Report: Rodgers wants new contract (Update: May not want to return in 2021)

[Fear The Chorizo]

James Jones was on with Cowherd today and said (paraphrasing) it's not about Gute and it's not about who gets brought in the building. Its about who is let go without consultation. He thinks Rodgers will be in camp. I feel like every former teammate that's close to Rodgers has said this is fixable.

 

 

Still unclear on what he actually wants if he's not mad at Gute. Extension? Trade Love? Do we need to send someone to his house to give him a backrub and sing "Lullaby" by Shawn Mullins to him?

 

When Rodgers doesn't know the answer to this question or simply can't specify his actual beef publicly without revealing it's self-generated due to his ego, how is anyone else supposed to?

[sveumrules]

At this point I'd rather watch Jordan Love quarterback the pack to an 8-8-1 record than kowtow to Rodgers whims.

 

I don't necessarily disagree, but I would take the under on 8-8-1 if Love is our QB for 17 games this year.

 

Picked 8-8-1 because it would be the least satisfying, except who doesn't love a good old fashioned tie?

 

Any worse & we get a better pick, plus its justification for those who didn't like the Love pick to begin with. Any better & the team will have likely exceeded expectations & maybe even make the playoffs.

 

Between scheme/coaching, Adams leading a well rounded receiving corps, Jones heading up a dangerous backfield, Tonyan looking like a legit weapon, & one of the better offensive lines in football, Love should be set up much better to succeed than most first year starting QBs, so I don't think the over is too unreasonable.

[homer]

James Jones was on with Cowherd today and said (paraphrasing) it's not about Gute and it's not about who gets brought in the building. Its about who is let go without consultation. He thinks Rodgers will be in camp. I feel like every former teammate that's close to Rodgers has said this is fixable.

 

 

Still unclear on what he actually wants if he's not mad at Gute. Extension? Trade Love? Do we need to send someone to his house to give him a backrub and sing "Lullaby" by Shawn Mullins to him?

 

When Rodgers doesn't know the answer to this question or simply can't specify his actual beef publicly without revealing it's self-generated due to his ego, how is anyone else supposed to?

 

A lot of assumptions in that post. We literally have no real understanding of what's going on other than there's some kind of beef between the front office and Rodgers about personnel (and even that's just an educated guess). His teammates both current and former have all backed him up. Literally the only two that have ever said anything remotely bad about him are Greg Jennings and JerMichael Finley and who cares what they have to say.

[Fear The Chorizo]

A lot of assumptions in that post. We literally have no real understanding of what's going on.

 

Not really alot of assumptions on my end, just 1. It's about $ - Rodgers is currently getting $$$$$, but he wants $$$$$$$$$$. He can't flat out say that publicly because it flies in the face of everything else that's been sporadically dribbled to the media in effort to get what he wants financially in terms of one more huge guaranteed pile of cash. I'd have more respect for him if he just came out and said as much, even though it conflicts with having a talented enough team around him to win a Super Bowl before he does hit the twilight years of his career.

 

Say it's actually about Rodgers wanting more influence/input on personnel decisions - I mean Jimmy Graham worked out great here, so why not?? IMO that makes Rodgers even more at fault with this whole situation, because no matter how great a quarterback is on the field his job is not making personnel decisions for both the short and longterm interest of the organization he plays for.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

If Gute's ego were on par with Rodgers, he'd be publicly explaining himself and worried about how he looks. He clearly doesn't care, and he shouldn't. Bringing Gute's ego into this is very strange to me. He drafted a young QB because his was old and starting to look washed up.

 

As far as the root of this whole thing, I think it's that Rodgers basically wants to be special counsel to the GM.

[MrTPlush]

A lot of assumptions in that post. We literally have no real understanding of what's going on other than there's some kind of beef between the front office and Rodgers about personnel (and even that's just an educated guess). His teammates both current and former have all backed him up. Literally the only two that have ever said anything remotely bad about him are Greg Jennings and JerMichael Finley and who cares what they have to say.

 

Those two have been cry babies about Rodgers for over half a decade it seems.

 

On another note it seems to constantly get brought up that Rodgers was on a massive decline and washed up. He certainly wasn't MVP level, but the dude was still probably vastly better than Jordan Love could ever dream of being. Rodgers was one heck of a washed up QB on the decline. I don't totally blame them for drafting a QB a bit high, but its strange when people act like Rodgers was late career Brett Favre. Rodgers was still a really good QB, arguably still a pretty elite one.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Yeah.... People are rewriting the narrative to make it sound like 18/19 Rodgers was Jay Cutler bad, (straw man!) But he was still 'really good' instead of one of the top 3 QBs in the league.

[PeaveyFury]

I'm sure this would feel very good for him but it would accomplish nothing. At the end of the day Gute has a responsibility to look out for the best interests of the franchise, not get into an ego standoff with Rodgers which would only deepen the chasm between Rodgers and the franchise.

 

I'm guessing Rodgers feels very good about his trade demand/threat to retire, but so far it too has accomplished nothing.

 

Well, my interests are in the continued well-being of the Green Bay Packers. What Aaron Rodgers accomplishes or doesn't accomplish that have no bearing on a Packer football game means nothing to me.

 

I think the serious problem continues to be that in my view, Aaron also doesn't seem to care about his situation's effect on the success of a franchise that he's dependent on to win, suggesting that he doesn't really care all that much about the winning part.

[Fear The Chorizo]

On another note it seems to constantly get brought up that Rodgers was on a massive decline and washed up. He certainly wasn't MVP level, but the dude was still probably vastly better than Jordan Love could ever dream of being.

 

But Rodgers having a 2 year stretch of stats that don't have him in consideration for being a league MVP is a massive decline for him, particularly when it comes to how his contract impacts other aspects of how the Packers can build their roster. One of those years was impacted by a knee/shin injury along with McCarthy's stale offense and the other (2019) was a year where he still had good production learning a new system but just wasn't making game-changing plays on his own. Step back and consider what we would be thinking about Rodgers and his current contract heading into 2021 had the 2020 season not been played at all due to COVID and Rodgers wouldn't have just had an MVP season, which was a distinct possibility during the 2020 draft that saw Love go in Round 1. It would have been a given among fans that his current deal required a restructuring this offseason, without any discussion of a significant extension - particularly one that eliminated a cap-friendly way for the Packers to move on after 2021 if they wanted to.

 

Speaking of that 2020 season, regardless where he plays QB next year I'll be very interested in seeing how Rodgers performs in games that actually have significant crowd noise again that don't allow for getting blocking adjustments and all offensive players on the same page pre-snap like last year's crowdless games did. I think most QBs benefitted from that, but Rodgers probably benifitted more than most due to his presnap hard count abilities that significantly slow a pass rush even if it isn't drawing lineman offsides and providing free shot plays, and experience with presnap reads/audibles against defenses.

[BillScottCanRake]

Yeah.... People are rewriting the narrative to make it sound like 18/19 Rodgers was Jay Cutler bad, (straw man!) But he was still 'really good' instead of one of the top 3 QBs in the league.

 

While I think perhaps some are exaggerating Rodgers play in 2018/19, there was/is enough real uncertainty about Rodgers to justify drafting a quarterback. I think all of these statements are true:

 

1. Rodgers 2018 and 2019 seasons were not as good as his previous seasons, suggesting he may have entered a period decline.

2. Rodgers 2018-2019 was still good, (still very good in 2018) but not a an MVP level guy.

3. Rodgers is talented enough he could play at a high level for a number of years, but old enough he might not (See Favre, Brett, 2005-2010).

4. Rodgers current contract gives the Packers an out after 2021, and expires after 2023, when he will be 40.

5. At the time Love was drafted, there was less certainty about the future of the QB position in Green Bay than there had been since 2008.

6. Love was drafted to have a player management liked and projected to be a long term answer at the position if/when that is what was required.

7. Love does not have to replace an effective Rodgers.

8. Rodgers could outlast Love in Green Bay or price himself out of Green Bay if he plays well enough.

 

Trying to predict how well Rodgers is going to play year-to-year gets harder and harder every year because Father Time is still undefeated. Having a plan if things go south, especially one you can pivot away from if Rodgers plays like an MVP until he's 40, seems like a decent idea.

 

How the Love pick was executed (trading up, making that player Love, etc) is a different discussion. Yes, the drafting a quarterback and drafting Love specifically are intertwined, but if Love isn't who management thought, we can look back on 2020 and say "Picking a quarterback was a good decision, but they got the wrong guy" or something.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Yeah.... People are rewriting the narrative to make it sound like 18/19 Rodgers was Jay Cutler bad, (straw man!) But he was still 'really good' instead of one of the top 3 QBs in the league.

 

 

 

How the Love pick was executed (trading up, making that player Love, etc) is a different discussion.

 

I don't think it is though. There are people who are making a big deal out of Rodgers decline in order to justify the way the Love pick went down.

 

I think that there's really not one part of the whole that's a separate discussion. Each part makes up individual pieces of the puzzle, but they all tell small pieces of the whole story.

 

In 2018 Rodgers through for 4400 yards and had a 25/2 TD /INT ratio, while being sacked 49 times and coming off a pretty bad injury. Yeah, yeah, he held the ball too long and took too many coverage sacks. Sucks when your defense is awful and you're playing from behind a lot and trying to score points. In 2019, he had an "ok" (by his standards) season, and at the time the narrative was "how much of this is because he's playing in a new offense?"

 

Now that we aren't supposed to like him, the narrative changes to well we thought he's old and declining, and I think that's just super disingenuous.

 

Is he old, and of course, going to decline? Yup, as stated, father time never loses, but the narrative changes to fit the argument.

 

Now, to be fair, if the Packers were offered 2 firsts, 2 seconds, and a couple good starters from Denver, I'd take it yesterday. I don't care if Aaron Rodgers wins another super bowl, but i do care if the Packers do, and building the best roster while he's still here is the best way to do that. If they move on from him, that window is closed for a couple years and Jordan Love almost certainly isn't the guy. I know that's my opinion only, but I'll state that with as close to certainty as I can.

[SeaBass]

I never thought his 18/19 seasons were bad seasons, but they didn't feel elite either. The thing that Rodgers does really well is limit turnovers and especially interceptions so really I don't know that he's actually capable of having a "bad" season, but by his own standards those seasons don't really measure up all that well to his past seasons. More than anything else I question his motivation in those seasons because I think he became jaded by how stale McCarthy's offense had become. I can't really blame him for that, at the end there weren't a whole lot of McCarthy supporters among the fans either.

 

When I say I question his motivation it stems from the fact that I remember after the Love draft pick Rodgers had given an interview, I don't remember where, but he said something along the lines of he had been watching old tape of himself and thought he had spotted something that he thinks he lost along the way. He was really excited about it because he thought it could help him have an improved season. I remember being excited about that myself but I also remember thinking, why hasn't he been studying his old tape before now? I just think he had become a little bit complacent and hadn't really had that kick in the pants to snap out of it. Until the 2020 draft. Or, if not the draft and to give him some credit, maybe it was losing the championship game to the 49ers. Either way something motivated him that hadn't really been there for a couple seasons.

[Fear The Chorizo]

Rodgers' 2018 and 2019 seasons were career lows for him in terms of completion percentage and TDs when able to play a full year. They were also career lows for the QBR stat and by a significant margin - he was ranked 17th in NFL QBs in 2018 and 20th in 2019. Rodgers wasn't bad in those two seasons, but he wasn't great or frankly much more than average either.

[homer]

 

I think the serious problem continues to be that in my view, Aaron also doesn't seem to care about his situation's effect on the success of a franchise that he's dependent on to win, suggesting that he doesn't really care all that much about the winning part.

 

 

I guess I'm not sure, at this point, what impact this situation has on the team. If he holds out until mid August then yeah. But he won an MVP last year with a 3 week training camp.

[PeaveyFury]

 

I think the serious problem continues to be that in my view, Aaron also doesn't seem to care about his situation's effect on the success of a franchise that he's dependent on to win, suggesting that he doesn't really care all that much about the winning part.

 

 

I guess I'm not sure, at this point, what impact this situation has on the team. If he holds out until mid August then yeah. But he won an MVP last year with a 3 week training camp.

 

I think that's a fair distinction. I guess I was assuming this becomes as much of a thing as some want us to believe, but is exceptionally fair to question whether this is actually that substantial.

[sveumrules]

 

I think the serious problem continues to be that in my view, Aaron also doesn't seem to care about his situation's effect on the success of a franchise that he's dependent on to win, suggesting that he doesn't really care all that much about the winning part.

 

 

I guess I'm not sure, at this point, what impact this situation has on the team. If he holds out until mid August then yeah. But he won an MVP last year with a 3 week training camp.

 

A 3 week training camp that wasn't preceded by months of completely avoidable speculation that could really only serve as a distraction to the rest of the team.

[reillymcshane]

I will say that in 2018-19, the Packers receiver corps was nothing special. Graham wasn't very mediocre. And Lazard, Allison, MVS were all pretty inconsistent. Plus, I think McCarthy's scheme was really stale by the end of his term. I think 2019 there was some learning on Rodgers part with LaFleur's offense. I think last season was a culmination of Rodgers getting really comfortable in the scheme, plus some of his receivers gaining experience and confidence in themselves - as well as getting more comfortable with the offense as well.

 

I'm not saying Rodgers wasn't showing some age. Just that his supporting cast, plus the offense situation may have affected his numbers.

[BillScottCanRake]

Yeah.... People are rewriting the narrative to make it sound like 18/19 Rodgers was Jay Cutler bad, (straw man!) But he was still 'really good' instead of one of the top 3 QBs in the league.

 

How the Love pick was executed (trading up, making that player Love, etc) is a different discussion.

 

I don't think it is though. There are people who are making a big deal out of Rodgers decline in order to justify the way the Love pick went down.

 

I think that there's really not one part of the whole that's a separate discussion. Each part makes up individual pieces of the puzzle, but they all tell small pieces of the whole story.

 

I'm not sure how I can explain this in a way that makes sense. It makes sense to me, but that doesn't do anyone else any good.

 

I work in software, which I know isn't the NFL, but a huge part of my job is making sure our current software does what it needs to do while also making sure long-term development goals are met. At points, it isn't possible to do both, and that is when "hard" decisions need to be made. When we have our retrospectives, we try to evaluate things at two different levels: Decision and Result. Was the decision a good decision based upon the information at the time? Would you make the same or a similar decision because it was the right thing to do? And was the result desirable? We have had instances of making the right decision with the result being undesirable, and some instances where the wrong decision was made but we got lucky with a positive result. We can live with good decision, bad result because more good decisions lead to fewer bad results than good results coming in spite of poor decisions.

 

So when I look at what happened in 2018 and 2019, I didn't see a "bad" Aaron Rodgers, but I did see one that, for all the reasons you mentioned and more, appears to be declining. Based upon the information available after the 2019 season (his age, his trends, his ability to use his incredible physical gifts to get him out of bad situations), I feel the decision to add a quarterback the team can look to be effective as a long-term starter if required was solid. If Love turns out to be a bust, that means the team picked the wrong player, but I don't fault them for the decision to move in that direction.

 

I do understand it isn't that simple, because the Packers picked a specific quarterback in part because of their evaluation of Love, so that factors into the "decision" part of the equation.

 

Personally, I have not seen enough of Love to know what I think. I am excited to see him this pre-season and hope he plays a lot regardless of what happens with Rodgers because I will be able to make some decisions based upon my own observations.

 

In 2018 Rodgers through for 4400 yards and had a 25/2 TD /INT ratio, while being sacked 49 times and coming off a pretty bad injury. Yeah, yeah, he held the ball too long and took too many coverage sacks. Sucks when your defense is awful and you're playing from behind a lot and trying to score points. In 2019, he had an "ok" (by his standards) season, and at the time the narrative was "how much of this is because he's playing in a new offense?"

 

Now that we aren't supposed to like him, the narrative changes to well we thought he's old and declining, and I think that's just super disingenuous.

 

Is he old, and of course, going to decline? Yup, as stated, father time never loses, but the narrative changes to fit the argument.

 

I'm not sure it is fair to categorize all fans OK with drafting a quarterback as having changed their narrative. I am sure it is true for some, but I equally sure there are lots of people who just feel like having a plan in place, even if it is rather loose and fluid, is better than not having one. And for those people the narrative hasn't really changed.

 

Personally, I still want Aaron Rodgers to be amazing and a Packer, and I want Jordan Love to be amazing and a Packer. I am sensitive to change management and I know trying to live in both the present and the future is messy, but the best thing for the Packers is for both those guys to remain a Packer and both be amazing if they can make that work.

 

Now, to be fair, if the Packers were offered 2 firsts, 2 seconds, and a couple good starters from Denver, I'd take it yesterday. I don't care if Aaron Rodgers wins another super bowl, but i do care if the Packers do, and building the best roster while he's still here is the best way to do that. If they move on from him, that window is closed for a couple years and Jordan Love almost certainly isn't the guy. I know that's my opinion only, but I'll state that with as close to certainty as I can.

 

I agree with everything here. I hope you are wrong about Love, but I don't have anything to challenge your opinion.

[homer]

 

I think the serious problem continues to be that in my view, Aaron also doesn't seem to care about his situation's effect on the success of a franchise that he's dependent on to win, suggesting that he doesn't really care all that much about the winning part.

 

 

I guess I'm not sure, at this point, what impact this situation has on the team. If he holds out until mid August then yeah. But he won an MVP last year with a 3 week training camp.

 

A 3 week training camp that wasn't preceded by months of completely avoidable speculation that could really only serve as a distraction to the rest of the team.

 

I don't see this as that big of a distraction to the team. At least not to the point where it's going to impact anyone's performance. If he comes back he'll be welcomed with open arms.

[young guns]

It wasn't necessarily the stats those 2 years, it was that he looked off, at least for him. His accuracy was questionable, especially on deep balls. There was genuine concern about if it was because of age related skill diminish.

[MrTPlush]

I get it, again, I don’t blame them for drafting a QB higher in the draft. Though trading up for one is somewhat questionable, especially blindsiding Rodgers at the same time.

 

I just think the Rodgers decline thing is really overblown. Quite a few elite HOF QBs in recent history have had some struggles once they got older and needed to adjust. Those generational QBs often do turn it around too. Even Favre went from gutter trash to a top QB again at one point. Manning/Brady have done it.

 

I get some concern, but I always figured a QB as good as Rodgers would figure out the needed adjustments as he aged to get back on track as a really good QB. Maybe not back to an MVP award level, but definitely though he had good years ahead of him. Rodgers had a down year in his mid 30s and everyone sounded alarm bells...in reality I don’t think it should have been as concerning as people made it.

[DuWayne Steurer]

In 18, he was coming off an injury, and the offense had gotten stale as heck. McCarthy was calling the same 6 plays they'd been running for 10 years, and defenses had adjusted. Most of them were variations on "Aaron, run around a bit and hit someone in a super tight window" or "hit Davante on a slant"

 

Every time Rodgers couldn't complete a pass in a 4" window in double coverage because defenders were jumping plays, because they'd seen the same 6 plays for the last 10 years, McCarthy had that quizzed, puzzled look on his face like 'Huh!? I can't believe that play didn't work! We've run it successfully for the last 10 years!"

