Shake-up propels team into new era
Barely more than 24 hours after the Green Bay Packers finished their 2017 season, they’re looking for a new general manager and new defensive coordinator.
The Packers needed this shock, though alone it won’t go very far. In the end it’s about finding people of competence and substance to run the team, and putting good players on the field. But at minimum any complacency that had drifted into the organization the last few years should be gone.
Now starts what should be a newsy week or two as the franchise goes about filling not one but two of its important posts.
Coach Mike McCarthy will conduct the defensive coordinator search. I’ve seen the same lists of possible candidates as you. Outside looking in, I have to think Vic Fangio, whose contract just ran out with the Chicago Bears, has the best odds of ending up running the Packers’ defense.
But that’s just a guess. When he hired Dom Capers in 2009, McCarthy interviewed at least four candidates. He has had the two weeks since the Packers were bumped out of the playoff race to plan for this search. You never know what he might be thinking.
Finding Ted Thompson’s successor falls on Mark Murphy, the Packers’ President/CEO. This is by far the most important hire of his 10-year tenure.
The Packers don’t have an owner pocketing profits, so all their resources go toward winning games and ensuring the franchise has a viable financial future. Everything revolves around putting the best possible team on the field.
And the person responsible for that is the GM, who should have the final say over all football decisions. So this is a decision Murphy has to get right.
What I wonder is how Murphy will go about finding his next GM. When I asked him that in an interview last February, he said, “There will be a plan in place for the process to find a successor.”
I could only interpret that to mean he’ll follow what he’s done in the past to fill several executive positions in the organization: Hire a search firm. That’s a common practice in college administration, which is his background. In fact a search committee identified Murphy as a candidate for Packers president.
I understand using a search firm for hiring vice presidents for the business side of the organization. Qualified candidates in finance or marketing could come from any number of industries.
But if I were on the team’s executive committee, GM is the one call I want Murphy to make on his own. The pool of candidates isn’t that big – it’s hard to see how it can be anyone other than a current or recent high-ranking NFL executive. Why substitute a search firm’s biases for your own?
Murphy always should have a short list of GM candidates in mind just in case. He can expand it now if need be. But he has been in the NFL for 10 years, so he should have plenty of contacts around the league to solicit opinions. Hiring a GM is not just the most important hire he’ll make, it also might be his most important decision overall.
I’m sure if he uses a search firm, he’ll argue that it might identify a good candidate he wouldn’t have thought of. The Packers have the resources. This is one to do on their own.
They have several good candidates working in their office right now.
If I’m Murphy, I’m promoting one of Thompson’s three top personnel advisers – Eliot Wolf, Brian Gutekunst or Alonzo Highsmith – to the job.
The track record of Ron Wolf protégés is excellent. All five of his former scouts who have become GMs have done well: Thompson, Scot McCloughan, John Schneider, Reggie McKenzie and John Dorsey.
That doesn’t mean the next will pan out. But it’s a good reason to find out.
From talking to people in and around the organization, you get the sense that the leading candidate might be Russ Ball. He has been negotiating Packers’ player contracts since 2008. And year by year, he has accumulated more duties in the team’s football operations as vice president of football administration/player finance.
The GM job has, or at least can have, major administrative and management responsibilities that can overwhelm someone new to those duties. Ball’s advancement shows the organization’s high regard for his abilities in those areas.
But my question is about player expertise. Ball played Division II football, so he knows the game, and he reportedly has been sitting in on video sessions the last few years to sharpen his scouting skills. But he’s not a scout by trade, and in the end, a GM’s most important task is finding players.
If I’m running a team, I want a lifetime scout making those calls. A few teams have GMs whose background is in the salary cap, but they have to rely heavily on a top scout for player personnel. If those teams succeed, they’re always in danger of losing their top scout to another club.
If I’m Murphy, I’d skip the middle man, hire whichever of his top three scouts he thinks will be the best GM and do what he must to retain Ball. That setup allowed Thompson to concentrate mostly on scouting, in essence acting as the team’s super scout.
Other candidates from other teams might come up as well. But the early guess here is that Murphy will stay inhouse.
Regardless of Murphy’s path, he’s starting the Packers on a new era. They’ve had their biggest shakeup in a long time. Now it’s up to Murphy to set the next course.