On April 23, 2020, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was in the basement of his home in Bronxville, New York. It was an insane circumstance. The world was on pause because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Near the end of the first round of a unique draft, he announced the Green Bay Packers had traded up from the 30th-overall pick to the 26th with the Miami Dolphins, who had acquired the selection in a Laremy Tunsil trade.
The immediate expectation among Packers fans was for a linebacker, Patrick Queen or Jordyn Brooks, or a wide receiver, Michael Pittman or Tee Higgins. When Goodell changed the order of the papers in his hand, the future of the Green Bay Packers was about to change too.
“With the 26th pick of the 2020 NFL Draft, the Green Bay Packers select… Jordan Love, quarterback, Utah State.”
It was not only Packers fans and the media who were shocked by general manager Brian Gutekunst’s move. Green Bay’s starting quarterback was surprised too.
“I was like: ‘Oh, wow. Okay,'” Rodgers told The Ringer. “I love Scotch, but I’ve been drinking some sipping tequila lately as well. And once I got that text, I went to the pantry and poured myself about four fingers. I knew it was going to be one of those nights where people were going to start calling.”
That night, three years and one day ago, started a fever dream that culminated in this week’s trade. On Monday afternoon, the Packers sent Rodgers, a future Hall of Fame quarterback, to the same destination they sent his predecessor to when it was Rodgers’ time. As happened with Brett Favre in 2008, Aaron Rodgers is now the quarterback of the New York Jets.
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Eight months after the Packers had selected Jordan Love, the Jets and the Jacksonville Jaguars were the two worst teams in the NFL. Adam Gase’s Jets started the season with an impressively bad 0-13 record. On December 27, fortunes were about to change again in the NFL, though. One week after surprisingly beating the Los Angeles Rams, the Jets won again, this time over the Cleveland Browns.
“I’m super proud of our guys,” said Sam Darnold, who was the Jets quarterback at the time. “We had a huge win in LA, and then we came in to work on Monday, Wednesday, and the whole week we put in a real good week of work, and we’re super-excited about the win.”
Darnold knew his time in New York was up. The Jets traded him to the Carolina Panthers the following season. But that win and a Jaguars loss to the Chicago Bears in Week 16 made the first-overall pick change hands.
The Jets lost to the New England Patriots in Week 17, but the Colts beat the Jaguars, and it was too late for the Jets to get the first-overall pick back. Pundits considered Trevor Lawrence the best prospect since Andrew Luck, at least, and maybe since Peyton Manning. Therefore, he was too valuable of an asset to pass up. And Jacksonville was going to take him.
With the second pick in the 2021 draft, the Jets could choose between Zach Wilson, Trey Lance, Justin Fields, and Mac Jones. Without Lawrence, the chances of getting an elite quarterback were much smaller, but the Jets thought Wilson could get them there.
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April 29, 2021 was an agitated day for football fans. Everybody knew Lawrence would be the first pick, and Wilson was also expected to go No. 2. But hours before the draft, ESPN insider Adam Schefter dropped a bomb that would affect the Packers for months.
For the next few hours, nobody knew if the Packers would trade Rodgers and go with Jordan Love, who hadn’t played a single snap in his rookie season. Remember, there had been no preseason because of the pandemic.
The Packers acted like nothing wrong was going on. They selected cornerback Eric Stokes and moved on.
“He’s a complicated fella,” Packers president Mark Murphy said in June, while the Packers still didn’t have an answer.
Days before training camp, they finally came to an agreement. Rodgers was back under a restructured contract and with Randall Cobb as an olive branch from Gutekunst.
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After the Packers’ loss to the San Francisco 49ers in the divisional round of the 2021 postseason, Aaron Rodgers made it clear his future was unclear. Even with another MVP award that season, he was uncertain about whether to keep playing in 2022.
“There are a lot of decisions to be made,” Rodgers said. “Key players, a lot of guys who played tonight… so many guys whose contracts are up or on the brink or salary cap stuff. So, a lot of decisions to be made. I don’t want to be part of a rebuild if I’m going to keep playing. So a lot of decisions in the next couple of months.”
