Ted Thompson leaned forward in his chair and considered the question. It was the summer of 2007, and the then 54-year-old was beginning his third season as the Packers general manager. He’d already made one of the decisions that would define his tenure, using his very first draft selection as general manager on University of California quarterback Aaron Rodgers, even though future Pro Football Hall of Famer Brett Favre was still the starter despite his annual retirement musings. Thompson’s next career-defining decision—severing ties with the legendary quarterback by trading him to the New York Jets during the bizarre summer of 2008—was still a year off.
And yet a sect of the team’s passionate fanbase already had developed a disdain for Thompson and his draft-and-develop approach. That disdain had been fueled in part by Favre’s publicly expressed frustrations about how the roster was being constructed after a 4–12 finish in 2005 (in Mike Sherman’s final year as coach) and 8–8 finish in 2006 (in Mike McCarthy’s first season).
So Thompson was asked that summer afternoon in his sparsely decorated office on the third floor of Lambeau Field why fans didn’t like him. “The people I work with understand how I go about my business and why we’re doing certain things,” Thompson explained during a lengthy interview for a profile in the Wisconsin State Journal’s annual football preview. “Yeah, from an organizational standpoint, I would like for the Packer fans to think the Packers are in good hands quite frankly, not necessarily everybody patting you on the back but [for] there to be a little trust with the Packer fans [in] me. But at the same time, this is a big boy place, and if I get criticized, I’m okay with it. Personally, I can take it from an ego standpoint, but I would prefer it if it was more of a positive message just because of the people out there who are getting up and reading that at the breakfast table or watching it on the nightly news at night. It might make them have a bad day thinking, Oh my gosh, that sort of thing. I’m not immune to that. But I’m fairly thick-skinned about other things.
“The people here are very nice. They’re not mean-spirited, they aren’t necessarily mad, they just want the Packers to do good. And there’s no animosity, no hatred, or anything like that. Ultimately, that’s all everybody wants is the Packers to do good. That’s what I want, too. Look at this place. This place is one of the most storied franchises there are, but Packers fans don’t care. They want to win now. They want to win [the season opener]. And that’s the reason I sort of fight against this we’re-building-for-the-future thing. We’re building to put the best team we can out there. Certainly, we want to look at the big picture, but we want to win [in Week One]. I am confident we’re going to do everything we can to make this the best place to work and best place to play and give our players the best chance to win. Outside of that, that’s all I can do. And then you see how that works. There will be surprises along the way—good surprises and bad surprises. But I think as long as we keep making sure we try to do things the right way, that we try to get the right character people on this team, then I think it gives you a chance. That’s all you can ask for. Five years from now, I would hope that I do this job well enough that I’m still sitting here. I won’t be here forever, but I’m healthy, I enjoy this job, and I think we have a chance to do some good things. I’d like to be here for a good long run and win tons of games and make everybody that cheers for the Packers happy.”
As it turned out, the Packers did exactly that during Thompson’s 13-year tenure as GM. The team compiled an overall regular-season record of 125–82–1 under Thompson’s watch and made the playoffs nine times, including a franchise best eight straight seasons from 2009 through 2016. Green Bay was 10–8 in postseason play during that time, reaching four NFC Championship Games (2007, 2010, 2014, 2016), and the 2010 team—led by Super Bowl XLV MVP Rodgers—won it all.
He assembled that championship roster with terrific drafts that yielded many of the team’s best players (Rodgers; wide receivers Greg Jennings, Jordy Nelson, and James Jones; safety Nick Collins; outside linebacker Clay Matthews; and defensive tackle B.J. Raji) as well as vital depth that allowed the team to survive a spate of injuries that year. Those picks were augmented by arguably the second most significant free-agent signing in franchise history (field-tilting defensive back Charles Woodson), a handful of veteran free agents (most notably nose tackle Ryan Pickett), and diamond-in-the-rough finds on the street (cornerback Tramon Williams) and in undrafted free agency (cornerback Sam Shields). All the while, Thompson adhered to a roster-building philosophy that had helped ex-Packers coach Mike Holmgren build a Super Bowl team in Seattle even if it differed from that of Thompson’s Pro Football Hall of Fame mentor, Ron Wolf.
