Thompson argues there is only so much money to go around, and when it's time to pay players like Rodgers, Matthews, B.J. Raji, Sam Shields and Randall Cobb, you want to have as much money as possible to keep them. Sometimes you choose not to pay as was the case with Greg Jennings, Scott Wells, Daryn Colledge and Nick Barnett.
"If you've done a good enough job of drafting and developing, you're going to have more of those at that stage than you can keep," Thompson said. "But that's, relatively speaking, a good problem to have. You have to try to make good decisions in every deal that you do.