Aaron Rodgers has been a mainstay in the headlines this offseason. Ever since Adam Schefter’s draft-night report about No. 12’s anger with the Green Bay Packers’ front office, it’s been nonstop chaos.
Trade rumors have continued to swirl while Rodgers has made a few appearances nationally, including Kenny Mayne’s last SportsCenter and teaming up with Bryson DeChambeau on TNT’s The Match.
The league MVP from a year ago seems to relish keeping Brian Gutekunst and Mark Murphy guessing, providing no clues about his plans for the rest of the summer — including Packers training camp, which starts July 28. Despite all the frustration around the team’s franchise quarterback this year, the beginning of the 2019 offseason was more annoying than anything that’s happened this summer.
It’s always good to get a refresher on the past so that history doesn’t repeat itself. For the Packers, the start to the 2019 offseason was drenched in ridicule and mockery.
Green Bay was coming off a 6-9-1 season (not nice), and missed out on the post-season for a second consecutive year. Mike McCarthy was shown the door during the regular season after a loss to the Arizona Cardinals. Things were falling apart.
When the Packers chose Matt LaFleur as their next head coach, the move was met with immediate skepticism from some fans.
The biggest concern was that then-39-year-old LaFleur had never been a head coach before. How would Rodgers respond to the new hire? Would he even give LaFleur the time of day? This lazy narrative dragged along for weeks as people wondered aloud why Green Bay would pick a first-time head coach who most recently led a good-but-not-great Tennessee Titans offense.
Rodgers, by his own standards, had an average 2018 season. He only threw two interceptions total and started every game, making that statistic even more unbelievable. However, him only having 25 touchdowns in 16 games and the second-lowest quarterback rating of his career had some worried that No. 12 was in decline.
It got so out of hand that there were literally articles being puked out asking if Mitchell Trubisky was ready to “dethrone” Rodgers as the best quarterback in the NFC North. The media — and sports media, in particular — is largely based on getting clicks. We get it. But is there no shame whatsoever for some of these circus acts? The idea that Trubisky could overtake Rodgers in the hierarchy of NFC North quarterbacks was more than far-fetched. But some saw a struggling franchise with a new, unknown head coach and seized the opportunity to churn out insanity.
That wasn’t even the low point of the chaos. Let’s not forget when Colin Cowherd claimed Rodgers was “Jay Cutler with a ring,” and then backed up his take on Rodgers AFTER year one with LaFleur, calling No. 12 a quitter and urging fans to stop blaming McCarthy.
Things eventually calmed down. The Packers went out in March and signed some crucial free agents like Za’Darius Smith, Preston Smith, and Adrian Amos. All have been a huge part of Green Bay’s success defensively the last couple of years and figure to be a massive part of the blueprint in 2021.
So the narrative went from “Rodgers won’t respect a coach with no experience and is declining anyway” to “Hey, this defense could turn out to be pretty good.” It was like waving a treat in front of a dog to take their attention off the other neighborhood dog running around outside.
All that was needed was a couple of free-agent signings and all of a sudden the Packers were destined for greatness yet again.
This offseason hasn’t been fun by any stretch of the imagination for the Packers. It’s the middle of July and Green Bay still has Rodgers on their roster but has little idea who their QB1 will be Week 1 against the New Orleans Saints.
As the relationship between Rodgers and the front office remains fractured, all those nagging doubts linger. The best thing to do: Zoom out the microscope, take a deep breath, and remember the times in offseasons past where things were even more unbearably annoying than they are now. It might be hard to believe, but the first two months in the 2019 offseason were even more dreadful. The Rodgers fiasco will have a solution sometime soon, one way or another.
At least now Packers fans have found out that LaFleur can coach.
