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The Packers are in a tough spot with Aaron Rodgers.And to understand it, I think you have to understand how their perspective on this situation has changed over the past year.
The previous two offseasons, Green Bay’s focus was singular—. My sense is that focus was born of Rodgers’s own excellence, the roster’s makeup (very win now), and the uneasiness of Jordan Love’s readiness to take over. It left them waiting Rodgers out for five months in 2021, and giving him an unprecedented contract to play an 18th season in Green Bay, and a 15th season as Packers starter, in ’22.
This year is different. They’re open to moving Rodgers. They have questions on backside-of-their-prime vets such as David Bakhtiari, with some cap issues to work through. And where they were worried about Love’s development a year ago, they’re now seeing a guy capable of starting—at the very least—with considerable upside.
Now, the problem: The contract Rodgers was able to leverage from the in-the-moment Packers of 2022 stands to hamstring the looking-forward Packers of ’23. Here’s how …
• Rodgers is due $59.52 million this year. It’s fully guaranteed. No one is trading for a quarterback with that number without knowing he’s all in, especially with that quarterback carrying the hammer of a potential retirement with him. So while Rodgers doesn’t have a no-trade clause on paper, as a practical matter, he might as well have one.
• Rodgers has a cap number of $31.62 million for this year, thanks to a contract that runs through 2023, but spreads cap charges through ’26. The trouble with that, of course, is the $40.31 million in dead-cap charges to deal with if they trade Rodgers. Those could be alleviated by waiting until June 1 to trade him, but it’s hard to imagine delaying things until then given the circumstances.
• Because of the $59.52 million he’s guaranteed this year, cutting him is basically out of the question. Doing so would mean taking on a nine-figure dead-cap charge.
So if Rodgers wants to return, the Packers have to do their best to make it work.
If he doesn’t? Because of all of the above, this probably plays out a little like Tom Brady’s situation did in 2020, when the number of boxes that a suitor needs to check (win-now roster, cap space to add players he wants to bring, coach system he wants to work with, city he wants to live and play in, etc.) narrows the field to a very small number of serious candidates. Making it even tougher would be that Green Bay has the control that the Patriots lacked over Brady’s exit, and the Packers will have teams they won’t trade Rodgers to.
Now, all this said, I’d applaud what the Packers did the past couple of years, even if this is the end for Rodgers. As we saw in Tampa Bay, and with what’s happened in New England over the three years since Brady left there, the opportunity that a legendary quarterback creates is impossible to replicate—and just because Green Bay accommodated Rodgers and didn’t get back to the mountaintop doesn’t mean their strategy to keep and build for him was flawed.
So Rodgers’s contractual implications, his control over the situation, and a likely small group of bidders will almost certainly depress his trade value, where the cost could wind up being less than a first-round pick (though owner involvement with some of these teams could change that), whereas last year or the year before, it’d have been much more than that.
And if Rodgers is all in on returning, there’s plenty of merit to just keeping him, too.
