Morning Buzz: Gutekunst has plenty of work to do
Aaron NaglerWelcome to your game day Morning Buzz, rounding up news and views regarding the Green Bay Packers from around the web and here at PackersNews.com. Grab a strong cup of coffee and get caught up on everything you need to know about the Packers.
We’ll start with Pete Dougherty’s column on the hiring of Brian Gutekunst to be the next Packers general manager and Mark Murphy playing the odds by doing so.
Mark Murphy played the percentages and made a football scout the Green Bay Packers’ new general manager.
Next comes the fallout.
Many signs over the past week pointed to Murphy, the Packers’ president and CEO, choosing the team’s salary-cap manager and top administrator on the football side, Russ Ball, as the new GM. Instead, Murphy surprised on Sunday by hiring the 44-year-old Brian Gutekunst, who first joined the Packers as a scouting intern in 1997.
That’s playing the odds. The Packers have been a model franchise ever since Bob Harlan, the team’s chairman emeritus, ceded to the quintessential scout, Ron Wolf, total control over football operations in 1991. There’s a lot to being a GM, but in the end his most important duties are drafting and signing players. If you don’t get that part right, the rest doesn’t matter. So the Packers’ GM really should be a scout above all.
Ryan Wood has our news story on the hire:
Ryan also has 10 things you need to know about Gutekunst:
Tom Silverstein writes that there are no more excuses for Mike McCarthy:
Michael Cohen looks at the new GM’s top priorities:
We looked at the top three things on Gutekunst’s to-do list:
I chatted with readers about the hire:
Elsewhere, it sounds like the Packers could lose Eliot Wolf to the Browns:
Ron Wolf had some things to say about his son getting passed over for the GM job:
Wolf’s personnel tree continues to grow:
Mark Murphy answered some fan questions via the team’s website:
The Packers have a lot of homegrown players:
Rob Demovsky writes the hiring of Gutekunst is a “home run”
Lots of good Packers talk at WBAY’s website:
Tom Grossi asks the question on the mind of many Packers fans:
ACME Packing Company has some free agent fantasies:
This hire has long-term ramifications:
The Internet’s got jokes: