I hadn't followed this thread until just now. It seemed to be the only game in town.
I find it interesting that there is so much negativity toward uffda udfa - in this thread anyway. In some other ones, I could understand why. Saying he ruined the thread - this one anyway - is a bit over the top. The 2nd or 3rd post, I think - his first in this thread - was an intelligent rebuttal to a very shaky premise - that Ted Thompson is all that special as a GM or even as a drafter - removing from discussion the whole aspect that he stubbornly refuses to go after other teams' free agents to any significant degree. Beyond that, it seems to me, the "ruination" has been condemnation of uffda udfa and his responding to it.
In this particular case, I have to side with the basic premise of uffda udfa. One line of his really stands out. I paraphrase: "Where would Ted's teams be without Aaron Rodgers?" A big hell yeah to that!
It could easily be argued that drafting the best QB in the history of the world makes Ted a "stellar" drafter. It could just as easily be argued that he got lucky. It was a fairly obvious move at the time to draft a QB who had been speculated to have a 50/50 chance of being the overall number one pick when he was still there 20 or so picks later and Favre getting on in years - who knew he would remain good for so long. As uffda udfa said, you look at the team minus Aaron Rodgers, and you get a whole other picture - mediocre comes to mind rather than stellar.
And then there's the one Super Bowl won thing ...... I would suggest that if the GM had Aaron Rodgers and did a stellar or even above average job of building a team around him, we would have an all out dynasty - half a dozen or so SB wins in the years up to now with Rodgers as starter.
What I will give Ted credit for is that he is an excellent finder of UDFAs. The Packers have been way above average at finding and using them. They better be, because a LOT of those stellar draft picks have kinda fallen flat.
Many will also give Ted credit for keeping the Packers out of "cap hell" as the Niners and a few other teams over the years have ended up. I will give him limited positivity here, but not as much as many people. The fact is, Ted has played it too close to the vest - NOT maximizing the cap as much as he could have and arguably should have. There is limited cap space, yeah, but there are a lot of creative ways to stretch that which the Packers don't really do much of.
So all in all, it's easy to defend a GM who has brought us so many years of being near the top, but for the reasons I have stated, I don't buy the "stellar" thing. I don't even buy "above average". Ted has made a reputation based on benefiting from the greatness of Aaron Rodgers.
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