THompson said
As told to MMQB's Peter King in 2014:
"Three or four days before the [2005] draft," Thompson says, "we're doing our research, going down the board, and I'm looking, and I think, 'None of these teams are taking a quarterback.' I couldn't find one, after San Francisco. We hadn't really paid attention to Rodgers because we just figured he'd be gone. Plus, we didn't have that big a need there, obviously. So I just buried myself and went to look at all the Rodgers tape -- from games, from the combine, from his pro day. After a couple of days I just felt he was too good to pass. So I said, 'If he falls to us, we're taking him.'"
They knew that the pick would probably do nothing to help the team in the next couple of seasons, but Thompson was confident that the move would look genius "five years" down the line. Now if he could just survive the job long enough to see it happen.
After the Dallas Cowboys opted to stick with Drew Bledsoe (and his young backup, Tony Romo), the New Orleans Saints with Aaron Brooks, the Houston Texans with David Carr and the Kansas City Chiefs with 35-year-old Trent Green, the Green Bay war rooms really started to buzz about the idea of Rodgers making it to them.
The "curse of young hope" is really what caused teams like the Texans, Baltimore Ravens (Kyle Boller) and the Jacksonville Jaguars (Byron Leftwich) to pave the way for Rodgers sliding to a team that did not care at all if they "needed" a quarterback. If you believe a franchise quarterback is available to you, it shouldn't be as simple as declaring him ineligible because you already have one.
Andrew Brandt was a member of one of those Green Bay war rooms in '05 (they have one for the player side of things and one for the financial side) and
described to MMQB why they were freaking out at the possibility of getting Rodgers:
"In 2005, we had approximately 20 players rated above the first-round line. When we arrived at our pick, at No. 24, the only name left above that line was Rodgers, who played the same position as one of the most durable players in NFL history: Brett Favre. …
"(After taking Rodgers) we heard the faint sound of boos from the draft party going on below us. Our room was a mixed bag. Some celebrated; others were muted knowing while they would be judged on the short-term; this was a long-term play."
The important part in that was "the curse of young hope." You have no way of knowing where teams may have had Rodgers ranked, but teams can pass if they have a young player already there. So your statement that all teams had him as a late 1st or early second is not proveable - at all. The packers had 20 names in the first and Rodgers was somewhere between 1 and 20 - at worst 4 picks fom the dead middle - not even bottom quartile.
But I know you will provide nothing other than "I knew it then, see - trust me"