Q&A with Packers GM Ted Thompson: Jinxes, backup QBs, Brett Favre and more

Tom Pelissero | USA TODAY Sports

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Ted Thompson doesn't look like a guy who just lost his Pro Bowl quarterback for several weeks in the midst of a playoff push.

It's Friday afternoon in a conference room on the third floor of the Lambeau Field atrium. Thompson, the Green Bay Packers' reticent general manager, has just returned from one of the scouting trips he still takes almost every Tuesday through Friday during the season.

And Thompson, 60, is in an upbeat mood, even while discussing challenges past and present – most notable, Aaron Rodgers' broken collarbone, which has thrust career backup quarterback Seneca Wallace into the lineup for Sunday's game against the Philadelphia Eagles and beyond.

In an interview with USA TODAY Sports, Thompson reveals why he never speaks about the possibility of Rodgers getting hurt, the decision to bring in Wallace, the evolution of the scouting process, his future as GM – and yes, Brett Favre.

Q. When you're building your roster from year to year and thinking about the big picture, how much do you take into account the possibility of an injury to Aaron Rodgers?

A. You make sure you have so many of every position, given the limitations of a 53-man roster. But quite frankly, you never think about your better players ever getting hurt. If you think that way, you might jinx it. It might happen. Literally, you don't think about it. It's a place where you never tread.

Q. Do you believe in jinxes?

A. No. But you still never tread. You just don't like to say it.

Q. So, even when you're discussing the backup quarterback position, you're not saying 'if Aaron's hurt …'

A. No. That position's not really like any other position. But when I was here in the '90s and went to Seattle and even here, we've always liked to fool with that second and third quarterback thing, trying to tweak it and find a guy. In a perfect world, you do it like Ron (Wolf, the former Packers GM who gave Thompson his first scouting job) – you find a good one, he'd apprentice to Brett for a couple years and then you'd trade him for a second-round pick. Not to treat him like a commodity, but then you go get another one and you do the same thing with him. It sort of worked that way a little bit with Matt Flynn. But it doesn't always work. We've drafted a couple of guys. We've had guys here who never did find it.

Q. When you're playing with that No. 2 QB spot on a playoff-caliber team, are you looking at it through the prism of 'can we win a Super Bowl with this guy' or 'can we win a game with this guy?'

A. I think there are both kinds. There are a few of them that are backups that are available in the offseason that you look at and you think, 'This guy could lead us to the Super Bowl.' There's 32 starters (in the NFL). Say he's the 33rd guy – is he going to be able to win you the Super Bowl? I'm not so sure.

Q. That's the thing. Is there any backup quarterback who can lead a team to a Super Bowl with the way the game and league have evolved?

A. I think it would be the unknown guys, if there is one. It would be the Tom Bradys of the world – sitting on the bench, brought up behind a veteran, not much said about him, sixth-round draft pick, plays good in the summertime but never plays during the regular season, and all of a sudden the thing gets turned upside down and he becomes Tom Brady.

Q. With the time you invested in Graham Harrell, and then bringing in Vince Young and ending up with Seneca Wallace days before the opener – can you take me through the timeline of the decisions to change course?

A. I would a little bit, but I'm not going to rate these guys. If something went wrong at the backup quarterback position, it's my fault. It's not somebody else's fault. It's not even one of those quarterbacks' fault. I just didn't get it worked out right.

Q. So, why Seneca Wallace?

A. I had a pretty good comfort level with him. I was in Seattle when we drafted him out there. I know the kind of person and I know his football intelligence. I know he's got good mobility, has confidence as a player.

Q. To what degree, if at all, do you look at the fact that he's 5-16 as a starter in the NFL?

A. Not a lot. I think it's important to be a winner, but you'd have to examine each set of circumstances, and sometimes the odds are stacked against you pretty good.

Q. You're in your ninth season as general manager. How, if at all, has your roster-building philosophy evolved during that time?

A. Not a lot. It's still based on the way Ron Wolf trained us. We're still trying to continue to push the envelope to try to get better all the time. We're still trying to work the bottom part of our roster during the course of our season, as much as you can without disrupting the flow of getting ready to play the game. You can always say, 'we can stick him on special teams' – well, if he doesn't know what he's doing, he's not going to be able to play on special teams. Now you've hurt the team. We're not going to do anything to hurt the team. Roster building – I don't think that ever changes really. You have certain guidelines that Ron taught us – you have to be so tall if you're a corner and that sort of thing, and we stray from time to time. But there's no absolutes in football.

Q. How do you avoid being overly reactionary to circumstances – a backup plan fails at a certain position, which may be a scouting or development failure, as opposed to a philosophical failure?

