Tyrant Ted’s Legacy

The 13-year reign of Ted Thompson is finally over or is it? The irony of Thompson’s business style was he was hired to break up exactly what he eventually ended up becoming – one man rule.

Let’s look back to what brought Tyrant Ted back to Green Bay in the 1st place. Mike Sherman was the last of the General Manager/Head Coaches that had started with Curly Lambeau and ended the 1st time with Gene Rozani in 1953 when Vern Lewellen became General Manager. It started again when Vince Lombardi was hired in 1959 and ended the second time in 1980 when Bart Starr had his power over personnel removed when Dick Corrick was hired as Director of Football Operations. Tom Braatz replaced Corrick in 1987 and remained as defacto General Manager until 1991 when Ron Wolf was hired as General Manager. When Wolf retired in 2001 Mike Sherman was hired as the 1st General Manager/Head Coach since 1980 and it was his time in both offices that brought us Ted Thompson I. A combination of the disastrous signing of Joe Johnson in 2002 and the lack of playoff success (2-4), including the 1st playoff loss at Lambeau Field in 2002 (ironically Mike McCarthy has lost at Lambeau Field a total of 3 times in the playoffs - 2007, 2011,2013 and he didn’t get fired) brought Green Bay to a crisis moment and it was Tyrant Ted to the rescue in 2005 when Sherman was stripped of his General Managership. Sherman was fired the next season and Mundane Mike McCarthy was hired and the front office was set for the next 12 years.

The 1st 6 years of Tyrant Ted’s reign was magical. It started with the firing of Brett Favre after the 2007 season and a loss to Giants at Lambeau Field to the hiring of Mark Murphy as CEO and President in 2008 and ended in 2010 with Aaron Rodgers and Clay Matthews bringing the Lombardi Trophy back to Green Bay for the 1st time since 1996.

Happy Days were here again and the promise of a new Packers Dynasty was on the horizon with the best quarterback in football at the helm, but something went terribly wrong and the best way it came be described is by the phrase, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

After the Super Bowl win Ted Thompson was being talked about as a sure Hall of Famer and he loved it. In fact despite the failure to return to the Super Bowl the national media continued to talk about how great a talent evaluator he is and it was proved they knew absolutely nothing about the true facts. But that is an argument for another day.

Back to Mediocre Mark Murphy. He was hired to replace President John Jones, who was hired in 2006, when he had to leave for medical reasons just a year into the job when Bob Harlan began to retire and then replace Harlan when he did retire a year later as CEO. As it turned out we found out two days ago at the press conference to introduce Brian Gutekunst as the new General Manager that Mediocre Mark was playing second fiddle to Tyrant Ted until last Monday when he didn’t fire him, but bump him up where he hopefully can’t do any more harm. I would have fired him, but I guess Mediocre Mark has Tyrant Ted to thank for his job and if he doesn’t I don’t understand the blinders he wears in regard to Tyrant Ted.

Here’s what Mediocre Mark said about the front office organization, “I’ve had a sense for the last couple years I needed to be more involved. This process made it clear what that involvement was going to be. This is going to be positive for us moving forward.”

It seems Mediocre Mark is a lot like an aircraft carrier in that it takes miles for the ship to make a turn and it took over 2 years for Mediocre Mark to make this change.

Now what exactly was he referring to. It seems the tail was wagging the dog in the Packers front office. The official title of Tyrant Ted was Executive Vice President/General Manager/Director of Football Operations (finally Packers.com changed Tyrant Ted’s title to Senior Advisor to Football Operations on Jan. 10th a full 9 days after he changed jobs. I guess the people at Packers.com read my column from yesterday because it’s too coincidental that it was updated right after I posted it), but I digress.

Like I said Tyrant Ted was Executive Vice President and Mediocre Mark is President. In any other organization the Vice President reports to the President, but in the Packers front office Tyrant Ted reported to no one. He was Lord and Master of the Kingdom and could do and did anything he wanted including cutting All-Pro left guard Josh Sitton just because he was saying bad things about Tyrant Ted. Mediocre Mark had no power over him and Tyrant Ted had absolute power over the front office holding the top two jobs in the Football Operations part (Director of Football Operations) and the Player Personnel part (General Manager). BG is only the General Manager and Russ Ball was promoted to take over the other job as Executive Vice President/Director of Football Operations thusly splitting the 2 jobs Tyrant Ted held.

OBTW: Eliot Wolf, who was Director-Football Operations in the Player Personnel part of the front office while Tyrant Ted was Director of Football Operations in the Football Operations part of the front office. And it was announced today that Wolf is now gone having been hired by the Cleveland Browns as Assistant General Manager.

