Green Bay Packers Eliot Wolf a possible successor at GM
The Green Bay Packers quietly made a very important personnel move within their front office on Friday, promoting director of pro personnel Eliot Wolf to director of player personnel. With teams around the NFL reshaping their organizational structures, this move signifies the Green Bay Packers’ commitment to Wolf, who I believe will be first in line to succeed Ted Thompson as the Packers’ next GM when the times comes.
Eliot Wolf is just 32 years old, which makes him significantly younger than most NFL executives at his level. After joining the Green Bay Packers in 2004 as a pro personnel assistant, Wolf was moved to the role of assistant director of pro personnel in 2008. He was given control of the pro personnel department in 2011, where he stayed until his most recent promotion.
As the director of pro personnel alone, Wolf oversaw pro scouting, advanced scouting of future opponents and any other personnel decisions that happened at the NFL level. In his new position, Wolf will oversee the entire pro personnel department along with the college scouting and personnel departments. Keep in mind that Ted Thompson’s contract runs through the 2019 NFL Draft, and Wolf’s new position is not a far leap from GM.
This move is not only a strong football decision, but it represents what I see to be the beauty of the Green Bay Packers: they represent the community around them as well as any team in the NFL. Green Bay, Wisconsin is not a city like New York, where money and people flow freely in and out, and change is a constant. Instead, the Packers closely mirror Green Bay’s unique “small-town NFL” family feel in their insistence of building from within, both on the field and in the front office.
Wolf, of course, is the son of former Packers’ GM Ron Wolf. I leave this until now, and hesitate to say it at all, because I often felt that Eliot was pigeonholed as “Ron’s boy” earlier in his career, when he is, in fact, a great football mind of his own. The elder Wolf manned the helm of the Packers’ franchise from 1991-2001, and teams under him recorded a 92-52 record with one Super Bowl Championship. Early in his tenure, Ron Wolf hired Mike Holmgren and traded for Atlanta’s backup QB, some kid by the name of Brett Favre. In 1993, he orchestrated the deal that brought the legend of Reggie White to Lambeau Field.
The hopes of Eliot Wolf climbing higher in the Packers’ organization are, of course, under the assumption that a greater opportunity does not first come from elsewhere. In today’s NFL, career advancement is often done with diagonal movements between franchises, and the Packers are very familiar with this after their front office success has caught the eye of other clubs.
Green Bay has lost Reggie McKenzie to the Oakland Raiders, John Dorsey to the Kansas City Chiefs and John Schneider to the Seattle Seahawks over the past several seasons. All three moved into GM positions with their new teams. Wolf seems destined for the opportunity at some point in his very young career, and the Green Bay Packers will be hoping that he stays at Lambeau long enough to take his father’s old desk.