Thank you. Pickett's been a rock - even last year while playing through a tough injury.
The Williams trade was almost universally lauded on the fan boards when it went down - nobody thought he was worth the money he wanted and I don't recall anything being said other than "good job". Now with hindsight, people are hopping back over the fence on that one. Weak.
The only piece of this that truly falls @ Thompson's feet is Harrel - it's pretty clear there was a lot of optimism in play about his health, where such optimism wasn't warranted.
"ILikeThePackers39" wrote:
ILike - It's not that people are hopping back over the fence on Williams. The mistake was that Ted Thompson thought Bustin could replace Williams. That's the mistake.
In the last 2 years we had Williams, he was the ONLY DT in the NFL who had 7.5+ sacks each year.
Now don't get me wrong, Williams was seen as one of those people who once he got the big paycheck, he'd think he wouldn't have to work any more. But we needed to replace him with someone who would be on the field. That's where the mistake was made.
Hopefully it will be corrected in '09.
"zombieslayer" wrote:
Well, I rather doubt he was counting on Harrell alone - I think he expected Jolly to take another step and for guys like Cole to also step up. To be fair, maybe he did think Harrell would be ready as well, but IMO he wasn't expecting Harrell to step in and rock.
All that said, obviously his expectations - be they for Harrell, Jolly or anyone else - were wrong. As it turns out, we did need Williams. But I don't believe anyone knew that at the time, and I remember no concerns being voiced; just "hey, that was a good deal."
In hindsight it was obviously a bad move - I'm certainly not disputing that, but at the time nobody thought so, or at least I don't recall seeing anything to that effect.
"ILikeThePackers39" wrote: