GM Ted Thompson was interviewed during the Family Night Scrimmage and he is really doing a good job of answering questions. Originally it was annoying that he never seemed to say anything, he still says few interesting things, but he doesn't avoid any question and explains why he doesn't want to discuss something. The best policy is to give the other NFL teams as little free information as possible. At his August 7th press conference there were a few interesting points.
The Packers roster is likely to have two or three players on it in September that are not currently on the practice field.
It's part of the personnel process from now and through the final cuts, and even beyond quite frankly, we will do night and day tape watching on preseason games. Fortunately we had the Hall of Fame Game in already, so we're going to start that as soon as I get done with you guys here. We try to focus, number one, on personnel, the personnel side of it in terms of who's got multiple, who looks really strong at a particular position, maybe they're not going to be able to keep all these guys, and that sort of thing. Obviously we try to find out how they're using the younger guys. How they're going to fit, what roles they're asking these guys to do. It's a pretty extensive process. Because like I said before, it's all positions. It's not just, take our particular position of tight end, we're a little thin there, we've gotten banged up. We're not just going to watch for tight ends. We're going to be watching for everybody on those teams, because you never know how this thing shakes out. We'll do a lot of watching tape.
There are a number of returning and rookie linebackers in camp. When asked about them he specifically mentioned LBs Tim Goodwell and Tracy White. Goodwell was involved in several tackles during the Family Night Scrimmage. White has little shot at any significant playing time on the starting defense, but the veteran was the leading tackler on special teams last season and the Packers' mediocre kick coverage unit can't afford to lose its best player.
On WR Donald Driver's extension: