The Green Bay Packers’ most important task this offseason was finding a new home for Aaron Rodgers. Pretty quickly it turned into a staredown between them and the New York Jets, the franchise Rodgers intended on playing with during the 2023 season. Despite having virtually no leverage, the Packers got a deal done they can be comfortable with.
During his introductory press conference, Rodgers was candid about the process. Somewhat shockingly, a lot of the interaction was done between Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst and Rodgers’ agent, David Dunn.
Rodgers made an interesting comment about the ability to reach him, which led to conversations being held that he wasn’t a part of. According to the future Hall of Famer, he has bad cell phone service in his house and needs to be reached via video call.
“People who know me, I’m fortunate to live in a beautiful house,” Rodgers said. “The only downside is I have very limited cell service. If you want to get ahold of me, I need to see your face. You have to FaceTime me. So, the only response to the communication thing is, there’s records in your phone about who called you, when, FaceTime, and there wasn’t any specific FaceTimes from any of those numbers that I was looking at. That’s neither here nor there because now we’re in this position.
“Obviously, that’s the direction they wanted to go as far as the story they couldn’t get ahold of me, which led for this to be the case. My point was, if there was a change that wanted to be made, why wasn’t that told to me early in the offseason? Now, obviously, my future was undecided at that time. I didn’t know if I wanted to keep playing. I wanted to go into my darkness retreat and sit with it and contemplate. But when I came out, it was evident that it was retire or move on to a new team.”
While Rodgers shared some of that in jest, the Packers certainly weren’t in a joking mood. Gutekunst was asked about communication between the team and Rodgers and he provided a very direct response. Rob Demovsky, the Packers ESPN NFL Nation reporter, shared the update.
“Packers GM Brian Gutekunst didn’t want to get into the whole FaceTime thing between him and Aaron Rodgers saying, “Certainly we tried to communicate … There was no lack of effort by us. We tried to communicate on a number of different levels.””
It certainly sounds like parting ways were best for both sides here. The writing has been on the wall for a few years now about Rodgers leaving town and this offseason the Packers were finally ready to pull the trigger.
All things considered, Green Bay did a very good job with this deal. They had zero leverage once Rodgers let it be known that the Jets are who he intended to play with this season. Despite that, they come away with multiple draft picks and a huge amount of money saved in the future.
Green Bay comes away with an extra second-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft and either a second or first-round pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. However, being free of any cap hits for Rodgers in the future, which would have reached historic numbers, is the biggest benefit of this deal.
The Packers now have maneuverability and will get to work rebuilding and upgrading the roster around their new starter, Jordan Love.
