The Packers announced a pair of front office promotions today, confirming in a press release that former director of player personnel Eliot Wolf is now the team’s director-football operations. Replacing Wolf as Green Bay’s director of player personnel is Brian Gutekunst, who had previously been the club’s director of college scouting.
“We think both of them are very worthy of those promotions and it’s an indicator… for stuff that they’re already doing,” general manager Ted Thompson said, per Tom Silverstein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “They’ve become leaders and have been leaders in our organization for some time now. Maybe it’s a little overdue. We thought this was a good time. We’re leading up to the draft, so everybody understands the contributions they make.”
Wolf, the son of former Packers GM Ron Wolf, has received several promotions since joining the club’s front office in 2004, and is viewed by many as a future general manager himself. Although Wolf has been cited as a potential candidate for several teams who have hired new GMs in recent years, he has always been considered highly unlikely to leave Green Bay, since he’s viewed as the possible heir apparent to Thompson.
As for Gutekunst, he has also drawn interest from outside the Packers’ organization in the past. When Chip Kelly was looking to hire a personnel executive for the Eagles in 2015, Gutekunst was considered a candidate, but ultimately didn’t interview — either he or the Packers turned down the Eagles’ request.
Wolf is to Green Bay as DeCosta is to Baltimore. As long as both men continue receiving promotions and treated as heirs to the GM throne, there is no reason for them to take GM positions with less stable franchises and risk being out of work in a couple of year. I’m interested to see how they will perform when they finally get their shot.