Packers-Jets: philosophical opposites

[Ron Sellers]

Green Bay Packers, New York Jets take opposite approaches to team-building | Green Bay Press-Gazette

A Green Bay newspaper takes a look at the polar opposite approaches between the Packers and the Jets, who meet in NJ on Sunday.

There probably aren’t two NFL teams that conduct business more differently than the Green Bay Packers and New York Jets.

Ted Thompson, the Packers’ general manager, is the most free agent-and-trade-averse man running an NFL club today. If he wouldn’t trade a third-round draft pick for Marshawn Lynch earlier this month, he’s never going to do a meaningful in-season deal. It is and always will be all draft and develop, all the time, as long as Thompson is calling the shots in Green Bay.

Jets coach Rex Ryan and GM Mike Tannenbaum, on the other hand, have swung big in the last year, trading for and signing seven accomplished players who were character, contract or age risks in pursuit of the Super Bowl — this year.

Thompson is highly sensitive to locker room and organizational harmony, puts forward possibly the most bland public face of any GM in the NFL and is a stoic of the highest order. “No drama Obama” has nothing on this man.

Ryan, on the other hand, is brash in a league in which boring and uninformative are art forms among the men who front for their organizations. He appears to embrace confrontation and chaos.

The differences in management philosophies are manifest in ways big and small. Consider their takes on the HBO series “Hard Knocks.”

Ryan welcomed the added pressure and scrutiny of the series in training camp this past summer. And Thompson? There is no way in this universe’s configuration he’d even consider allowing HBO into the Packers’ camp.

So which approach is better?

read the rest of the column here

 

[Ron Sellers]

Semi-related, the same paper also offered their viewpoint on the Randy Moss trade.

Minnesota Vikings get no guarantees out of Randy Moss trade | Green Bay Press-Gazette

At age 33, he’s no longer the once-in-a-lifetime talent the Minnesota Vikings drafted in 1998. But is he still good enough to be the difference in the division this year? To lift a Vikings team weakened by an injury to their best receiver (Sidney Rice), a quarterback who’s finally showing age (Brett Favre) and slip-shod play on the offensive line (most notably, right tackle Phil Loadholdt)?

Or, have the all-in Vikings, with their aging roster, thrown good money after bad in a desperate shot at the Holy Grail?

There might not be a simple either-or answer to this one, because part of the answer depends on whether Moss is so rare a talent that he remains an elite player for two or three more years. And if so, whether the Vikings can re-sign him to a front-loaded contract extension that protects them when the salary cap likely returns next year.

Still, it’s hard to shake the too-little, too-late feeling of this deal.

read the rest of the column here