GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Caught in the middle of the spat between the NFL and the NFL Players Association, Green Bay Packers general manager Ted Thompson did the only thing he could Tuesday. He stood by Clay Matthews and Julius Peppers, but he offered no more insight into whether his two defensive stars will cooperate with the league in its performance-enhancing drug investigation.
Only minutes after neither Matthews nor Peppers was available to reporters during Tuesday’s media session, Thompson took a proactive approach by offering a statement on the matter before any questions were asked in his regularly scheduled press conference.
“It’s kind of as simple as pie: We’re going to support our players, we’ve always supported our players and we will continue to support our players,” Thompson said. “This is no different in this case. I will have nothing further to say on this matter. Everybody in the world’s going to be talking about it, but I’m not going to have anything to say about, the Packers will not have anything to say about it until it gets resolved. You can in the meantime direct your questions to the NFL or the NFLPA.”
A day after the NFL imposed an Aug. 25 deadline for players named in the December Al-Jazeera report to comply with the league’s request to be interviewed on the matter or face an immediate suspension, the NFLPA had not issued any comment or reaction.
Matthews and Peppers both have maintained their innocence but have not addressed their options since Monday’s development. Thompson would not say whether Matthews and Peppers will meet with NFL officials on the matter.
“I’m sure there’s a lot of people that don’t understand what’s going [on]. That would include probably most of the people in this room, including me,” Thompson said. “It’s a little more complicated than you might want it to be. But I think the more people pipe in, especially somebody like me, into the whole serenade, the less likely it is that it will work itself out.”
It’s Thompson's job to make contingency plans for the possibility that Matthews and Peppers won’t be available for the start of the season, but he wouldn’t say whether the latest developments in the case would force him to alter his plans for the roster.
“We make contingency plans for all of our players, because you never know what’s going to happen in a football game,” Thompson said.
Thompson, like any team official, is in some ways caught in the middle of this situation. As a team employee, he’s technically on the league/management side of things and has to answer to commissioner Roger Goodell. But he’s also in the business of winning, meaning he wants his best players on the field, hence his support for Matthews and Peppers. And he’s a former player who at one time was represented by the players’ union.
“I think I’ve said all I’m going to say on this,” Thompson said. “It doesn’t serve a purpose. I’m not an active player in this group.”