Morning Buzz: Will Packers play tag?
Welcome to your Morning Buzz, rounding up news and views regarding the Green Bay Packers and the NFL from around the web and here at PackersNews.com. Grab a strong cup of coffee (or brew some English breakfast tea, if that’s your thing) and get caught up on everything you need to know about the Packers.
We start with Tim Masthay being ready to take a call from an NFL team. Ryan Wood writes on the former Packers punter.
Six seasons and a Super Bowl ring were not enough to scratch former Green Bay Packers punter Tim Masthay’s itch for football.
He will turn 30 in March. A young man in punting years. The NFL’s best punter, former Indianapolis Colts All-Pro Pat McAfee, unexpectedly retired at the same age earlier this month.
Masthay said he wants back in.
“Just trying to train and stay ready,” Masthay said before the Packers' trip to Atlanta for the NFC championship game last month, “in case I get phone calls. It’s kind of a train-and-wait type game for me.”
Gary D’Amato pens a wonderful ode to Bud Lea, who covered Vince Lombardi’s teams in Green Bay and remains a link to the glory years in the league’s smallest city, along with countless other seminal moments in Wisconsin sports
Lea, 88, is vitally important to Wisconsin sports history. A sportswriter for more than a half-century, he is one of the last living connections to a golden era – Vince Lombardi’s Packers, Hank Aaron and those great Milwaukee Braves teams, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the Big O, Al McGuire.
He pounded out thousands of stories on a typewriter – look it up, kids – and his words were devoured the next morning by sports fans who went to work with newspaper ink on their fingers.
“I don’t like social media,” Lea says. “I don’t read all those Twitter things.”
He may be a dinosaur, but if so, he is Tyrannosaurus Rex.
I chatted Packers with readers over on our Facebook page on Tuesday afternoon. You can see a replay below:
Elsewhere, Rob Demovsky looks at the possibility of the Packers bringing in Adrian Peterson if he ends up being cut by the Vikings. (I tend to think there’s a better chance of Brett Favre coming out of retirement again, but it’s a good read.)
The franchise tag window opens later today. This hasn’t meant much in Green Bay for a while:
Gregg Rosenthal has a great primer on the franchise tag for the league’s website:
Rosenthal does posit theory that a new deal is more likely than a tag for Packers linebacker Nick Perry:
General manager Ted Thompson retained Perry on a one-year, $5 million contract last season. Perry will cost a lot more this time after a breakout season, and it wouldn't be a surprise to see Perry re-signed before free agency starts. Thompson has a knack for getting his players to sign reasonable deals.
The Packers added another member to their Fan Hall of Fame:
Packers cornerback Herb Waters has posted some video of his offseason work:
Interesting story on how Julian Edelman almost became a Green Bay Packer:
Finally, this has nothing to do with the Packers or the NFL, but it’s a fantastic story about the power of sports: