Aaron Rodgers, the Packers and the long succession: ‘Just tell the truth, you wanted to move on’
May 31, 2023
A little more than three years ago, Aaron Rodgers was preparing to make his second appearance of the night on “The Pat McAfee Show,” the streaming sensation on which Rodgers is a regular guest, when he got a text from his longtime agent, Dave Dunn.
“QB,” it said, a reference to the Packers’ surprise selection of Utah State quarterback Jordan Love with the No. 26 pick of the 2020 NFL Draft.
Green Bay was fresh off an NFC Championship Game debacle, a 37-20 loss to the 49ers in which the team allowed 285 rushing yards — the most ever in an NFC title game. Conventional wisdom indicated the team should select a run-stopper, or maybe a wide receiver to complement star Davante Adams.
Instead, Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst traded up four spots in the first round to draft the 21-year-old Love even with four years remaining on the contract of arguably the best player in franchise history.
Rodgers skipped his scheduled appearance on McAfee’s show.
“That’s when I went and poured myself a little glass of Añejo and waited for somebody to call me,” he told The Athletic last week.
The Packers knew Rodgers wouldn’t be happy about the selection, and to protect the relationship between him and head coach Matt LaFleur, they told him the decision to draft Love was strictly the GM’s.
“I had friends who said, ‘Hey, Matt looked super excited when they made the draft pick,'” Rodgers said. “And I said, ‘I don’t care, honestly.’ Like, they made the pick. They all signed off on it.”
The drafting of Love proved to be the tipping point in the tumultuous, highly successful and nearly two-decade-long marriage between Rodgers and the Packers, even if took years before the final separation. Last month, three years after Green Bay selected Love — and one year after Rodgers signed a record-breaking contract extension after back-to-back MVP seasons — the Packers shipped Rodgers to the New York Jets, like fellow Packers icon Brett Favre before him, for a small bounty of draft picks.
As recently as last offseason, Gutekunst said he intended for Rodgers to play at least the 2022 and ’23 seasons in Green Bay. As recently as last July, Rodgers said he wanted to retire with the only team for which he had ever played. But the drafting of Love contributed to a simmering resentment and caused a legendary franchise and a franchise legend to conclude a divorce was coming.
The 39-year-old Rodgers is perhaps the most skilled passer in NFL history but also a bit of an enigma and/or diva, depending on your rooting interest. He’s no stranger to using slights as motivation, as he did for years after his boyhood team, the San Francisco 49ers, took quarterback Alex Smith No. 1 overall in 2005 instead of him.
“Did I wanna, years down the line, go, ‘Well, what if we had just taken somebody who could impact our team because we had just gone to the NFC Championship?’ Yeah, of course,” Rodgers said of the Packers’ decision to draft Love. “I don’t think any other competitor would say anything different.”
In 2020, Rodgers completed a career-high 70.7 percent of his passes for 4,299 yards and a career-best 48 touchdowns against only five interceptions. He was named the league’s MVP for the first time since 2014, but the Packers narrowly lost to the Buccaneers, 31-26, in the NFC Championship Game at Lambeau Field, leaving Green Bay one game short of the Super Bowl for the second consecutive season.
Rodgers’ comments in his Zoom press conference after that loss were ominous.
“A lot of guys’ futures, they’re uncertain,” he said then. “Myself included.”
Rodgers says now that after the Packers drafted Love, he thought he’d have one or two years left in Green Bay.
“We didn’t win the Super Bowl,” Rodgers said. “They had their guy in waiting. Unless things changed, I felt like — that’s why I said what I said — there was a possibility they were gonna move on.
“I knew that (Love) was always a possibility, that they would wanna go, ‘You know what? We tried hard. We tried to win a championship. We had a good team, but now it might be time to go with Jordan, move some contract stuff around and do that.'”
Rodgers had been on the other end of this, almost note for note.
At 21, he was a surprise No. 24 selection out of Cal in the 2005 draft but sat behind Favre for three seasons. In 2008, with Rodgers impressing behind the scenes and the Packers growing tired of Favre’s annual flirtations with retirement, Green Bay traded the 38-year-old to the Jets.