After Thompson’s playing days ended with the Houston Oilers in 1984, he spent seven years working in Houston’s financial sector until Wolf hired him to work in the Packers’ pro personnel department in 1992. He rose quickly through the ranks after that, ascending to director of pro personnel after one year, to Wolf’s right-hand man as director of player personnel in 1997, to the Seattle Seahawks’ vice president of football operations in 2000. “I hired Ted with the thought that he could do for us what Ron Wolf did for us in the ’90s. He built a great ballclub,” said retired Packers president/CEO Bob Harlan, who lured Thompson from Seattle to replace Sherman, who spent four years as the dual coach/GM position before losing the GM duties after the 2004 season. “Nobody agrees with every decision the general manager makes. But when you look at the two eras, they were built very much the same way. When Ron Wolf came in, he hired a good coach in Mike Holmgren, got a franchise quarterback in Brett Favre, and he got a standout defensive player in Reggie White. And that was our foundation in the ’90s. Now Ted Thompson comes in, gets a good coach in Mike McCarthy, gets a franchise quarterback in Aaron Rodgers, and has a sound defense formed around Charles Woodson and Clay Matthews. So these two men have worked very much alike. And after what we went through in the ’70s and ’80s when we could never win, what Ron accomplished in the ’90s and what Ted Thompson accomplished after that, it was just good to see the Packers back among the elite teams where they belong.
“They are different type people. Ron Wolf, he will take more chances. And he did appreciate the spotlight more. Ted is really a back-room guy. I remember when I was going to hire him, I went to one of the PR individuals and told him what I was going to do, and the first thing the person said to me was, ‘Boy, Ted’s not very good with the press.’ And I said, ‘I’m not hiring him to be good with the press. I’m hiring him to build a football team for us. And he will do that.’ And he did that. The personality doesn’t matter.”
Behind his milquetoast façade, Thompson could be funny, self-deprecating, and insightful. But when it came to his public persona or getting worked up about anything, he likened his conscious decision not to allow his feelings to affect his decision-making to the approach he took to his inconsistent golf game. “I’m a normal guy. I get happy if I hit a good shot; I get mad if I hit a bad shot. But even that is absolute, wasted emotion,” he said. “It doesn’t help your golf game at all. There are things I value: this job and how we do a lot, but I don’t think I can do my job if I allow myself to be on a roller-coaster ride. I have to look at it as, ‘Okay, this has happened; what do we do now?’ I guess I would classify myself as sort of reserved. I think it’s my job in this role to be sort of a calm in an atmosphere that sometimes can get chaotic. Because right now somebody could walk in here and give me some really bad news, and then it’d be my job to make everybody think that, even though this is bad news, it’s going to be okay. I think that’s part of my job, but it’s also part of my personality. There are things that I get worked up about, but I don’t do them in public. If someone has done something I don’t like, I’ll speak to them, but I’ll speak to them in private, and there won’t be a lot of ranting and raving.”
Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, Thompson’s accomplishments will be better appreciated in time. He stepped aside as GM in January 2018 to take a senior advisor’s role and he was inducted into the Packers Hall of Fame in May of 2019. After his induction he admitted he had been battling an autonomic disorder for several years. But for a man who dedicated everything he had to the organization—Thompson never married nor had children—he probably never got his due during his tenure. “To me what really stands out about Ted is, it was never about him,” said Mark Murphy, who followed Harlan as team president/CEO. “He’s a very humble man. He’s tremendously loyal to the Packers, and it was always, ‘What’s best for the Packers?’ And ‘What can we all do together to help the Packers win championships?’ I think his record speaks for itself. I realize, probably as you do, he’s a little bit of a lightning rod among our fans. I’ve read some of the comments as I know you have. But I think when you step back and look at what he has accomplished as our general manager, it speaks for itself.”