NFL Free Agency 2014: the Packers have money to spend -- that's all we know

Yesterday NFL Network reporter Ian Rapoport unveiled that, according to “sources informed of the team’s thinking,” the Packers are planning to spend money in free agency this offseason. This would maybe not be news for many other teams in the league. For Ted Thompson’s Packers? Well, let’s just say that sometimes it seems around Packerland that the second-best thing to a Super Bowl would be a big free agent signing or two.

Rapoport, then, continues to stoke the fires when he adds that the Packers could sign as many as five outside free agents, which would be the most since 2006 and again, to some, maybe the thing that happens just before the plague of locusts arrives.

(For the memories, here are the free agents signed by Thompson and Green Bay in 2006: Wide receiver Marc Boerigter; safety Marquand Manuel; linebacker Ben Taylor; defensive tackle Ryan Pickett; then-cornerback Charles Woodson. So two of those worked out quite well.)

Green Bay will have just under $30 million to spend under the salary cap. Part of that, however, could be allocated towards in-house free agents, namely Sam Shields, Evan Dietrich-Smith, James Jones, John Kuhn, Choose Your Own Defensive Lineman, rookies, and, somehow, more. But Green Bay’s potential spending spree, per Rapoport, is hugely based on the desire to give the defense a facelift in the image of its coordinator, Dom Capers.

So when the report ends with Rapoport saying that makeover could mean faster, more versatile linemen – more in the mold of Datone Jones – it in turn possibly signals the end of the road in Green Bay for beefy free agents like Pickett and B.J. Raji. The one thing it doesn’t mention is whether or not hairstyles will be a factor in this new look Packers’ defense, but we understand that there is a difference between information from sources and top-secret plans for a combover revolution, and we aren’t here to trifle.

There’s a lot to digest here, especially since the Packers’ general Us Versus Spiders relationship with free agency naturally puts our guard up to rumors of this sort. But Rapoport is one of the best out there nationally, making this feel like more than Internet fodder for the time-being.

Still, the biggest thing to remember is that until anything happens nothing has happened. It is always exciting to imagine the possibilities. It is always smart for football teams to at least cruise the avenues available to them for improvement. And here’s where it could just be us making this into an offseason topic du jour more than anything else. The Packers are a smart organization run by very smart, both football-and financially-speaking, people. To think this is the first time in X amount of years they actually considered getting out the checkbook for free agency is a Hot Take served wrong, cold, and with someone else’s side dish. (Yams, if you’re wondering.)

Just because maybe they want to spend some money on outside free agents this year doesn’t mean it’ll happen. Years and money have to line up with a player’s availability and interest and fit with whatever tweaked version we’ll see of the Packers in 2014. And can we just say? Five free agents is a lot. It is a lot for a lot of teams, and feels even crazier for those of us conditioned to believe draft and develop is the one and only avenue Green Bay takes to work in the offseason. But surprising as this report is, as uncharacteristic as it may feel, wouldn’t it be sillier to expect an organization like this, seemingly respected in nearly every corner of the league, to stand pat with a clearly regressing defense? The whole thing feels both expected based on Green Bay’s reputation and yet strange for the same reasons, is what we’re saying here.

We know something will happen, because the amount of players the Packers are forced to make decisions on this offseason means there’s really no other option – change is coming. But twisting in with that, if Rapoport’s sources are right, is the Packers just seeing what everyone else did: the Seattle Seahawks feverishly turning offensive lines into low-impact speed bumps on their way towards creating seemingly constant pressure and chaos from all sides. Often they did this with only four rushers. Four athletic, quick, strong, angry rushers. If this is part of the image Capers wanted all along, there’s no other time its effectiveness could be questioned less.

Honestly, we still won’t believe in multiple free agent signings until we see them, much less five. If the money’s right and the deal works and the player wants to play in Green Bay, however, why wouldn’t it happen?

There’s always the chance this turns into one of those reports referenced after nothing happens. After the Packers pass on veterans, content to wait for the unknown youth of the draft. With some degree of change on the way, though, maybe this means they’ve already started. Or maybe Ted Thompson is laughing at all of us reading deeply into a report from “sources informed of the team’s thinking.” Through it all this stays clear: we shouldn’t really know, based on prior years or what could happen, what to expect from the Packers this time around. It is normal, weird, and it is Green Bay in the offseason.

P.S. For the record we will be ecstatic with one or two well-placed free agents. And by “well-placed” we mostly mean safeties but are willing shift our views at an instant depending on each individual signing.