So now you see that the reason Tyrant Ted was hired was because Mike Sherman had too much power as Head Coach and General Manager over personnel decisions, but instead of solving that problem they created a worst monster by handing the reigns over to a man, who on the outside was Mr. Peepers, but on the inside was Benito Mussolini. Tyrant Ted had everyone fooled up to the final two weeks of the season when evidently someone in the Packers organization grew a pair and forced his ouster, at least of his day to day duties, we think.

Mediocre Mark said this about why he took the action to reassign his benefactor and mentor Tyrant Ted, "There's no truth to the story that I was directed by the board (of directors) to make a change. Our board doesn't operate that way. ... It was my decision to move the way we have, and this is going to be my hire. I keep our executive committee (apprised)."

I don’t believe a word he said. Just 7 months ago at the Shareholders’ Meeting on July 12 Mediocre Mark made this pronouncement, “Ted and I, we have a great relationship. As long as he wants to continue to work, and he’s still doing a good job — and I think he still does a great job for us — we want him to continue to be our general manager. At a point he decides he doesn’t want to do it anymore for whatever reason, then we would do a search.”

That’s why I think the Board or someone representing the Board had a heart-to-heart talk with Mediocre Mark telling him in no uncertain terms that if Tyrant Ted wasn’t fired (or whatever) then Mediocre Mark will be shown the door. I can’t see any other scenario that would make Mediocre Mark change his mind.

But as we can see Mediocre Mark is still afraid of Tyrant Ted. He couldn’t just hand him his gold watch and show him the door. He had to keep him around until “he doesn’t want to do it anymore for whatever reason” and why would he want to leave when he doesn’t have to do any work for a high salary. Tyrant Ted has it made until they find him slumped over his desk and he gets to go out with a state funeral held at Lambeau Field with all the pomp and circumstance the Packers can muster.

Like I’ve said he should have been shown the door for wasting the prime years of the greatest quarterback in the game and building a mediocre roster that showed “The Emperor Has No Clothes” (I hope I can get that image out of mind sooner than later) when the only true All-Pro on the team was sidelined and the other 52 proved they needed overtime to beat the 0-16 Browns directly by Tyrant Ted’s handpicked successor Brett Hundley, who also proved he was not ready for prime time and may never be.

However, Mediocre Mark had this to say when he announced Tyrant Ted was being reassigned, "(Thompson) is a scout at heart. He loves it. It's what he loves to do. That’s kind of what moved us to (Senior Advisor) role."

Why in the hell would you want any advice from the man who tore down a budding dynasty and turned it into the “Just Good Enough” Packers who were playoff contenders, but only Super Bowl pretenders? And with the luck (and I consider it luck because it was the reason we finally got rid of Tyrant Ted, well sort of) of Rodgers going down it showed how terrible the Ted Thompson II (2011-2017) era really was by letting go All-Pro players like Casey Heyward, T.J. Lang and Micah Hyde just because they were about to be paid and cutting All-Pro player Josh Sitton just because and letting Lang and Sitton go to division rivals, which up until Tyrant Ted was a huge no-no.

Well when its all said and done Mediocre Mark is now large and in charge. He now has BG, RB and MMM reporting to him only. Let’s hope Mediocre Mark has had an epiphany and will now be building a Super Bowl team instead of, let’s see what he also had to say about that last summer, “I hear from a lot of fans that they’re disappointed that I’ve accepted mediocrity and I’m just happy to be in the playoffs and that I should fire (GM) Ted (Thompson) and (coach) Mike (McCarthy) and then after I do that, retire. So you realize that it’s a spread and there’s all kinds of fans, but I would hope that the average or typical fan understands that when you work for the Packers organization and you set a record for most consecutive years in the playoffs with our history and tradition, that’s pretty good.”

Well, it’s all on you now Mediocre Mark. Let’s hope you’ve been hiding your true feelings all these years afraid of being chastised by Tyrant Ted. However,  when you had a chance for a clean reboot you kept Tyrant Ted in the building and hired Tyrant Ted’s assistant and promoted his other assistant. How it that a clean start? It isn’t.

The Green Bay Packers need to be in a Super Bowl frame of mind, instead of a playoff frame, but all the people who were happy (“you set a record for most consecutive years in the playoffs with our history and tradition, that’s pretty good”) with just making the playoffs are still in the building, including Tyrant Ted, and the “Tedders” are thrilled about. I am not.