it's about a player's] energy level. When a guy comes in and sort of lights up the practice field with his energy, that leads me closer to that player."
As for Lyerla, who was quit the Ducks team last fall and shortly thereafter was arrested for cocaine possession, ESPN.com's Rob Demovsky reported Saturday evening that the team was leaning toward signing him. Thompson certainly sounded open to the idea, despite Lyerla's checkered past, on Saturday. He ran the third-fastest time among tight ends at the NFL Scouting Combine in February and had the best vertical leap at the position as well.
"We did a lot of work on Colt. He's a very talented athlete," Thompson said. "We interviewed him at the Combine, we went through all those procedures, talked to a lot of people. He's a young man that made some mistakes and we feel like he was worth bringing in and taking a look at.
"Every case is an individual case. ... I have always believed that there are certain things that people can atone for, acknowledge their mistakes and get on with their lives. And I am a proponent of those kind of people that try to do that. And that's where we're at with Colt."
Jason Wilde wrote: