Telling the Real Story and Giving Credit Where it is Due

Being a Green Bay Packer fan and having the privilege the past nine years of living in Title Town itself, I have followed every movement the Packers management and coaching staff have made during my stay. Like most diehard sports fans I have known in my lifetime, I often find myself in utter disagreement with the news media about the real perspectives and stories about professional players and teams. We know that the press feeds off of any news that they can use or even twist to defame players and coaches, they also have been known to manufacture sports heroes because sports-hero stories sell. If a good story isn’t at hand the media have shown they are up to the task of making a story up out of thin air. The media having this MO often makes them blind and oblivious to the obvious. I have to say that nothing has rankled my sensitivities more than noting in the past couple of years the fact that the media has almost completely missed what should be the big story about the recent rise of the Green Bay Packers. What I am speaking of does not have to do with the greatness of Brett Favre, but rather the giving of GM Ted Thompson and coach Mike McCarthy their just due. They are the geniuses in the Packer’s conglomerate. Yet, how little those whose job it is to opine have paid due attention to them.

The year was 1999, and the Packers had just lost to the Denver Broncos in the 98’ Superbowl. Mike Holmgren had decided to leave Green Bay to become the coach of the Seahawks so that he could have the responsibilities of both head coach and GM, something that had been denied him in Green Bay. Ironically, Mike Sherman was then hired to be the head coach and also GM of the Packers, and coincidental to these events we moved our family to town from Seattle. Being from the city that took the Packer’s coach we were not always well appreciated. Mike Sherman took over an incredibly talented team, one that the previous year had made it to the Superbowl. Initially Sherman showed quite a bit of coaching prowess and had success with the team, including winning division titles in 2002-2004 and also getting them to the playoffs via a wildcard in 2001. But, in the 2005 season, the Packers won only 4 out of 16 games. The problem was that Sherman was a much better coach than GM and there were too many draft picks that he had used on guys like Jamal Reynolds, Amad Carrol, and Joey Thomas. The Packers had a roster deficient in talent. The previous year the Packer organization had realized that Sherman needed to concentrate only upon coaching, and that was when they hired Ted Thompson to be their GM. This hiring occurred before the 2005 draft.

Thompson’s first actions were to decline resigning starting guards Mike Wahle and Marco Rivera and releasing starting safety Darren Sharper, all which were considered risky and somewhat controversial moves. Then, in that first draft he picked the Packer’s current starting quarterback, Aaron Rogers, with his first pick. This was followed by selecting today’s key contributors in safety Nick Collins and linebacker Brady Poppinga. During that draft Thompson began to reveal his strategy for rebuilding the team that had been decimated under Sherman. His plan was not to build the team by seeking out big names and egos in free agency, as had been the tendency in professional team after team, and sport after sport, for years. Rather, Thompson sought to obtain as many draft picks as possible and rebuild with the most talented youth available. This was never more obvious than after the 2006 draft when Thompson revealed that he would not be drafting according to the need at the moment but according to the best player at any position, and at that time the Packers needed someone to replace star receiver Javon Walker who had demanded a trade and ended up in Denver for a second round pick. Thompson stated he would not be building his team upon free agents.

The philosophy of spending the bulk of your salary cap on a few highly expensive free agents and surrounding them with mediocre talent just doesn’t work, especially when so many players have to contribute significantly to make a football team successful. A successful team needs a bunch of very talented players at various positions. But how do you build such a thing? Thompson had the answer that had eluded so many franchises for so long.

Few understood Thompson’s philosophy at that time, nor why it would work. This includes Brett Favre. This was evident when it was reported after the 2007 draft that Thompson had not picked up receiver Randy Moss as a free agent that Brett had initially asked for a trade.

Thompson’s first act after the dismal 2005 season was to remove Sherman as coach to find new blood in someone who could teach a bunch of young players the fundamentals of the game, make them competitive, and be strong enough in character to tell them what they needed to do to improve. Mike McCarthy was the man hired for the job because Thompson knew McCarthy had such ability and also the guts to promote the players not that have the big names but that make the big plays. McCarthy proved to be a miracle worker and even the best thing for quarterback Favre since Holmgren.

Having followed many sports and teams throughout my lifetime, I have never seen a GM turn around a sport’s franchise like Ted Thompson has done. In just three years the 4-12 talent deficient Packers were 13 and 3 and Superbowl contenders in 2007, just one playoff victory away from the big dance. To everyone’s amazement, they were not only the youngest team in the NFL at that time, and thus had incredible upside potential, but even Brett himself remarked they were the most athletic team he had ever played on. And, imagine this, before the 2007 season began it was reported that they were $10 million dollars UNDER the salary cap. Such things cannot be, can they? Yes, in Green Bay and with Thompson!

Likewise, why coach McCarthy was not chosen as the USA Today NFL coach of the year in 2007 over the Patriot’s coach Belichick who was caught early in the season cheating by taping the Jet’s signals during a game and fined $250,000, is completely befuddling to me. In the first place, what does awarding Belichick teach youth about the importance of having good sportsmanship? But, no one had a harder job than McCarthy in bringing such a young team to the point of achieving such feats, and everyone in the media was shocked by the Packer’s success.

The media has largely enveloped the Packer’s story of the past few years to be about Brett Favre, and I don’t want to take away in any sense his greatness. But, to me it should be obvious that the bigger story should have been about Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy. Last summer, I even heard that the NY Yankees were finally trying to build their team from the bottom up in draft picks and talent rather than buying their pennants, and no one has more epitomized the doomed philosophy of free agent building than the Yankees. I think they have paid attention to what Thompson has done. The other thing is that sports franchises are meant to be a community chest, not about individuals, and what Thompson and McCarthy have done has been for the benefit of the community of Green Bay and the state of Wisconsin. They have made everything about the team.

Since I am a pastor, I will end by making spiritual application from my perspective I have shared in this article. We need to give credit to where it is due. Those who truly do good should be recognized. We ought to start by giving all of the credit and glory to the Lord just as king David of Israel did in 1 Chronicles 29:10-13: “So David blessed the Lord in the sight of all the assembly; and David said, “Blessed are You, O Lord God of Israel our father, forever and ever. “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the dominion, O Lord, and You exalt Yourself as head over all. “Both riches and honor come from You, and You rule over all, and in Your hand is power and might; and it lies in Your hand to make great and to strengthen everyone. “Now therefore, our God, we thank You, and praise Your glorious name.”

Likewise, we need to realize the wisdom in not going with crowd in the things that we do in life, but rather swim against the current when it is going against the Lord’s will and plans, just as Jesus taught us in Matthew 7:13: “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.” We need to stand up for all that is right in God’s sight, even if doing so isn’t popular. This starts by believing upon Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.