The major difference: Two of Favre’s campaigns with Rodgers on the bench were subpar, while Rodgers won MVPs with Love looking on in two of the last three seasons.
According to a source associated with the team who was granted anonymity to candidly discuss the sensitive dynamics between the front office and the star quarterback, early in the 2021 offseason, Dunn, Rodgers’ agent, called Packers president Mark Murphy with a request: Fire Gutekunst or trade Rodgers. Murphy did neither. Months later, news broke that Rodgers wanted out of Green Bay, but the Packers held firm.
When asked about the demand last week, Rodgers deferred to Dunn, who did not reply to The Athletic’s request for comment.
Rodgers stayed away from the team until days before training camp in late July — and after, among other things, Gutekunst extended an olive branch by trading for wide receiver Randall Cobb, Rodgers’ best friend and former longtime teammate.
“I was under contract, for one, so definitely wasn’t gonna hold out and let them fine me,” Rodgers said. “There were a lot of things that I was hoping were gonna change, and they made some promises about things they were gonna try and do better. But I just felt like coming back, have a good season, move forward and just not focus on some of those things that I really felt strongly about but that may or may not actually ever get done.”
After the first practice of camp, Rodgers aired his grievances, saying he wanted to see changes to the organization’s communication and culture. According to Rodgers, the communication between him and Gutekunst improved somewhat. (“It still wasn’t anywhere near what I’ve already enjoyed here with the Jets in just a few short weeks,” Rodgers added.)
The Packers believed privately that both parties had moved past the conflict, but Rodgers felt like executive VP and director of football operations Russ Ball, who manages the team’s salary cap, was the only member of the front office who took the message to heart.
“I mean, Russ definitely made an effort to be more seen, to be a better communicator, to be around more, to interact with the guys more, and I really appreciated his effort to grow and to listen to some of the things I was saying and try and make the culture and the place a better environment,” Rodgers said. “I thought Russ, more than anybody, really showed that he cared and showed a lot of personal growth, and I give him credit for that.”
In the 2021 regular season, Rodgers was exemplary again. He won his second consecutive MVP award and led the Packers to the No. 1 seed in the NFC, but the Packers fell to the 49ers in the divisional round at Lambeau Field. In postgame comments, Rodgers was once again noncommittal about his future.
The succession plan was going to be complicated.
Months later, there seemed to be clarity.
In March 2022, Rodgers signed a three-year, $150 million extension to keep him in Green Bay. Would Rodgers outlast his successor? Three years would seemingly allow Rodgers to retire as a Packer and would force the team to make a tough decision on Love and his lapsing rookie contract, but closer examination revealed Rodgers’ deal to be a glorified one-year contract with two additional years tacked on.
Days later, the Packers traded Davante Adams, who had paired with Rodgers for eight prolific seasons, to the Raiders. Rodgers knew Adams wasn’t thrilled in Green Bay, but the quarterback thought his star receiver would stay.
Adams wanted to be the highest-paid receiver in league history, exceeding DeAndre Hopkins’ $27.25 million per year, and the Packers were willing to oblige — eventually. Rodgers believes now that the way negotiations were handled helped drive Adams away.
On a recent appearance on the “I Am Athlete” podcast, Adams said the initial offer from Green Bay, which the Packers made before the 2021 season, was less than $20 million annually.
“They offered him less money than Christian Kirk ($18 million per year) and (Adams) is going, ‘Are you serious right now? I’m the best receiver in the league, and you’re gonna offer me less than Christian Kirk?” Rodgers said. “With all due respect, he’s not on Davante’s level.
“I’m sure that the team will say that’s just the business of negotiation — it’s like, yeah, but you’re also sending a message to that guy, and a lot of times it can stick with guys and make them a little sour on things. … That goes back to the first offer that they made, and I don’t think (the Packers) had the foresight — obviously didn’t have the foresight.”