A. We have a lot of people here that I feel comfortable talking to and examining. We're not going to sugarcoat anything. If we've made a mistake, we've made a mistake. But for the most part, we try to stay steady as you go. Our coaches are good at taking young players and coaching them up and getting them ready to play. They're not overwhelmed by it. They don't get whacked-out, and in some places it might be that way. But it's not that way here, because it's happened to us over and over and over again. We try to get good people, and as soon as they get here, whether they're on the practice squad or whether they're on the regular roster, they have to know they're getting ready to play and maybe start and maybe play the whole game. That's just the mind-set here. It's the only way we can get by.

Q. The fact you won a Super Bowl with 15 guys on injured reserve probably helps. How significant a factor is it in your success that you seem to have a pretty clear plan for dealing with these situations?

A. I think it's absolutely important, because otherwise there's going to be confrontations. There's going to be arguments. This place is set up a certain way, and it was set up that way when Ron was here and it works. I have complete control over personnel, but I don't walk around axing people and telling people to go to hell because I know what I'm doing and they don't. We're all in this together. We're all trying to find the right way to put the pieces together, and there's no book you can go to and find the answer to it. You learn and you grow and you get experience. Hopefully, we're better now than we were three years ago. Hopefully, I'll be better three years from now.

Q. You're 60 years old now. Ron only was GM for nine seasons. Do you intend to be in that seat three years from now?

A. I don't know. I suppose. I don't have any other thing in mind. I joke – it's kind of half-joking – I wouldn't mind being an area scout where you just hit the road, check into your Marriotts and scout people up, and if you happen to catch the game on Sunday in a bar somewhere on a beach, that's cool, too. That'd be a really good scouting job.

Q. Some guys become GMs and lean more toward administrative stuff, don't watch as much film, delegate. What is it about the scouting side do you like enough to keep doing it?

A. I think it's the thrill of the chase – to be able to find a guy. We belong to combines and we get the list of names and we have pre-ratings. Now, we rate them the way we would select them and rate them. But I think it's like in some of those old baseball movies, where you're some baseball scout on the road and you find this guy that nobody ever has known about. That doesn't happen anymore. But you're always looking for that guy. You want to be that person – 'Yeah, that Ted Thompson, he found that guy.'

Q. Occasionally, there might be a Division II guy or something …

A. Sure, yeah. But there's very few secrets in scouting. The teams are too good at it and the scouts on those teams are too good at it.

Q. How much has that changed through time?

A. I'm relatively new at it, being that I started doing this in 1992. I don't go back to the days where they carried their own projectors on the road. But there was a time when I came out of college – 1975 – where two guys from Jackson State University were drafted number (four and six), Walter Payton and Robert Brazile. That would never happen today. All those players are somewhere else. Elvin Bethea, who I played with (on the Houston Oilers in the 1970s and '80s) and went into the Hall of Fame, was from North Carolina AT&T. I think in those days, when you had those predominantly black college players, there was more of that 'let's go find them, let's go dig 'em up.' Now, it's a little bit more corporate. But you still have to make decisions on do you like them or not.

Q. Isn't part of that the college scouting process evolving? Alabama can afford to scout the whole country and get those guys who might have ended up elsewhere 30 or 40 years ago.

A. I think so, yeah. The same pressures that are on us to find players and things like that are on colleges. It's not as easy as it sounds.

Q. The last time we spoke on this floor of the building was the summer of 2008, right as the Brett Favre situation was escalating. Does that remain the toughest thing you've gone through as GM?

A. I think so, because it tore at the fabric of the place – through no fault of anybody. I don't think it was the fault of us. I don't think it was the fault of Brett. It just was one of those car wrecks that you could see coming, but it wasn't like you could dodge. It just happened. That was a shame.

Q. You look at what has happened since – Aaron Rodgers has won an MVP, you've won a Super Bowl, you've been to the playoffs four straight years. As it was happening, was any part of you doubting whether you'd even make it to the other side and see this success?

A. Oh, I don't go around hanging my head about it, but I doubt every day. And I think it's a challenge, and I think it's an opportunity to say, 'OK, let's get past this.' But there's train wrecks all over. And you know there are. You just hope you can dodge them.

Q. Going forward, what are the things you want to accomplish on a daily basis to take this roster, this team, where you want it to go?

A. Just to continue to evolve, continue to do our job, and a lot of that is on the contract side and on the salary cap side. But it's way more than that. It's making sure you make the right decisions on people, and sometimes, people change. Sometimes, it's better for someone to go somewhere else. It doesn't make them a bad guy. It doesn't necessarily make us a bad guy. But you have to make those hard decisions. That's the hardest part, is when you have a player that has played for you and has done a good job for you, but for whatever reason, you think it's time to part ways. That's like telling a family member goodbye.

Q. You don't speak like a guy who's even mulling retirement …

A. No. Not right this second. I just got back from a scouting trip. I'm all invigorated.

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