Ted Thompson Press Conference: Packers GM on Favre, Injuries, Player Evaluation

On Wednesday before the team took to Ray Nitschke Field for practice, Green Bay Packers General Manager Ted Thompson spoke to the media to discuss the team as he does each week during training camp. Here is a partial transcript of his press conference.

For those of you new to my press conferences, this will be the largest crows we have in training camp. So far so good...training camp is training camp, there's things you like and things you want to see improvement on and hopefully well have more of one and less of the other.

Thompson would not address injuries, instead deferring to Mike McCarthy who usually addresses them. He did mention briefly about how to handle injuries on the offensive line in light of Don Barclay's injury:

Guys go down, other guys step up...We tried to acquire as many big guys as we could in the offseason.

On Brett Favre and his impending Packers Hall of Fame induction next summer:

What he's done for this place is remarkable. I was here in 92 when Ron first acquired Brett so we sorta grew up with the Packers. He's a good guy, great football player, great teammate. We're happy all that other stuff has been put aside and let's go forward with the relationship.

On how to evaluate players in the preseason games:

Is the game too big for him ... sometimes it'll (happen) in the first game but not the second game. You acquire tons of information over the course of a short time ... in that time you'll find out a lot about all the players on our team and hopefully you make the right decisions at the end. It's a very difficult process at the end. This part is not so difficult, nobody has to leave.

On whether the team would weight a player's performance in preseason games or practice reps more heavily when making cuts:

I think you try to factor all of (practice and game action) in. Certainly playing the game is an important factor, you only get so many looks at that...it's all combined.

Ted was asked about roster construction and if the team has certain players that they want to succeed:

If they do good and if we drafted him, that's what we like. Kidding aside...you don't pull for a specific player ... (how we think the roster will look is) a lot different than it was June 1st and it'll be a lot different at the end of August than it is today. I know the media has to make their own fantasy cuts for who makes the roster ... you guys are mostly always wrong ... Some of the young guys get depressed because some sportswriter has them not making the final roster ... it's not accurate and I kinda feel bad for the guys that have to read that ... they wrote that about me when I was with the Houston Oilers, and I was always cut in every newspaper.

On Johnathan Franklin getting a role with the Packers organization:

Mark Murphy thought it was a good idea to see if we could find a role for him to perform ... He's gonna be the mayor of LA, he's not gonna be here that long. It gives him some insight in some way of seeing the inside workings of an organization on a different level, not necessarily the football part, maybe marketing or whatever.

On whether he has an emotional tie to the Tennessee Titans since he played for the Houston Oilers:

I don't have an emotional connection...I was told one of my pictures still hangs on the wall down there. I don't know if that's true, I can't imagine that's true...I think someone's pulling my leg.

Stay tuned to APC for more on the Packers' Wednesday practice.