A Tip Of The Cap To Andrew Brandt » Brats & Beer

Posted on January 28, 2008

People out there wondering what makes Green Bay Packers fans so great, just look at the response to today’s news that VP of Player Finance Andrew Brandt is leaving the team. He was a front office administrator who hardly ever got face time in the news, and yet everyone knows who he is and what he meant to the team as chief contract negotiator and keeper of the salary cap.

Like most everyone else, I hate to see him go because Brandt was smart, talented, and creative and helped clear some $24 million in cap space for Ted Thompson to spend in the draft and free agency (even though we all know he won’t part with much of it at all). He’s also a big part of the reason the Packers are in such good shape financially despite playing in the smallest NFL market.

For these reasons, too, his departure puts the team at a crossroads. TT has to make a good decision on hiring a successor to Brandt to keep the team on track into the future. What a disaster it would be for the Packers to end up like the 49ers with no cap room and no way to get out from under that dark cloud. Hopefully there’s someone in the organization that Brandt mentored or maybe TT knows a good numbers person on the staff of another team who would like to move to beautiful Wisconsin.

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