Bryan Bulaga, the right tackle of the Green Bay Packers’ Super Bowl championship team in 2010, retired as a member of the Packers on Friday.
Bulaga was the Packers’ first-round pick in 2010. The man who drafted him out of the University of Iowa, the late Ted Thompson, led off Bulaga’s 10 minutes of thank-yous.
“Obviously, start right away with Ted Thompson,” Bulaga said. “Took a gamble on a short-armed, small-handed guy from Iowa. Probably not the greatest 40 time and stuff like that. But selected me in the first round and I will be forever grateful for that.”
The Packers will be forever grateful, too. When veteran Mark Tauscher went down in the fourth game of the 2010 season, Bulaga stepped into the lineup. Only injuries knocked him out of the starting lineup over the next decade.
He started the final 12 games of his rookie season plus all four playoff games as the Packers beat the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV.
“I didn’t really realize what was happening until we beat the Eagles in that first-round playoff game,” Bulaga said. “I remember, we’re sitting on the bench and Cliffy [left tackle Chad Clifton] looked at me, he was like, ‘This kind of stuff doesn’t happen every year, so just start enjoying this and taking in this playoff run.
“It was a surreal kind of feeling. At the time, I was just trying to stay above water as a rookie. I’m blocking for Aaron Rodgers, I’m playing across the line full of veterans, I’m the youngest guy. I’m just trying to not get Aaron killed while playing a new position, and then making sure I don’t screw something up so then [Josh] Sitton’s mad.”
The Packers were road warriors. They held off Philadelphia, crushed Atlanta and escaped Chicago before toppling the Steelers for their fourth Super Bowl win.
“Once we get to the Super Bowl and win that, it was it was absolutely crazy,” Bulaga said. “It’s hard to put into words and, unfortunately, we never got back to another one, but it was probably one of the coolest moments. As a rookie, like I said, I was just trying to stay above water and then you end up winning the whole thing and It’s just a surreal, awesome deal.”
Bulaga thanked coaches past and present – Mike McCarthy and offensive line coach James Campen from early in his career and Matt LaFleur, Adam Stenavich and Luke Butkus from the current staff.
LaFleur took over in 2019 and “made football fun again for us. I give a lot of praise to those guys because it’s tough going into a locker room with a lot of veteran guys and getting these guys’ mentalities to change and switch and buy into something new. They were able to do it and they made it fun. For my last year here, it was some of the most fun I had playing football, so a lot of thanks to them.”
Bulaga also thanked the training staff, which got him through a litany of injuries, and former teammates such as Clifton and Tauscher. For a big chunk of his career with the Packers, he lined up on a star-studded offensive line of left tackle David Bakhtiari, center Corey Linsley and guards T.J. Lang and Sitton.
He called that the “best offensive line” in Packers history.
“We pushed each other to be great and I and I really appreciate and love those guys,” Bulaga said.
Bulaga signed with the Chargers in 2020. He played in 10 games in 2020 and one game in 2021, back issues sidelining him for both seasons. The Chargers released him before the 2022 draft.
With the Chargers coming to Green Bay for a game on Sunday, Bulaga officially has moved onto the next phase of his career – kids sports, golf and a little radio.
“This is where I feel like I belong,” he said. “Being a Green Bay Packer is what I loved being. It’s an honor to play for this team and be able to wear that ‘G’ on your helmet and go out on that field and play every week and be part of this storied franchise’s history, it means everything.
“So, for me, it’s just a lot of a lot of emotions but more just thankful, grateful, honored, humble. I can give a lot of words for it but to me this is where I felt like I was whole as just not a football player but as a person when I was here.”
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