I'll make the point again: There's a difference between not addressing problems and solving them. For example, Thompson had drafted Mike Neal in the 2010 draft, IMO in anticipation of Cullen Jenkins perhaps departing the next season. That obviously didn't work out, but it wasn't because Thompson didn't address it.
Look at the 2012 draft. That obviously was a draft to address the problems on D: That the first 6 selections played defense wasn't a coincidence. Two of those first 6 players were very good picks in Hayward and Daniels. Perry has been very disappointing and Worthy, McMillian and Manning contributed nothing, or close to nothing. Thompson’s philosophy is obviously very dependent upon the draft – that’s by far his number one way to improve the team – and he picked two DL, two LBs, and two DBs to restock the D. If you accept Thompson’s philosophy and were rightly concerned about the defense at the time, you had to be pleased with the way Thompson addressed the problems on D, right? In hindsight it would have been better if Thompson hadn’t been so focused on the D in that draft.
But of course the draft isn’t the only thing available to build a roster and some of us would like Thompson to use UFA more. But a greater dependence on UFA, even second tier UFAs comes with pluses and minuses. The zero sum nature of building an NFL roster means money, cap space and roster spots spend on UFAs aren’t available for the developing players on the roster (as part of the draft and develop philosophy). And Thompson has made the point that UFAs may bring bad habits and may not mesh with the current roster. I would be more willing to make that trade-off, I’m just making the point that it’s not a cure-all and it does come with negatives. Overall I think captainWIMM has it right: Thompson’s body of work in Green Bay has been pretty impressive.
