I was predicting two years ago on this very site that Greg Jennings wouldn't make nearly as much in free agency as a lot of you guys were insisting he would. Greg Jennings has
always been drastically overrated by a lot of Packers fans.
That being said, Packers free agents seem to consistently overrate themselves too. How many consecutive free agents has this been who turned down an offer from the Packers thinking they'd make more on the free market -- and ended up with less than the Packers offered them? Heh, joke's on them. I think a lot of front offices leaguewide understand that there is a major element of synergy at work in the Packers organization; that, in other words, Green Bay's system makes good players look a lot better than they actually are. For that reason, general managers around the league seem to apply a discount to Packers castoffs, and I think they are right to do so.
There are two major reasons why I can see Jennings choosing to sign with Minnesota despite the offer of more money from Green Bay:
1)
Pride. Having chosen to take a gamble elsewhere, he didn't want the humiliation of slinking back into the fold. Understandable.
2)
Guaranteed money. Knowing Ted Thompson, the Vikings probably offered him more.
There's also a possibility that there really was the schism in the locker room that Valyncia Jennings hinted. Some of the things Jennings has said as far back as 2011 have struck me as peculiar, almost as though he was trying to alienate himself from Packers fans. Contrary to the fantasy a lot of fans seem to have, not everyone even in the Packers locker room likes each other.
Still, these free agents, for all their talk about the "business of football," prove themselves time after time to be pretty unsavvy businessmen. It's probable that Jennings would have made more money in Green Bay than he will in Minnesota, since he's going on 30 and isn't likely to see more than three years of that five-year contract. It's possible, though, that he suspected Thompson was planning to cut him after this season no matter what, in which case he made the right decision.
As for those of you who are blathering about how Jennings is dead to you now, grow up. Seriously. He's a freaking gun for hire, nothing more. He's not your property, and he's not your family either. You owe him nothing, and he owes you nothing in return. He's free to ply his trade wherever he wants without rancor from butthurt fans. It's because of possessive control freaks like you that perfectly good-looking prostitutes end up dead on the streets.