[CheezWizHed]

As someone said above, there were a lot of moving pieces. I don't think anyone would debate that MM's scheme was stale nor the effort in learning MLF's new system wasn't an immediate transition.

 

But you also have a 35/36 year old QB potentially showing signs of age. That isn't suddenly a new thing. We could pull up our own conversations back then and many (myself included) were wondering what was going on. Not only had his numbers slipped (not off the cliff, but declining), but he was visibly looking off. I remember a number of passes 4' over the WR's head. His deep passes were very different than years prior.

 

He said much of that was on his footwork that he worked to correct. But that narrative of concern about an aging QB was present then too. No matter how much Rogers wants to play until 40+, if his body can't keep up, there isn't anything he is going to be able to do to stop it. Age is undefeated. I want him to play as long as he can, but not many QBs have made 40.

[MrTPlush]

I don't think anyone is denying there was some concern, mostly due to age and maybe some injuries in prior years. However, it seems now that many hate Rodgers the narrative is becoming how he looked washed up etc. and drafting a QB was a no brainer. It certainly wasn't a terrible idea to have going into the draft, but it was far from obvious if Rodgers was declining or not.

[DuWayne Steurer]

It's tough to articulate (as others have pointed out) so many different viewpoints on this, but I'm going to try

 

1) Rodgers 2018/2019 definitely were not up to his standards. I think that some/ a lot of it was McCarthy's stale offense, and 2019 was adjusting to new guy's offense. I also absolutely agree that some of it was age related regression. which ties into ....

 

2) The Packers had every reason to at least think about a succession, and plan on a long term contingency *if* Rodgers decline was age related, and certainly at his age, it wouldn't be shocking

 

3) The Packers had just come off a 13-3 season where they made it to (but got stomped in) the NFC title game. I'm not going to put a percentage on it, but a lot of people said "we're not on the niners level". Gonna get revisionist here, but the niners didn't even make the playoffs in 2020.

 

4) You've got Aaron Rodgers, and you're coming off an NFC title game appearance. Decide if you're all in, or building for the future. Using your first round pick to get a guy who *probably* won't play for 3-4 years is an absolute future move. If you want to play for the Super BOwl in 2020, use that first round pick on something that helps you right now. It doesn't HAVE to be a WR, or even an offensive player, but something that helps you now.

 

Like I said, I don't care if Aaron Rodgers wins another Super Bowl, but I DO care if the Packers do. Using a first round pick on a backup QB who probably won't play, and who isn't going to win games if he does play, when you've got Aaron Rodgers is poor asset allocation. There's people trying to justify the pick who were lambasting it the night it happened. We're all homers to a degree, but this is what I mean when I say we're being revisionist. We are Packer fans, so we wanna take the Packers side. Root for the uniform. The pick sucked. (IMO). If you're gonna roll with Rodgers, go all in, and use your picks to load up. In one way, Gute reminds me of Ted Thompson, in that he (Seems Like) (IMO) he tries to be the Smartest Guy In The Room, reaching for picks and grabbing guys projected way later than when he picks them, trying to show everyone that he knows something that they don't.

 

I love that the Packers have been a perennial contender and almost never have to suffer through the 4-12 or 6-10 seasons, but once in a while I'd like to see them take a deep dive and go ALL IN and say "hell yeah, this is the year" and get the pieces they need instead of spending 6 million dollars on Kevin King.

 

Getting the Smith Bro's was cool! Then spending draft picks on a qb that is training to play in 2024 and a 5th round H-back that we don't need probably wasn't cool.

 

I'm not taking Aaron Rodgers side, I'm taking the side of "lets win a freaking super bowl while the all time great QB is still a Packer".