Green Bay Packers release Desmond Bishop, quick analysis
The Green Bay Packers and inside linebacker Desmond Bishop could not agree to a restructured contract, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Ty Dunne reports that the Packers are done with Bishop and have finally decided to pull the trigger and release the 28-year-old inside linebacker. While the Packers are losing a very talented ILB, the NFL free agent pool is getting one of its top players, and Bishop could become an impact linebacker for another team.
A team like the Kansas City Chiefs. New Chiefs GM John Dorsey is very familiar with the former Packers linebacker as a former Packer himself, and he could bring Bishop to Kansas City to form one of the most formidable LB duos with star Derrick Johnson, who never seems to get the credit he deserves.
The Packers asked Bishop to take a significant paycut following a ruptured hamstring, despite the fact that Bishop was making just $3.464 million. He was under contract until the 2015 season but is now on the free agent market. While Bishop says that his hamstring is fully healed, it doesn’t seem like the Packers buy that. In fact, the Packers decided to try and trade the talented ILB, but there were no takers, thus leading to his release today.
If his hamstring does check out medically and Bishop is correct about it being fully healthy, then Bishop should be able to latch onto a team relatively quickly. It will be interesting to see how much money Bishop gets, because it sounds like the Packers wanted him to play for peanuts following the injury. The Chiefs are a team to keep in mind, but there might be other teams who have a bigger need for an inside linebacker and will want a guy who recorded stellar 2010 and 2011 campaigns with the numbers to back up the tape (more appropriately, the tape to back up the numbers) with 103 and 116 tackles respectively. That said, the Chiefs could use a big upgrade next to Johnson and build an amazing duo, and Bishop is simply a very talented player (he was so good that the Packers axed Nick Barnett for him).
Bishop is a very good linebacker in this league, and the Packers must have really thought Bishop’s hamstring injury was very severe. Ruptures are nothing to play around with, but $3.464 million isn’t much, and many believe that the Packers were trying to give Bishop a steep cut on a restructured deal. He’s home free now, and we’ll see if he rejoins Dorsey and how his hamstring really is, based on what other teams do.