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As most football fans know, the Green Bay Packers are a unique organization. They are the only non-profit, community-owned team in sports. This means it is run by a board of directors along with a CEO, Mark Murphy.
He made some front office changes in early January and recently tried to explain why he shuffled around some of the duties the way he did. In his most recent column for the Packers website, he responded to a fan asking why Super Bowl champ Mike McCarthy will now report to him rather than new general manager Brian Gutenkunst.
“A key factor in my thought process was to improve communication within football. I felt that, over time, silos had developed within football operations and communication had suffered. Also, I wanted to create a structure that gave Brian the best chance to succeed. By narrowing his responsibilities (several of the GM’s responsibilities were shifted to Russ Ball, including salary cap management and contract negotiations), it allows him to focus on the most important aspects of his job, the draft and determining the 90- and 53-man rosters….”
He went on to talk about how he wanted to retain Brian Gutekunst and Russ Ball. According to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, many thought Ball was going to get the GM job. But Murphy wanted to go with Gutekunst, yet he feared Ball would move to another team. So, to keep that from happening, he made Ball the new Director of Football Operations and Gutekunst the GM.
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But then he shifted a major duty that typically goes to the GM, to himself—the head coach.
Maybe he made the changes out of fear of offending Ball to the point he'd leave. So, by limiting the new GM’s authority and responsibilities he makes the position less desirable. Ball doesn’t feel slighted, so he stays.
In the end, no one is going to care what anyone in the front office does as long as they win games next year.
