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Leader of the Pack GM Wolf returned Green Bay to its glorious roots
Updated: Friday February 02, 2001 1:43 PM
As many of you know, I'm one of 38 selectors for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In that job I get politicked a lot. This year the Ron Yary and Lynn Swann factions came after me hard. But I will not have to be politicked about Ron Wolf. I will vote for Ron Wolf -- and I will advocate for his election into Canton -- as soon as his name appears on our list of finalists. Two reasons: One, after a distinguished career as a totally anonymous personnel man, Wolf, who announced his retirement Thursday effective after the 2001 NFL Draft, worked the last decade as the general manager of the Packers. And he did something that nobody thought could be done in Green Bay. He made the Packers a team good players wanted to play for. He made Green Bay a destination, not a dreaded location. In his tenure, he lured three of the NFL's most charismatic personalities to Green Bay -- quarterback Brett Favre, head coach Mike Holmgren and defensive end Reggie White. He did it by shrewdly trading for Favre and by convincing Holmgren and White that Green Bay was not the end of the universe. Two, with Green Bay clearly being the toughest place to build a great team in the free-agency era, Wolf may have built the best team in football. Since 1994 when the league began forcing teams to comply with the salary cap, the Packers' 74-38 mark (a .661 winning percentage) is the NFL's best record. Wolf, 62, said he couldn't muster up the energy and enthusiasm to continue to fight against the salary cap, war in free agency and joust with agents. And so he decided to leave the team to head coach Mike Sherman, a professorial sort who will be asked to don the dual cap Holmgren wanted to wear in Green Bay before he left for Seattle two years ago. Wolf will stay on as a consultant, but likely will move to the eastern shore of Maryland or to Delaware and stay in semi-retirement. He told me he almost certainly would never take another NFL job.
Wolf was not down when I spoke to him Thursday afternoon. In fact, he was unusually reflective. Grateful for getting this chance to rebuild one of this country's great sporting institutions. Happy that he won, of course. And exuberant about being able to do something that no one thought possible -- making America's smallest big-league city a winner in the age of greed and fame. "Ten years ago, I was sort of feeling hung out to dry," Wolf told me over the phone from Wisconsin. "I was feeling sorry for myself a little bit. I was working for the Jets then and I never thought I would have the chance ever again to run my own team. When the Packers called, I didn't care if they were in Sebastapol. People said, 'How could you take that job? You can't win there.'
"But, see, that's why this is such a great profession. You can win in Green Bay. This was supposed to be the deathbed of pro football. And in this era of free agency I am so pleased and I feel very special to have been a part of making this a viable place where people want to play, a place that can contend for the playoffs every year. We took a downtrodden franchise and made it a good one. So many people helped, so many players, so many coaches, but I guess I'm the titular head and to be very honest, I am very proud of that. "Besides making the trades and the acquisitions that we did to help our team, the other thing I'm very proud of is that we as a group have re-instilled in all of the players that have come through here in the last 10 years the true Packers' tradition. As far as the guys on this team were concerned when we got here, all Vince Lombardi was was the name of a street. We brought the old players back. We got them involved. We got our young players to love the old guys and to feel a sense of family. And I really think that helped us win. It has just been a very, very special place to be." Wolf did something else that others have not been able to emulate in recent NFL history. In an imperfect world, he tried to perfect the art of the deal. He knew that too many stick-in-the-mud front-office types in the league were afraid of making trades. He wasn't. In the decade from 1991 until preseason 2000, Wolf was responsible for eight of the precious few 21 player-for-player trades made in the NFL. In fact, he made 16 percent of the trades overall during that time. He always felt, and repeated this to me Thursday, that if you didn't use every opportunity to build your team, you weren't doing a very good job.
I'll never forget in 1995 when Sports Illustrated assigned me to do a story on a week in the life of the Packers. I had the run of the team office in Green Bay and the locker room and several players' homes. On Wednesday afternoon that week, before the Packers were to play Minnesota, I remember sitting in Holmgren's office when the coach was having a conversation with Wolf, who was on the road, scouting college football. The two talked about whether the Packers should sign holdout tight end Keith Jackson. Holmgren's view was that the team was playing just fine without Jackson, and that since Jackson had been so mouthy and opinionated about not wanting to play in Green Bay, he might upset team chemistry by coming in at midseason. Wolf's view was that Holmgren had excellent control of the locker room and that the chemistry issue would not be a problem. Besides, Jackson was too talented not to sign if the Packers had a chance, which they did. Holmgren tried to be convincing with Wolf. Wolf, in his forceful but quiet way, was just as convincing with Holmgren. And finally Holmgren conceded. He would take Jackson on the ballclub and make the best of it. When I questioned Holmgren about this, he said everything you needed to know about his trust for Wolf, even though the two men did their share of sparring. "Ron really feels strongly about this one," Holmgren told me. "And I've learned enough about Ron now that when he feels strongly about something, he's almost always right." When the Packers' history is examined, Wolf should get as much credit for the 2000 season as for any that he lorded over. True, Green Bay missed the playoffs and stumbled through most of the first half of the season on its way to a 9-7 record. But it's what Wolf did to get the Packers to respectability that counts.
Before the season he traded dimeback Fred Vincent to Seattle for a running back deeply entrenched in Holmgren's doghouse, Ahman Green. He traded a fourth-round pick in 2001 to Denver for linebacker Nate Wayne. He traded a fifth-rounder in 2001 to Philadelphia for a backup corner and return specialist, Allen Rossum. Knowing he wouldn't be able to get Aaron Brooks on the field before losing him as a free agent down the road, Wolf dealt the young quarterback to New Orleans for a 2001 third-round pick.
Green became the first player in 23 years to lead the Packers in rushing and receiving, which has rendered the injury-prone Dorsey Levens expendable this offseason. Wayne became a fixture at right outside linebacker, finishing second on the team with 126 tackles. Rossum, who took Vincent's spot in the dime package, ranked fourth in the NFL with a 25.8-yard kickoff return average and 16th in punt returns (8.6 yards per return). Green, Wayne and Rossum became three of Green Bay's most important players, and Wolf got them all, collectively, for a song. "When you hit the top in the NFL these days, then you're supposed to go down and have a couple of 6-10 type seasons," Wolf said. "The worst we hit was 8-8. I give an enormous amount of credit for this season to Mike Sherman for holding the team together. But I believe you have to take every avenue you can to help make your team better. I'm an easy person to deal with. I was this year. "Now, I've made some clunkers. A lot of them. But the minute you succumb to the attitude of 'Well, I never want to do that again,' you're dead. I just always felt that you had to keep trading or keep trying to make your team better." Wolf will live on in the NFL in guys like Randy Mueller, the sharp young general manager in New Orleans. You can't be afraid to take chances in this league or you'll be like every other mediocre franchise. Wolf told me he thinks trading is going to make a comeback, that people are now seeing how good it is to trade a middle-round pick for a player you know can help your team right away. I'm not so sure. I'm finishing my 17th year covering the NFL and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that people with the action plans of Ron Wolf don't come along very often. I asked a friend of his today what he thought Wolf's legacy would be. "Simple," this buddy said. "He was never afraid to make a trade. Really, he was never afraid to do anything. That attitude will take you a long way in this league." Amen. Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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