The Packers were clear all along: They wanted Aaron Rodgers back. General manager Brian Gutekunst and head coach Matt LaFleur guaranteed at any single possible opportunity that they wanted him back. And after some weeks of thinking, Rodgers decided on March 8, 2022, that he wanted to come back.
The contract signaled a real commitment: a three-year, $150 million extension. The structure allowed outs with trades in the future because of the annual roster bonuses, but the financial engagement was significant — which has now been proved with the dead cap hit of over $ 40 million Rodgers leaves behind.
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Zach Wilson never lived up to expectations in New York. He had a 69.7 passer rating as a rookie. Nevertheless, the 2022 quarterback class wasn’t great. Even with two top-10 picks, one of which they got from the Seattle Seahawks in the Jamal Adams trade, the Jets passed up on Kenny Pickett twice. Rightfully so. They got cornerback Sauce Gardner and wide receiver Garrett Wilson, two keystones to their new foundation.
The Packers also had two first-round picks. Less than two months after trading Davante Adams to the Las Vegas Raiders, they got two defensive players in Quay Walker and Devonte Wyatt. On the next day, the Packers ended up trading their two late second-round picks and moving up to finally get a wide receiver: Christian Watson.
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On October 9, 2022, the Packers would play outside of North America for the first time. The team was 3-1 and, even though the performance wasn’t great, there was hope.
Without Adams and with rookies Watson and Romeo Doubs coming along, the passing offense took time to develop. Things got worse when Aaron Rodgers broke his right thumb on the last play of a 27-22 loss to the New York Giants in London.
His performance dropped dramatically in the next few weeks, and the Packers lost six of the next seven games. The playoffs were almost out of reach when the team started to get back on track.
Consecutive wins against the Bears, Rams, Dolphins, and Minnesota Vikings, plus favorable scores around the league, allowed the Packers to go to Week 18 depending only on themselves to get in. But they lost to the Detroit Lions at home, 20-16, in what would be Rodgers’ last game with the Packers.
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Even though Jordan Love didn’t have any chance to start a game in 2022, he had a significant appearance. On November 27, Rodgers suffered a rib injury and left the Week 12 game against the Philadelphia Eagles.
It was the we have something here moment for the Packers regarding Love. The feeling was the same Green Bay had 15 years earlier, when Rodgers showed what he had become in a 2007 game against the Dallas Cowboys. Love went 6/9 for 113 yards and a touchdown after Rodgers had gone 11/16 for 140 yards, two touchdowns, and two interceptions.
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By the end of the season, the Jets had completely given up on Zach Wilson. They had made Mike White their starter, and the front office offered signs they would want another long-term answer starting for them in 2023. Former Packers offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett ended up being their choice to replace Mike LaFleur, Matt’s brother. He was a guy Rodgers was comfortable with.
This time around, the narrative in Green Bay was different. They felt Love was ready. But the decision was gradually maturing. In his January press conference, Gutekunst said they had a real connection to Rodgers: the contract the parties had signed the prior offseason.
“We made a really big commitment to him last offseason, so I think as we did that, it wasn’t certainly for just this year,” the Packers’ GM affirmed.
But the tone was different during the NFL Combine in February.
“We haven’t really had those conversations yet,” Gutekunst said. “Not a lot to report until we have those conversations. We’ve exchanged some texts and things like that, but we haven’t had a chance to speak yet.”
In the first minutes of March 7 in New York, still March 6 in Green Bay, Trey Wingo reported Rodgers had been allowed to have a meeting with the Jets brass.
On March 10, even with Rodgers yet undecided about what he was going to do, Packers president Mark Murphy was definitive when asked if they wanted Rodgers back.
“If things don’t work out the way we would want, yeah,” Murphy said. “He’s obviously a great player. Four-time MVP. But I think it’s trying to find what he wants and what we want, and hopefully, we can find a win-win situation.”
There would be almost two months of leverage talk, discussions, and Twitter fights between Packers and Jets fans on Twitter. However, this book is finally closed.
History could have been different without the Jordan Love pick. History would almost certainly be different if the Jets had Trevor Lawrence. But the Aaron Rodgers era in Green Bay is now over, and the next chapters of this story will be amazing to follow.
