Thirty years of spoiling
The end of the Packers’ season came harder and faster than anyone, especially this writer, expected. Now the Packers, blessed with two generational talents at the game’s most important position for the past 30 years, face a reckoning.
Packers fans are the most spoiled of all NFL fans—although they certainly do not act spoiled—for this reason: They have had truly elite quarterback play, first with Brett Favre and then with Aaron Rodgers, without interruption for almost 30 years. The closest another NFL team has come to equaling that was the Colts moving from Peyton Manning to Andrew Luck. But that was interrupted by injury and terminated by Luck’s retirement. Now my sense, and the sense I have had for the past two years, is that the transition that all other teams go through is coming, and coming soon.
I have no inside knowledge on this from Aaron or the team, and deliberately refrain from reaching out; I comment from my own experienced insight and perspective. And I just think this is the time for a change, both for Aaron and the team. Let’s examine.
Keeping the seat warm as the MVP
Headlines blared all last offseason that Aaron wanted out of Green Bay and many, including respected pundits, suggested Aaron would never set foot there again. As you may know from reading this space, I always thought he’d be back in 2021, and he was.
My sense of what happened last year is that Aaron, both as the reigning MVP and a placeholder for Jordan Love, rightfully wanted some clarity. If the Packers were moving to Love in 2022—something I have always felt would happen—Aaron may have wanted to just get on with it rather than wait a year. The Packers, of course, wanted their cake and to eat it too; they wanted Aaron to continue his MVP play while Love apprenticed another year. And they got that. Aaron returned with another MVP season to boot and seemed happy with the team and the front office, and vice versa.
But alas, the season ended with another playoff disappointment at snowy and frigid Lambeau Field and the book on the 2021 season is now closed.
Time for Transition
Seared in my mind from draft night 2020 is the image of both Packers general manger Brian Gutekunst and head coach Matt LaFleur, in separate locations due to COVID-19, both smiling ear-to-ear after having traded up to select Love. Fifteen years before that, we drafted Aaron because no one else did and he fell in our lap. But here, the Packers aggressively moved to get Love.
The reality of the NFL is that first-round quarterbacks play. They don’t sit forever; they’re not flipped for draft picks; they play. For an NFL team to have the conviction to take a first-round quarterback, no matter where in the round, it is deciding that he is going to play. The only question is when.
For Aaron, that time frame turned out to be an extraordinary length: three years. Patrick Mahomes sat for one year, and it seems like Trey Lance will assume the Niners’ starting role after a year on the bench, too. Every other first-round quarterback drafted since 2012 has played during his first year. Except, of course, for Love, who has now sat two years.
I know: Rodgers and Gutekunst are now getting along well, and Aaron seems open to returning. But I don’t think so. I stuck with my position that he would return last year, in the face of so many saying I would be wrong, and will do the same this year.
And I think the decision will be mutual.
Andrew Brandts take on all this just posted..... no one knows AR better.