While shutting down negotiations during the 2021 season, Adams, like Rodgers, posted a second consecutive All-Pro campaign. “By the time he got to the end of it, I think he kind of made up his mind he was gonna go somewhere else,” Rodgers said.
Adams was shipped to the Raiders for a first-round pick and a second-rounder the Packers used to trade up for North Dakota State receiver Christian Watson in the 2022 draft. Suddenly, the All-Pro teammate Rodgers thought he’d have when he inked his name on his new deal was gone, replaced by an untested rookie.
Rodgers didn’t show up to voluntary OTAs after the team drafted Watson and fellow receivers Romeo Doubs and Samori Toure, among others. The quarterback didn’t feel like his presence was as important as the team did, saying any progress made during voluntary OTAs is “very nominal.”
According to the source associated with the team, the Packers weren’t satisfied with Rodgers’ commitment and effort, not only during voluntary OTAs but on a day-to-day basis afterward. Rodgers takes exception to the thought that the team wanted more from him in the months after giving him the richest contract in NFL history.
“When I’m in, I’m all-in, and you wanna ride with offseason workouts?” Rodgers said. “I won MVP without doing offseason workouts. Like, was my commitment any less then? I’d say not at all. The way that I come back to work, not just physically in good shape but mentally refreshed, is the best thing for me to have the season I wanted to have during those in Green Bay.
“I think that’s just a cop-out written to try and find something to disparage me about that, honestly, when you know what offseason workouts are really about, it’s completely ridiculous.”
On the first day of training camp last year, Rodgers told reporters he was “definitely” retiring a Packer. “Unless they trade me,” he said through a wide smile.
The 2022 season was an unpleasant one for the Packers, and not only because of any private displeasure they had with their quarterback. Rodgers played through a broken thumb suffered in Week 5, a young receiving corps made predictable mental errors and the defense underachieved. Ultimately, the campaign ended when the Packers lost at home to the Lions in Week 18, preventing a five-game win streak and what would have been a miraculous playoff berth.
“I showed up to work, I brought the same commitment, the same type of energy, and obviously there were some trying times and frustration as we went through that losing streak,” Rodgers said. “But we put on a strong run to finish the season and came up short.
“I feel good about the way I showed up for my guys every single week, and it’s convenient now to look at that, but it wasn’t a conversation when Russ and Matt and Brian and Mark would thank me for my speeches after games or the way I fought, played and different things. You can rewrite history all you want, but like I said, I still got the receipts.”
Rodgers said that a week after the season ended the Packers told him to take as much time as he wanted to make a decision about his future. “We want you to retire a Packer,” Rodgers said they told him. “We’ll figure everything else out, but we want you to be here.”
Gutekunst and Rodgers agreed to meet in person in Southern California, where Rodgers lives in the offseason and where Gutekunst was traveling in late January for the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl, but they never connected while Gutekunst was out west.
“Life happens,” Rodgers says now. “When I hit him back, he was already out of town, but it wasn’t like I hit him back like five days later. He hit me up, like, in the morning of one day. I hit him up either the night or the next morning or the next day and then he was gone.
“It wasn’t like there was a date we were for sure meeting at this time and this place. It was like, ‘Hey, I’m coming out west. I’m driving, whatever, you wanna get together?’ I said ‘Yeah, I got a busy schedule. I’m working out, I got things going on, I got appearances, but I’d like to make it work, too.'”
A few weeks later, Rodgers went on his much-discussed darkness retreat to contemplate his future.
In March, at the NFL’s annual league meetings in Phoenix, Gutekunst told reporters he tried to contact Rodgers “many times” during the offseason to discuss how the quarterback fit into the team’s future, but that Rodgers proved too elusive to reach.
Asked about the two sides’ differing stories, Rodgers credited the disconnect to the Packers not using FaceTime to call him.
“I have zero or one bar at the house, so you call me — sometimes it goes through, most of the time it drops and doesn’t go through,” Rodgers said. “Everybody who knows me, when I’m out west, they know that’s how to get a hold of me. So you can say whatever you want about that, but that’s the f—— truth.
