<
>

Packers GM didn't take Aaron Rodgers' 'all-in' remark as plea for free agents

INDIANAPOLIS -- Most of the NFL world took Aaron Rodgers' "all-in" comment after the Green Bay Packers' NFC Championship Game loss as a plea for Ted Thompson to take a more active approach to free agency this year.

"I didn't," Thompson, the Packers' general manager, said Wednesday at the NFL combine.

Rodgers hasn't been available to expand on his postgame comment since that season-ending loss at Atlanta, but Thompson indicated that it will be business as usual for perhaps the most free-agent averse general manager in the NFL.

"It doesn't matter how old we are, we're going to try to do the exact same thing every year," Thompson, 64, said. "We're going to try to get to the Super Bowl and win it. And that's what we're going to try to do again this year."

Rodgers, 33, said he believes his window to get back to the Super Bowl hasn't begun to close.

"I still feel pretty young," Rodgers said in Atlanta. "I think I have a number of years left in me [where] I can play at a high level. "We've just got to make sure we're going all-in every year to win, and I think we can take a big step this offseason."

Based on Thompson's comments Wednesday, the Packers would appear to be bit players -- at best -- when it comes to other team's free agents. Last year, he signed one impact veteran: tight end Jared Cook to a one-year, $2.75 million deal. And like Julius Peppers when he signed with the Packers three years earlier, Cook had been cut by his old team and wasn't a true unrestricted free agent but rather a street free agent.

The focus instead will be on trying to retain as many of the Packers' own free agents -- a list that includes Eddie Lacy, T.J. Lang, Nick Perry, Micah Hyde, Peppers (although Thompson said he didn't know if Peppers planned to keep playing) and Cook.

"That's our intention, and it's our intention every year," Thompson said. "I stand on this podium, I think, every year and say the same thing. Our best intention will be to sign as many of our own players as we can, and keep it together."

The window during which free agents can begin negotiating with other teams opens Tuesday and the Packers have yet to strike a single deal, but Thompson said he wasn't concerned.

"It's an artificial deadline," he said. "Not that free agency's not going to start at a certain time, it's just once you get to this particular point, there's very little risk of the player getting injured, so there's not a push on the side of the player to hurry up to get a deal done. But at the same time, sometimes they'd prefer to stay and deals get done earlier than we think. It's worked both ways, as you guys know. Over the years, we've signed several right at the start of free agency and my guess is that's what's going to happen this year."