GREEN BAY, Wis. -- If inside linebacker was important enough to necessitate moving Pro Bowl outside linebacker Clay Matthews there in the middle of the 2014 season, then why has Ted Thompson waited until the fourth round to address that spot in the past two drafts?

For the second straight year, the Green Bay Packers general manager ignored the position until the third day of the draft. A year after he picked Michigan’s Jake Ryan at No. 129 overall, he grabbed Stanford’s Blake Martinez at No. 131 on Saturday.

With fourth-round pick Blake Martinez joining 2015 fourth-rounder Jake Ryan in the Packers' linebacking stable, might Clay Matthews be able to move back to OLB? David Zalubowski/AP

More than three months after coach Mike McCarthy insisted it was time to move Matthews back to his original position, it's worth wondering whether he now has the roster depth to allow that to fully happen.

“Definitely,” McCarthy said after the draft ended. “I think this is a fluid situation.”

Thompson, of course, didn’t add any inside linebackers in free agency. Instead, he focused on another glaring need, tight end, when he signed St. Louis Rams veteran Jared Cook. He later signed outside linebacker Lerentee McCray, who played the past two seasons in Denver. Both were one-year deals.

There’s no reason to think Martinez will immediately supplant either Ryan or Sam Barrington as a starter in the base defense, but the Packers might not need him to. A more realistic role could be as the lone inside linebacker in the dime package -- a job Matthews didn’t do very often even after his position switch.

“I think it’s a possibility,” said Eliot Wolf, the Packers' director of football operations. “He played in space a lot at Stanford. They like to throw out in the Pac-12 so that’s something he’s used to.”

Last season, defensive coordinator Dom Capers entrusted former undrafted rookie Joe Thomas with that all-important, third-down job and experienced mixed results.

To be sure, McCarthy has said several times this offseason that Matthews won’t completely abandon the inside spot, but the goal is to get his best pass-rusher back on the edge more often than he was last season, when he recorded just 6.5 sacks -- the second-lowest total of his seven-year NFL career.

“Clay prefers to play outside,” Wolf said. “I don’t think that’s a big secret. So any time we can add someone inside that helps facilitate that, it’s a good thing.”

It’s also possible the Packers trust Barrington and Ryan more than those do who thought inside linebacker was their biggest weakness on defense heading into free agency and the draft.

“I don’t think it was as big of a need as some members of the media like to say it is,” Wolf said.

Or maybe the position just isn’t that important.

“The inside linebacker position's important,” McCarthy said. “Obviously, I think a lot of people want to start with the command of the defense and being able to run a defense. We’ve got inside linebackers here in house that are capable of doing that. Clay Matthews did some of that last year, so we have experienced players there, and you definitely look for that in young players.”