NFL draft Day 2 winners and losers: Packers do nothing to help Aaron Rodgers
Frank Schwab
Yahoo Sports
Apr 25, 2020, 12:03 AM
Maybe the Green Bay Packers got too caught up in history.
During the 2005 NFL draft, exactly 15 years before Thursday night’s first round, the Packers struck gold with Aaron Rodgers at pick No. 24. They had Brett Favre. They took Rodgers anyway. It worked out.
On Thursday night, the Packers made the most controversial pick of the draft, trading up to draft Utah State quarterback Jordan Love. On Friday night, their first pick was Boston College running back AJ Dillon, another odd pick. Dillon is a good player, but the Packers have Aaron Jones and Jamaal Williams. The third-round pick was Cincinnati tight end Josiah Deguara, which was considered a major reach.
They need pass catchers. Badly. And with their first two picks, in a deep draft for receivers, the Packers got a long-term project at quarterback and a running back who won’t start right away. The third pick was a questionable tight end selection. That’s not getting Rodgers any closer to a Super Bowl.
Love will be debated for a long time. He probably won’t help until 2022, at best. And unlike Favre in 2005, Rodgers hasn’t given any indication he might retire soon.
Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst needs this pick to work out or he’ll never hear the end of it. It will be considered a huge mistake unless Rodgers wins another Super Bowl anyway, or if Love turns out to be as good as Gutekunst thinks he can be. You can blow a pick on a linebacker and nobody remembers. That’s not the case here.
The problem isn’t necessarily picking a quarterback when you still have one. It’s that the timing doesn’t work great with the Packers’ move.
It will be very hard for the Packers to get out of Rodgers’ deal before 2022. They’d have a $31.6 million dead cap hit in 2021 if he’s cut or traded before June 1 and a pair of $14.4 million hits in 2021 and 2022 if it happens after June 1, according to OverTheCap.com.
Unless the Packers want to blow away the NFL record for a dead cap charge — right now it’s Brandin Cooks’ $21.1 million for the Rams this year, $10 million less than that potential 2021 Rodgers cap hit — then they have Rodgers for at least two more years. Even if they wait until 2022 to part ways, the dead cap hit will still be $17.2 million. That’s not ideal.
In other words, the Packers just traded up for a quarterback who, in any realistic scenario, won’t start for two years and maybe not for three. It’s smart to not wait too long to think about a quarterback replacement, but that’s not a good allocation of resources.
The notion that the pick was made to motivate Rodgers is ludicrous. Rodgers doesn’t need motivation coming off an NFC championship game appearance. He needs competent receivers other than Davante Adams. Things move too fast in the NFL to worry much about what might happen in 2023.
“I know a lot of people will look at this as not a move for the immediate, and I understand that, but the balance of the immediate and the long-term is something that I have to consider and that’s why we did it,” Gutekunst said, according to The Athletic. “… Obviously, if there was a game-changer-type player at another position, we would have seriously considered that. We didn’t feel that there was, so we picked Jordan and were really happy to do it. I think you can make mistakes thinking you’re one player away from anything.”
Here’s a realistic timeline for Love: He sits for two years and the Packers move on from Rodgers. Love then gets one year to prove he’s the quarterback of the future before a decision has to be made on his fifth-year option. That happens after a first-round pick’s third season. The Packers won’t get much benefit of a quarterback on his rookie deal, like Russell Wilson with the Seattle Seahawks, Jared Goff with the Los Angeles Rams or Dak Prescott with the Dallas Cowboys. They also won’t have a long time to make important decisions on Love.
The last time the Packers made the Super Bowl was the 2010 season. They probably should have made it at least once more with Rodgers. The chances of Rodgers going to another Super Bowl took a pretty big hit when the Packers decided against getting him much help in this year’s draft.
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Aaron Rodgers probably isn't happy with the Packers' draft. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
Frank Schwab wrote: