Packer Central

Reaction: Thompson ‘Always Saw Himself as a Scout’

“I think all the scouts would say, ‘He was one of us.’ So, it’s a sad, sad day.” Plus, reaction from several former Packers players.
Bill Huber|
Reaction: Thompson ‘Always Saw Himself as a Scout’
Reaction: Thompson ‘Always Saw Himself as a Scout’

GREEN BAY, Wis. – On March 20, 2012, the Green Bay Packers hosted veteran center Jeff Saturday on a free-agent visit.

General manager Ted Thompson was not there. Instead, he was in Ames, Iowa, for Iowa State’s pro day. He wasn’t there to watch a member of the Cyclones, though. Instead, an official in Iowa State’s football department at the time said Thompson was probably there to watch Damon Harrison, an unknown (at the time) defensive lineman from William Penn, an NAIA school in Oskaloosa, Iowa.

“To me, that story sums Ted up right there. That’s him,” said Jim Nagy, the Senior Bowl executive director who got his start in the NFL as an intern with the Packers in 1996.

Thompson, who built the teams that won the 2010 Super Bowl and advanced to NFC Championship Games in 2007, 2014 and 2016, died Wednesday at age 68.

“There’s a lot of people in the league right now that are affected by this. I think all the scouts would say, ‘He was one of us.’ So, it’s a sad, sad day,” Nagy said.

Nagy didn’t get to know Thompson during the Packers’ Super Bowl XXXI championship season but gained a deep amount of respect for him as their paths crossed over the years. Whether it was on-campus stops during the college season, or the all-star games, Scouting Combine and pro days during the lead-up to the draft, Thompson “always saw himself as a scout,” Nagy said.

“Some guys move up the ranks and they enjoy putting the suit on and walking around the field on gameday and doing all those things being the face of the franchise,” Nagy said. “I always appreciated the fact that when you’d be at a school with Ted, even when he was the GM of the team, he was like a scout when he was on campus. He didn’t just sit back and let the scouts do the work. He was a scout that day. I Just loved that approach that he took to the job as he moved up on the ladder.”

Here are some social media tributes to Thompson:

Published
Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.

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