Will Driver be back with Pack? Speculation grows

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GREEN BAY - There’s been growing speculation that the Green Bay Packers won’t have room on their roster for veteran receiver Donald Driver this fall. So at least some fans wondered if the 37-year-old Driver put out a goodbye message yesterday when he tweeted quote, “Hello everyone: I’m a Packer for life. It will never change. Go Pack Go!”

But Driver’s marketing agent, Brian Lammi, said the Twitter note was not a goodbye message or a signal that he plans to retire. Lammi said Driver was trying to re-assure fans that he looks forward to playing for Green Bay for a 14th season – and he has no plans to do anything else. Lammi said the Packers have quote, “never once given an indication that he wouldn’t be back.”

Packers' head coach Mike McCarthy and general manager Ted Thompson have dodged the question when reporters have asked about it this spring. Lammi said Driver was bolstered by the support from McCarthy and other Packers who showed up for this week’s “Dancing With the Stars,” where Driver made the final-three of the dancing competition. The finals of that show will be on Monday and Tuesday nights on ABC.

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Former Packers’ running back Ahman Green says he’s happy in retirement – but he’d play in the NFL again if the right opportunity turns up. The 35-year-old Green says he’s not seeking an NFL job – but if a team contacts him, he’d listen. He says he’s in excellent physical shape. Green is the Packers’ all-time leading rusher, with 83-hundred-22 in all or parts of eight seasons in Green Bay. He last played in 2010 for Omaha in the United Football League. Green last played in the NFL in 2009 in a brief second stint with the Packers. The Houston Texans cut him that year, and he ended up in eight regular season games and a playoff contest for the Pack. Last year, Montreal of the Canadian League cut him, after if showed up at training camp with a bad hamstring.

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Students at West Allis Hale High School were told to gather at their football stadium in an evacuation drill. But once they got in the bleachers yesterday, they were surprised to see the Green Bay Packers’ Tailgate Tour roll in. It was a surprise visit by a half-dozen past-and-present Packers – and they were greeted with applause fit for a rock star. Safety Charlie Peprah told how he and his family survived turmoil in Ghana, where his grandfather – a former head-of-state in that country – was executed in a military coup 30 years ago. Peprah emigrated to the U-S in the 1980’s, and he said his mother supported him and his brothers by working two-or-three jobs. He said persistence helped him succeed, and he and the other Packers told the teens to make good decisions and stay in school. Receiver Jordy Nelson said about 20 high school girls asked him to be their prom dates this spring. And they got the inevitable question about Brett Favre, and whether the Packers will retire his Number-Four. Team president Mark Murphy said it would happen, probably in a year-or-two. Murphy said quote, “We want to do it at a time that’s meaningful to him.”

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