Sherman backed decision, Harlan says
By TOM SILVERSTEIN
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Green Bay - If he wouldn't have been able to lure Ted Thompson to be his general manager, Green Bay Packers President Bob Harlan would have been staring at an empty seat in a luxurious new office inside Lambeau Field with no options to fill it.
Ted Thompson gets a five-year deal and becomes Executive Vice President, General Manager and Director of Football Operations.
That's how strongly Harlan felt he needed to separate the head coach's and general manager's duties in his front office and how strongly he felt Thompson should assume one of them.
Early Wednesday afternoon, after returning from a meeting in New York, Harlan met coach and general manager Mike Sherman in his office and informed him that he was splitting the duties. A few hours later, Harlan offered the general manager's position to Thompson, the Seattle Seahawks' vice president of football operations and the only man Harlan sought for the position.
Had Thompson turned him down, Harlan had no ready alternative to fill the GM spot and would have had to conduct a long search. But early Friday morning, after about nine hours of negotiations between lawyers for both parties, Thompson agreed to a five-year deal to become the team's 10th general manager.
"I knew it would have posed a problem if he said no," Harlan said. "I would really be concerned who I would turn to."
Harlan became convinced Thompson was the right man for the job in October after several National Football League sources he consulted confirmed the recommendation he received from former general manager Ron Wolf, a strong Thompson supporter. Wolf brought Thompson into the scouting business in 1992 with the Packers and kept him under his watchful eye until Thompson left to run his own scouting department in 2000 in Seattle.
And so Harlan focused his attention on someone he thought brought the same keen sense for talent that Wolf had and made a full-court press for his services once the Packers' season ended. When the Seahawks announced the firing of team President Bob Whitsitt on Friday, it opened up the possibility Thompson might be retained as general manager.
But Harlan's gamble wasn't that big because friends of Thompson's say he considers his new opportunity a dream job.
"He feels like he just got the best job in football," said former Packers and Seattle executive Mike Reinfeldt, a close friend of Thompson's. "It's a great fit for him."
Thompson, who turns 52 on Monday, did not attend a news conference announcing his hiring and was unavailable for comment. He will speak at a news conference scheduled for 11 a.m. today.
In hiring Thompson, Harlan made it clear that his new general manager has full authority over the football operation, including the right to fire the head coach. In fact, Harlan used the same written agreement the club had used to sign Wolf 13 years ago for the basis of Thompson's contract.
"Ted is the boss of the organization," Harlan said. "I put him at the top of the football operation."
Thompson is the fourth general manager in club history to serve solely in the front office, joining Wolf (1992-2001), Vince Lombardi (1968) and Verne Lewellen (1954-'58). His salary will be considerably less than the nearly $3 million a year Wolf received at the end of his tenure, but it's reasonable to think it's between $1 million and $1.5 million a year.
Four years ago, Wolf had a chance to recommend Thompson as his replacement, but Thompson was in Seattle and Harlan wanted to capture some of the life Sherman injected into the team after his first season as head coach. Harlan wanted to bring back a far more experienced personnel evaluator.
"I think Ted's matured a great deal in the last five years," Harlan said. "I think he's put together the scouting staff in Seattle, run the drafts, and I think he's become a much more efficient personnel guy in the last five years. He's grown in these 13 years. His career has progressed, and I think he's one of the better personnel people in the league.
"I tried to look at a lot and talk to people who knew a lot and his name came up frequently. I felt very fortunate to get him to say yes."
Said Wolf: "That's a great hire. He's the right man for the job."
Thompson takes over from Sherman, who inherited the general manager's duties from a retiring Wolf one full season into his tenure as head coach. Harlan said Sherman approved of the decision to hire Thompson.
Sherman's regular-season record of 53-27 is the fifth-best over the first five years of a coaching career since the NFL-AFL merger in 1970, but his drafts and free-agent signings were fraught with mistakes. Harlan was concerned that the dual role was taking away from Sherman's ability to coach the team.
A meticulous and tireless worker, Sherman poured all his energy into his job, and Harlan said he started to sense that the head man was spreading himself too thin. Never a fan of the dual coach-general manager arrangement for one man, Harlan became concerned when a general manager from another team spoke of seeing Sherman at every off-season scouting event, regardless of its insignificance.
Harlan said he basically came to his decision to relieve Sherman of the general manager's duties when he saw him agonizing over the situation involving cornerback Mike McKenzie. A holdout all of training camp, McKenzie reported the second week of the season with the intention only of getting traded.
The weekend before the New York Giants game on Oct. 3, Sherman was dealing with a complicated McKenzie issue while preparing for the game. Harlan met with Sherman the day before the game and saw how distracted he was.
"All he talked about was the difficult situation he was having with McKenzie's agent and the difficult situation he was having with the New Orleans Saints trying to make a trade," Harlan said. "And I thought, 'You know, with a big game coming up tomorrow, we need to be focused in. Somebody else can do these things.' "
Harlan informed the team's executive committee in mid-October that he intended to strip Sherman of the general manager's duties and pursue Thompson. He insisted that his decision was not based on Sherman's performance as a general manager but rather the strain holding two jobs was putting on him.
"This move is not meant in any way to criticize any element of Mike," Harlan said.
There's no question, however, that Harlan wanted a new leader in the scouting department to minimize some of the draft mistakes that have taken place since Wolf left. Harlan said he didn't strongly consider elevating any of the team's three top personnel officials - John Schneider, Reggie McKenzie and John Dorsey - because he thought it would create an awkward situation for someone who had previously worked under Sherman to become his boss.
Even though Sherman has only one year left on his contract and might not be around beyond next season, Harlan said he wanted to bring in someone from outside who could provide a smooth transition.
When he first went out in search of a general manager, personnel men like New England's Scott Pioli, Philadelphia's Tom Heckert and Baltimore's Phil Savage were on his list. But none appealed to him as much as Thompson because they had not been part of the Packers' tradition.
"I didn't think any of them would be as smooth as this," Harlan said. "I thought this would be less of a jolt to Mike than the other way.
"When I would talk to people around the league, they would say there's not a lot of guys who can do this. Other people told me he (Thompson) was a real comer in this league and that they felt he would end up somewhere else."
Thompson's strength, according to Harlan, is his draft expertise. It is well known in league circles that Thompson disdains free agency and prefers to build a team through the draft.
Though he didn't have total control in Seattle, Thompson oversaw five drafts that included seven players who earned all-rookie, all-pro or Pro Bowl honors. Of the 47 players the Seahawks drafted in his tenure, 31 remain on the roster.
The Seahawks have not had the kind of success they thought they would have when Mike Holmgren was hired away from the Packers in 1999 and how much of that has to do with talent is an open debate. The Seahawks are 41-39 in the five regular seasons Thompson has been running the draft and finished 9-8 this season after a first-round playoff loss.
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