“Before I went in the darkness, I hit ’em up and said, ‘Hey, there’s some stuff swirling around here. We should get together, you, me and Matt.'”
Rodgers said he entered the darkness retreat thinking he would retire but emerged feeling good about either retiring or continuing to play. He contacted Dunn, who told Rodgers the Packers had been shopping him. Rodgers then told Dunn to tell Gutekunst he wanted to be traded to the Jets. He didn’t have much else to say to the GM.
“Did Brian text me more than I texted him? Yeah, but did I ghost him? No,” Rodgers said. “I texted him back. There was back-and-forths that we had and so this is the story you wanna go with? You’re gonna stand on this hill of austerity and say that arguably in the conversation of the best player in your franchise history, you’re gonna say I couldn’t get a hold of him and that’s why we had to move on?
“Like, c’mon man. Just tell the truth, you wanted to move on. You didn’t like the fact that we didn’t communicate all the time. Like, listen, I talk to the people that I like.”
The only aspect of this seismic transition that seems certain is this: It was time for the Packers and Rodgers to move on. Yes, this offseason served as a breaking point in their relationship, but the Packers also need to see what they have in the 24-year-old Love, who’s finally about to get his chance.
Thrust into the spotlight in Kansas City after Rodgers tested positive for COVID-19 in Week 9 of the 2021 season, Love completed 19 of 34 passes for 190 yards, one touchdown and an interception in his first start, a 13-7 loss.
But that afternoon is one of the reasons Gutekunst is encouraged about Love taking over. Why? Start with the 16 quarterback pressures the Packers allowed.
“We didn’t have a great plan for him there,” Gutekunst told The Athletic. “I thought the way he responded to that, the way he handled himself in the midst of that chaos in a tough time … I think it gave us confidence that he could stay poised in those moments.”
Love’s only meaningful regular-season snaps since then came in Week 12 last season, when Rodgers suffered a rib injury against the Eagles on “Sunday Night Football.” Love played the entire fourth quarter and, with the Eagles playing to protect their lead, completed 6 of 9 passes for 113 yards and a touchdown.
The Packers will remain patient with new QB Jordan Love, so onlookers should too.
Gutekunst said he has seen improvement from Love over the past couple of offseasons when Rodgers wasn’t around and when Love took starter’s reps and ran practice last season with Rodgers nursing injuries.
But the Packers haven’t committed to him yet. Instead of exercising or declining Love’s fifth-year option, Green Bay signed him to a one-year extension that essentially gives Love a two-year trial run as the full-time starter on financial terms that benefit both parties.
“Until you get into that fire and you go through a bunch of different games and you see a bunch of different looks and you fail and then have a bunch of those scars and overcome them, you’re never really gonna know,” Gutekunst said. “But I think we all took a lot of confidence just with how he grew the last year and a half.”
Rodgers and Favre had a famously complicated relationship, with the elder quarterback chafing at the idea that he was obligated to mentor his potential successor. But according to Love, Rodgers has been a model teammate.
“I like Jordan a lot,” Rodgers says now. “Jordan’s a good dude. It’s tough to be a backup behind a future Hall of Famer. You’ve got to kinda find that sweet spot. I thought he did a great job with that, but he’s a good-hearted kid. It’s undetermined, his future, but from the physical standpoint, I thought he improved his fundamentals this last year.”
Rodgers, meanwhile, seems energized on the rebound with the Jets. And as he prepares to start with his new franchise, he can’t help but think back to his start in Green Bay, when after three seasons he took Favre’s job and never looked back.
“(Love) gets a chance to blaze his own trails, be his own man and lead in the way he best sees fit,” Rodgers said. “Take the good things he learned from me; things he would do differently, do ’em differently. That’s what I did when I took over.
“Obviously the team felt good with moving forward with him as the starter, and that’s how the team felt in 2008 with me after I showed in ’07 that I could get the job done. And history just repeated itself in that sense.”
https://theathletic.com/4564360/2023/05/31/aaron-rodgers-packers-succession-trade/
Matt Schneidman wrote: