Woodson was a guy we didn't have to outbid anyone for. He was on the market with no takers for a long long time...Ted's kinda guy. The only other team who had any interest at all was Tampa and they wanted him to play safety which he didn't want to do. We gave him 10.5 mil his first season ( a ton back then ).

I think it's interesting that we signed him a day after Favre went cuckoo with management demanding they make some high profile additions. I will guess this is part of the reason it was so easy for Ted Thompson to just boot him to the Jets.

We overpaid for Charles just because it was Green Bay and he didn't want to come but he really had only options he didn't want outside of Green Bay. The fact that Green Bay is Green Bay works against us. You have to pay more to get premium guys to come here. There's a reason we have the highest workout bonus structure in the NFL. We have to. We're dealt a losing hand from the get go.

BTW, Charles had zero interest from the Raiders when we signed him. That flies in the face of Michael Rodney's logic of not signing a FA whose own team had no interest in. There are a myriad of reasons why teams let guys go. It often isn't solely about performance.

I'm against paying guys like Richardson extra money. You do that too often and it's as bad as making a terrible high profile FA signing. A few million here and there adds up quick. Our guy is praised often for setting a number and not exceeding it blah, blah, blah and being so frugal. He has done a lot of dumb things with money over the years.

We can only hope overpaying for Richardson means we won't pay for Jarrett Bush at all.

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Sometimes I think we fans believe the team would be better fielding 10 instead of 10 plus someone we dislike or feel is not good. You have to have bodies to replace bodies.

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That's true, Zero. You make some very valid points!

Ted KNOWS his guys, KNOWS how good or bad they are. Yes, he may pass up a few players that could help the team. He's surely not perfect. But I think he's doing a pretty good job fielding a good team.
Look around the NFL and see how many teams WISH they could field a contender every year. I think sometimes we have become so used to the Packers doing well, that we take it for granted.
I myself remember the 1970's and 80's and how bad they were. I remember when the Packers first returned to the playoffs in the 1990's, and how I was THRILLED just that they actually MADE the playoffs.
Our expectations have gone up with all the success.
I think if Aaron Rodgers wouldn't have got hurt last season we would have beat Seattle and been in the Super Bowl.
2 years in a row AR got hurt. That was devastating to the team. Yet they still almost made it all the way.
Get a few guys through the draft that can play, and if there is a F.A. out there that can add to the team, it could end up being a great season!

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I'd have to go back and check the details but if I am not mistaken a lot of the 10.5 million his first year was pretty much in lieu of a signing bonus (of which he got none) We had the cap space to burn that year so rather than give him 5 million in year 1 and 5 million dollar SB we gave it all to him as a guaranteed salary which meant we had nothing invested past that first year if he didn't work out. We could have cut him after the first year and had no dead money involved. It was pretty obvious that he was going to be on the team for that year so it made perfect sense. We used up cap space we couldn't roll over and we didn't jeopardize any future cap space if we decided to cut him. His year 2 and 3 salaries averaged around 3 or 4 million I believe.