Much like Bill Murray in Punxsutawney, Packers coach Mike McCarthy feels like he keeps having the same conversations at the annual NFL meetings, over and over again.
McCarthy said that every year at the league meeting he gets asked why the Packers aren’t more active in free agency, and every year he says the same thing.
“We obviously have a philosophy,” McCarthy said, via TheMMQB.com. “It’s kind of like Groundhog Day. I feel like I answer this every year, so I’ll try to be creative and answer it differently this year. But it’s just the way we operate. We do the evaluations. We just stick to our plan. Our number one priority always has been to sign our own free agents. We go into every offseason—if we have 10 conversations, nine-and-a-half of them are about our own guys.”
All the Packers have done this year is sign their own guys: Green Bay is the only team in the NFL that hasn’t signed away a free agent from another team this offseason.
But that approach works well for the Packers, who have made the playoffs five years in a row. If you draft well, you can focus on re-signing your own players and not worry about breaking the bank to attract free agents from other teams. That’s what the Packers do, over and over again.