Get What You Can for Rodgers

I’ve emerged from my daily eight hour darkness retreat to find the Packers still trying to come up with a deal with the Jets for Aaron Rodgers. My advice: take anything you can get and move on.

The YSDA Sports Bureau up on the 39th floor has put together the following observations on the Rodgers saga.

Something is better than nothing. The guy is 39, coming off the worst season of his career and is a handful to deal with. If the Pack can get the Jets’ second round pick this year and another player plus a pick in 2024 based on Rodgers’ performance (he does better, they do better) that would be really good. If they can’t work something out than Rodgers probably retires and they get nothing.

Why did the Packers squander their leverage? Rodgers says that the team had given him every indication that they wanted him back for another year. Then he emerged from the darkness to find they were shopping him around. Worse, CEO Mark Murphy said as much publicly. Well, now the Jets know that they have to get rid of him. It’s a fire sale. It would help if there was at least one more team in the hunt, but it seems it’s the Jets or bust.

I sort of get the retreat thing now. I’ve been quick to mock Rodgers’ retreat and his general Californianess, but what he had to say about all of the emails and messages waiting for him when he emerged from the forest reminded me of what it must be like to be Aaron Rodgers. When you’ve got that much coming at you, shutting down all the noise for awhile actually makes some sense.

Does Rodgers have a point about Green Bay management? He went on at some length about a list of star players that he feels the Packers did not treat well late in their careers. “It’s a business, but there’s a way to do things,” he said. Yeah, Rodgers is the prima donna of prima donnas, but GM Brian Gutekunst and Murphy do seem like bulls in a china shop. (See Murphy’s inexplicable public comments above.) And the china shop is becoming filled with ever more fragile pieces. Also, with one of the great quarterbacks of all time at the helm, why could’t the team pick up more than one Lombardi Trophy? Murphy is set to retire and that is probably a good thing. Gutekunst’s future is now entwined with that of Jordon Love.

Favre makes him look good. Whatever Rodgers does I’m pretty sure he’s not going to rip off poor people to build a fancy gym for his daughter.

Thanks for the memories. Weirdness and massive ego issues aside, Aaron Rodgers was fun and he was great. What were the chances that the Packers could have put two Hall of Fame quarterbacks together back-to-back? Were all those great seasons worth the turmoil at the end? You bet it was.