Green Bay — Down in Florida, Ron Wolf is hundreds of miles removed from the furor.
He takes in spring training baseball games. Kicks back. He's not immersed in excruciating, on-the-clock negotiations. He's not perusing Twitter for the pulse of the Green Bay Packer fan base.
There's discontent, he's told last Friday. Fans are angry.
The former Packer architect can't help but chuckle.
"If they're complaining about the Packers, then that's ridiculous," Wolf said. "How could you complain? Three straight divisions. How could you whine about that? It's not by style points. It's by wins or losses."
Free agency, by design, is overrated. Through the NFL's quest to make its product a 365-day attraction, free agency — Free Agency Frenzy! — has skewed reality. Every year, this is the most overhyped 48 hours in the football calendar year. Again, Ted Thompson started the party by re-signing his own. He let others spend.
Thompson did send a tremor through the state by signing 34-year-old Julius Peppers, but even this came at a reasonable price.
Peppers or no Peppers, Green Bay operates the Ted Thompson Way. He'll rely on the draft, on his own players' growth. Take it, leave it.
Wolf says that isn't so bad.
"When I was there," Wolf said, "they had three winning seasons in 24 years. That's a little different. And now, it's not just about winning the division. I'm not sure what it's about.
"I think they're really doing a heck of a job there."
Expectations are different in 2014 than 1992. Any anxiety reflects how much times have changed post-Wolf.
Since Thompson's 4-12 cleansing his first year on the job, Green Bay is 88-50-1 with four division titles and a Super Bowl. Most teams that wildly spend at the opening bell — with this year's Denver anomaly — are usually 4-12, 5-11, starving for a shock of energy.
"It's about winning," Wolf repeats. "It's not about all the other avenues or other agendas that people want to incorporate into a team. If that were the case the Washington Redskins, every year, would be in the Super Bowl. It's about winning. And you'd be hard pressed to find a team in the NFC with a better won-loss record than the Packers since he's been there.
"There's one stat and one stat only. And that stat is W's and L's. And in that bracket — he and that entire operation — have done a heck of a job in my estimation."
Wolf did refuel through free agency beyond Reggie White in the 1990s. One can certainly argue that Thompson should take this page out of his old mentor's playbook. More veterans would help. One offensive player said last month that the defense needed more "dogs," more threats that put fear into opposing quarterbacks.
This may be true.
Still, as Wolf notes, free agency is different today. It operates at warp speed. Brett Favre, he laughs, was once a free agent for a full week. In 2014, that'd never happen.
The G.M. admits he was "stumbling around" just trying to figure out free agency. In time, he realized it was overrated, too. The risks outweighed reward.
"What we eventually came around to realizing was rather than run amok in free agency — now these are my words — is you better keep your own players and pay a little bit more for them," Wolf said, "because you know everything about them than to bring somebody new in that you don't know anything about. Through trail and error, that's more or less what we decided to do.
"That doesn't mean, however, that you don't lean in there."
He quickly adds that Charles Woodson, after Reggie White and Deion Sanders, is the best free-agent signing ever. Paying up paid off.
Maybe Peppers is the player who gets Green Bay over the hump. He could flop, too. That's why his 2014 cap number is a friendly $3.5 million.
Above all, this first week of free agency was a reminder that the Packers go as far as Thompson's philosophy takes them. He used a combined $54 million on Sam Shields, Mike Neal, Andrew Quarless, B.J. Raji. Money that could've been spent on outsiders was spent on his own.
Years ago, Wolf told Thompson to never read the newspaper, never watch the local TV and never listen to talk radio. If Thompson didn't have thick skin, he certainly did after the summer of 2008.
Don't bet on the GM who shunned Brett Favre listening to any noise.
He's signing his own.
Wolf believes a deep breath is in order.
"I think the test of time bears out that they know what they're doing," Wolf said. "The object — and I don't mean to overemphasize it — it's whether you win or lose. If you lose, you don't keep your job.
"I'm sure their formula works — certainly in the NFC — a lot better than anyone else's."
Tyler Dunne wrote: