Thank the good lord this situation is finally getting resolved. Green Bay Packers QB (for now) Aaron Rodgers came forth and cleared the air as he said he wants to play for the New York Jets, though says it’s the Packers who are holding up the deal.
Are the Packers really trying to ruin yet another tenured relationship between themselves and a franchise great over compensation demands?
So, the truth has finally been revealed. On the Pat McAfee show today (which had over 500,000 concurrent viewers (including myself) on YouTube during Rodgers’ segment), Aaron Rodgers revealed he was 90% confident he was going to retire during his months and weeks leading up to his “darkness retreat”…to only do a 180 and commit to playing next season once the Packers intentions of trading away his contract rights were made clear to him.
What team was he going to suit up for? The…New York Jets!
Okay, we all knew Aaron Rodgers was on his way out of Green Bay for the New York Jets the moment the reports about the Jets entourage flying out to Southern California to speak with him came out, but did the Packers really have to make this exit one of the most controversial and bitter since Brett Favre’s departure from the team?
From Rodgers’ perspective and retelling of events, which I’m believing at face value as I don’t see why he would lie, the Packers originally made it clear they wanted Rodgers to return up until his late February retreat, but quickly changed their minds and started setting up trade deals while he was completely off the grid. Seems a little fishy, right?
Why didn’t the Packers front office just make it clear to Rodgers, the longest serving Packer of all-time (he’s spent his entire 18-year career with the team), they wanted to move on from Rodgers for Jordan Love in the beginning? Rodgers himself made it clear in his interview today that he understood the business side of the NFL and would have appreciated the QB situation “transparency” (his words, not mine) to begin with.
Surely, this generation of Packers front office members should have taken a few tips from how the 2008 front office ditched Favre for Aaron Rodgers.
Anyway, I still don’t see why the Packers are willing to move on from Aaron Rodgers, even with his sub-par (by his lofty expectations) season.
In the past 5 seasons, Rodgers has won 2 MVPs, 3 NFC North division titles, reached 2 NFC Championship games, won 53 games, had a 65% winning percentage as a starting QB, was named to 4 Pro Bowls, 2 All-Pro 1st teams, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s 2010’s All-Decade Team as one of two named QBs (Brady was the other one).
Oh, he also racked up 1,813 completed passes, 20,553 passing yards, 162 TDs, only had 27 interceptions, had a remarkable 6-1 TD-INT ratio, averaged 4,111 yards/season, and averaged a 65.7% completion percentage. Simply put, Aaron Rodgers was one of the best (if not the best) statistical quarterback in the NFL between the years 2018-2022, even with his sub-standard season last year.
And the Packers, who were a Super Bowl contending team the last four seasons, want to replace him after one average season for a quarterback who not only has less than 5 games worth of starting experience in 4 years, but also is turning 25 years old midway through the season. Doesn’t this seem a tad premature?
I get the parallels of switching from Rodgers to Love to the Packers changing Favre for Rodgers as Rodgers was an inexperienced, 25-year-old QB by the time he stepped in for Brett Favre, but the circumstances were entirely different.
Sure, Favre went 13-3 in his last season in Green Bay (2007) with 4,155 passing yards and 28 passing TDs, but he was abjectly bad (for a QB that won MVPs and Super Bowls ten years prior) for the previous four seasons as the starting QB of the Packers.
Favre’s Packers were 10-6 in 2003, 10-6 in 2004, 4-12 in 2005, and 8-8 in 2006, while Farve himself racked up 19,370 passing yards, 128 passing TDs, 100 INTs (including a league-high 29 in 2005), averaged 3,874, averaged a63% completion percentage, had 45 wins, a starting QB winning percentage of 56.3%, a 1.28 TD-INT ratio, was only named to two Pro Bowls, won 3 NFC North division titles, and only made the Conference Championship game once (2007: 23-20 loss vs. eventual Super Bowl winners New York Giants).
Plus, seeing how Rodgers went 6-10 in his first season as the starter in 2008, it’s clear that Favre’s mid-late 2000’s Green Bay teams were not Super Bowl contenders like Rodgers teams have been. Again, I know it was a different league back then as passing is far more welcomed today than it was in the 2000’s, but my point still stands. The Green Bay Packers were not a Super Bowl contending team!
Perhaps all of this is a moot point as Rodgers claimed he was 90% sure he was going to retire after the season ended, but how much of that was down to all of the talk about him getting replaced by Jordan Love during the season?
I guess we’ll never know as the only thing keeping Rodgers a Green Bay Packers is Green Bay’s reluctance to trade him to the New York Jets for the current compensation on the table. In my opinion, I’d just take what the Jets are offering (it’s probably a 2nd-4th round pick) at this point and save some face with the Packers faithful and Rodgers.
At the end of the day, Rodgers is and will always be a Packers legend that delivered the team’s 4th Super Bowl win in 2011.
As for the Jets, it’s time to get excited Jets faithful as you guys are getting your first franchise caliber QB since the days of Joe Namath. I honestly can’t believe I just wrote those words down as a Patriots fan.
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