Days continue to pass following the darkness retreat that was supposedly provide the four-time MVP with the clarity he sought about the remainder of his football career. Meanwhile, scores of Green Bay Packers fans continue to wait on pins and needles to see what will transpire between their beloved team and its quarterback, Aaron Rodgers. Unfortunately, the conversation that surrounds the will-he-stay-or-will-he-go drama that holds Cheeseheads hostage by largely neglects one major trump card that Rodgers still holds.
What if he changes his mind?
To its credit, the Green Bay front office has been buttoned up and slow to act throughout this whole process. It knows that forcing Rodgers to act leaves the Packers vulnerable to a future flip-flop by the future Hall of Famer. NFL writer Mike Silver, who has had a seemingly better relationship with Rodgers than insiders such as Adam Schefter and Ian Rapoport, laid out a close to Doomsday scenario for the Packers. In his Sunday column for Bally Sports, Silver described a situation where all of this offseason drama could rear its head in the ugliest of fashions. If Rodgers manipulates the league calendar to his advantage, he can force his way out of town to a destination of his choosing, sticking it to the Packers in the process.
If Rodgers decided to retire before March 17 (when the window opens for his fully guaranteed, $58.3 million option bonus to be exercised) and then unretired before the start of the regular season, the cap-strapped Packers would have a problem. They’d either have to pay him the bonus or owe that same amount in base salary for 2023 (upping his total pay to $59.465 million) and would have to get into cap compliance by the end of that day.
Ideally, Brian Gutekunst and Russ Ball would have a contingency plan in place were this to happen, but the real kick in the cheese curds in this potential scenario is that the team would have to sort its salary cap out that very same day. Green Bay would have little to no leverage; the rest of the teams will certainly have their quarterback situations resolved. Unless there was a mass upheaval of contracts on the roster, there’s no real way that the Packers could keep him.
It would make for an ugly day at 1265 Lombardi Ave., but one that has to be lingering in the back of the mind of all parties involved. The front office certainly wants to avoid this scenario, and have done well so far to prevent it from happening. However, it’s ultimately not totally within their control and could be left to how the astrological signs line up that day. It’s truly hard to say what’s going to happen, but ask yourself this: Does Rodgers seem like the aggrieved, vindictive, petty type that would put the screws to the Green Bay front office like this? Um…yes.
If the Packers were worried about this scenario, wouldn’t they want to trade Rodgers, in an attempt to move on? The quarterback does not have a no-trade clause, which means that Gutekunst could theoretically send the quarterback to the highest bidder. Rodgers’ leverage is that if he’s not happy with the trade destination, he could simply retire and ultimate make the trade null and void. The 39-year old has said that he doesn’t want to be a part of a rebuild, be in in Green Bay or elsewhere. Therefore, he’s clearly got a list in mind of places where there’s no shot of him playing next year.
On Monday, Derek Carr signed a significant free agent deal with New Orleans after forcing his way out of Las Vegas. That only increased speculation that teams like the New York Jets might step up their hopeful courtship of Rodgers, given that one of the top names on the available quarterback market had just been crossed off. The Jets have long fit the bill of a team that might be of interest to Rodgers, with some premier young talent that could conceivably make a jump with a MVP-caliber quarterback. As Carr and New Orleans begin their new marriage, the supply of capable signal callers has gone down, which means that if I learned anything in Economics 101, demand for those quarterbacks has gone up.
Some team may come out of the woodwork (the Carolina Panthers? Tampa Bay Buccaneers?) with a strong push for Rodgers, but nothing in the current arrangement of the tea leaves that a suitor like that will emerge. Green Bay announced Rodgers’ extension on March 8th, 2022, so we’re getting dialed in on the date that we’ve all been waiting for, in which we get just a bit more clarity of what’s coming next. However, unless it’s a definitive I’m staying or a Yep, I’m leaving and I’m happy to be going here, there’s still a chance that this saga isn’t over yet. Gutenkust and the Packers know that, and Rodgers most certainly knows that too. Until then, all that Green Bay can do is wait anxiously alongside the rest of us and see how this plays out.
