Word came down recently that Green Bay Packers president Mark Murphy will be replaced in 2025 by Ed Policy. Although this may seem like a rather innocuous detail, it actually represents a larger shift in the Packers’ culture and environment that has been ongoing for several years now.
Green Bay Packers: New head man
So who will be the new leader of the Packers’ franchise next year? It’s Ed Policy, who is currently the chief operating officer and general counsel for the team. He has been with the Green Bay Packers for 12 seasons. He has a rich familial background in the NFL, as his father was also a team president for both the San Francisco 49ers and the Cleveland Browns.
As for Mark Murphy, his exit is not technically by choice. It is within the Green Bay Packers’ bylaws that when the team president reaches the age of 70, it is mandatory that they retire. That’s why the process to find a successor began in earnest months ago, knowing that Murphy would turn 70 in July 2025.
2018: The Beginning of change
When Packers’ GM Ted Thompson announced he was leaving his post after the 2017 season, some may have been tempted to just write it off as a successful GM deciding to run off into the sunset. But in fact, it was a sign of a massive overhaul that was about to take place.
In the middle of the 2018 season, longtime head coach Mike McCarthy was fired. Then, after the 2021 season, MVP QB Aaron Rodgers left to join the New York Jets. In just about six years; the GM, the head coach, the quarterback, and the team president have all been replaced by new blood. That is a seismic shift in the day-to-day operations of the Packers.
The Packers should also be lauded for they have handled this multi-year transition period. They did not suddenly decide to blow up their entire organizational structure. They responsibly made the decisions that they made and followed those up by meticulously making sure that they found the right replacements.
Green Bay Packers: What are the results?
It would be safe to say that the Packers have been able to reboot their franchise in a way that has allowed them to continue their success. Matt LaFleur has been widely acclaimed as a first time head coach, and Jordan Love is coming off a breakout season in which he led his squad to a playoff win. Despite losing Rodgers as well as letting go of Packers’ veterans like Davante Adams, Mason Crosby and David Bakhtiari, GM Brian Gutekunst has been able to build a roster that is entering 2024 as a legit NFC contender.
One might be wondering what this change will have on the team’s chemistry and comity going into the 2025 NFL season. Will anything significant change occur in how the Green Bay Packers training camp is run or how well the team does on draft night? The answer is probably no. The Packers are known around the league as being run as a well-oiled machine, even with all the recent changes.
Final takeaways
The lesson that the other 31 NFL teams can learn from what the Packers have gone through is that sometimes change is good. It can be rather uncomfortable and some teams that are less fortunate than Green Bay may need several seasons to recover from a total rebuild, but there are countless examples of teams who have been able to whether the storm and remain in contention. The goal of any NFL franchise is not to do what is easy, but what is ultimately right for your team’s future. And that pertains to those in the front office, not just on the football field.
