Just wanted to pass along a quick link from the Super Bowl, where the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel caught up with Saints safety (and former Packers Pro Bowler) Darren Sharper. You remember him, right? The guy who told Brett Favre to keep his mouth shut about Javon Walker’s contract? Well, now he’s opening his mouth about Nick Collins’ contract.
Sharper didn’t relay a lot of news, other than some wistful talk about how well he and Collins would have fit together in Green Bay (Sharper was released a few months before the Packers drafted Collins) and Collins’ own desire to stay in Green Bay.
But as Tom Silverstein points out in the blog post, Packers GM Ted Thompson could be taking the same approach with Collins that he did with Sharper. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to us here at OBOD, since Collins is clearly not in decline, but if Thompson plays it the same way, we could be learning something about the value he places on safeties.
Sharper, who was a defensive player of the year candidate this year with the Saints, is enjoying a resurgence at age 34. ESPN’s Kevin Seifert had a good read on Sharper the other day; his blog is one of our go-to sources for NFC North news and insight. He covered Sharper with the Vikings, and felt that Brad Childress constrained Sharper in his later years in Minnesota after he made the Pro Bowl his first year there. Brad Childress, devising a scheme that takes away what his players do best? Yeah, we can’t fathom that either.
Anyway, Sharper seemed to harbor some bitterness about his exit in Green Bay, and he’s certainly made Thompson look foolish on a couple of occasions for letting him go. But his price, at the time, was deemed to be too high, and if Thompson takes a conservative view on paying safeties, it explains why he let Sharper walk. Hopefully he won’t do the same with Collins.
Brad Childress…heh heh. That guy cracks me up.
–Gene Bosling
Who was Sharper’s position coach in the last year or two he was in GB?