Rodgers wants out

[lupedafiasco]

Yeah Mr Turd Ab helped Brady win a super bowl come playoff time. You can worry about character issues, or you can worry about winning. Brady and the Bucs were worried about winning, and well...they won the super bowl.

Facts on facts.

Brady also won 6 Super Bowls with "The Patriot Way" that worried both about character and about winning.

And the Titans drafted a guy in the 4th this year that just got arrested and in the first last year that couldn't even make it through a calendar year on NFL rosters. And the Houston Texans have literally zero path to success because their star QB is being accused of 22 counts of assault.

Taking character risks doesn't always (or usually, or often) pan out. Don't act like it's a simple comparison.

(there are also different types of character risks, but that's a whole different thread)

The Patriots took tons of character concern players. The difference was they kept the risk low and the reward high. Randy Moss? Turned out to be one of the biggest robberies in NFL history. It didnt lead to a SB but it got them there and elevated TB to have his best season. Remember when they signed Corey Dillon because they needed a RB? Yeah that helped them win a SB and he was arrested for domestic violence. Aqib Talib was a loud mouth DB with character concerns they traded for. Legarrette Blount was considered a character concern and he won 2 SBs with the Pats. They traded for Albert Haynesworth for a 5th round pick. It didnt work out but it was a low risk move that could have had major rewards. Ochocinco was a loud mouth receiver they got for cheap. It didnt work out but again low risk. They got Josh Gordon whos body couldnt survive if it didnt consume an ounce of weed a day. Bradys last year the Pats picked up AB. Didnt work out and they cut him. No skin off their back but at least they tried. I dont know what youre talking about the Patriots and character and winning.

They only care about winning. Spoiler alert, they won a lot of Super Bowls.

[German_Panzer]

Somebody will have to bend over the table to make this work.

[Bogey]

Rodgers set aside his issues last year for the season, but it looks like its all flooding back again. He has a pretty serious personality disorder that has gone downhill pretty rapidly in the last few years, treat someone like a god for so many years then they start to think they are one.

Sad, sad, sad, for sure.

[lupedafiasco]

One thing I'm not sure how it works.

If Rodgers holds out until the start of the season to be traded and then retires he has to pay back his guarantees. I get that. But at that point youve missed out of the opportunity to sign people with the money allocated to him. Then next offseason right before the FA period opens again he comes out of retirement and again demands to be traded. His contract has to be honored again if my understanding are correct. He can just do that over and over and youre wasting cap space on a guy not playing until hes traded or cut.

It would be a douchey thing to do but if hes dead set on leaving and it isnt worth it for him to stay then its one way of eventually getting what you want. Hes got other business ventures and has made enough money that it shouldnt matter to him if he doesnt get another dime from his NFL career.

[RingoCStarrQB]

This is all about the NFL Power struggle. Thanks to Tom Brady the players are trying to take control of the front office. I keep saying the NFL is becoming the NBA. We've all known for years that starting and finishing with the same team became virtually impossible with the salary cap and how much QBs get paid, but now players trying to call their shots is the last straw for me. No more defending players. Rodgers has no leverage except to make Gutey look bad to the public and that sucks. Don't tell people you love the fans and then do this &%$@. Because this has nothing to do with the fans and only about MONEY! Poor guy is only worth about $80-100 million and we're supposed to feel sorry for him? And now MLF and Gutey are apologizing because they think the team will suffer financially if they don't!!

I'm just glad I got to experience the Packer teams of the 60s before all these woke players got involved.

[YoHoChecko]

One thing I'm not sure how it works.

If Rodgers holds out until the start of the season to be traded and then retires he has to pay back his guarantees. I get that. But at that point youve missed out of the opportunity to sign people with the money allocated to him. Then next offseason right before the FA period opens again he comes out of retirement and again demands to be traded. His contract has to be honored again if my understanding are correct. He can just do that over and over and youre wasting cap space on a guy not playing until hes traded or cut.

It would be a douchey thing to do but if hes dead set on leaving and it isnt worth it for him to stay then its one way of eventually getting what you want. Hes got other business ventures and has made enough money that it shouldnt matter to him if he doesnt get another dime from his NFL career.

If that happens you trade him next year when he does it for draft picks whose value is known. Aside from him coming back to play, that's actually the BEST case scenario: retiring for the year, saving us a boatload of money, then submitting for reinstatement next offseason so we can trade him to the highest bidder--I like the Texans and the #1 overall pick, haha. Trading him now just means we're getting rewarded and repaid with draft picks whose values aren't well-known.

If we want to trade him this year to get rid of a headache, which to me is in no way worth giving up your best shot at a Super Bowl in 2021, then we have to demand a CRAZY haul. Because we neither want to nor have to move him. I mean a totally insane haul. I've outlined some I'd consider over in Ghost's fake news story thread, though it's changed a touch now that the draft is over.

Basically either the Broncos or Raiders for last year's first round picks (Jeudy or Ruggs), this year's first round picks (Surtain or Leatherwood), this year's second round picks (Meinerz or Moehrig), a back-up QB (Bridgewater or Mariota), and next year's first round pick.

That's my floor for a deal this year. No budging. Again, the team neither wants to nor has to move him.

[Christo]

I posted a theory a few months back on FF about the possibility that Rodgers and Adams might get together to form an exit plan and join a contending team ala Brady and Gronk.

Rodgers probably doesn't want to start all over again to form a new rapport with a new WR that will take a few years to develop especially at his age. Adams knows if he sticks with Rodgers he will continue to produce at a high level and therefore extend his career earning power. With Love being drafted and Adams 1 year away from FA, also they saw how Brady and Gronk maneuvered their way out of New England to Tampa and win a superbowl. They probably looked at each other and said "lets do this, lets make it happen".

With that theory in mind, what if Rodgers is posturing that he wants to stay and get an extension to give the impression that he wants to stay when he in fact he actually doesn't and just want to cause enough trouble to force a trade to the team he wants. Then a year later they complete the plan when Adams hits FA.

Just spitballing here.

That may be, but the Packers can let Rodgers sit out for the next 3 years and they can franchise Adams after this coming season.

And remember, if this was to succeed, you can kiss the NFL goodbye. Every crybaby in the league will pull this crap.
I expect contracts in the near future to have clauses that can really hammer players from doing this.

Personally, I don't care if they both leave. I'm not going to lose any sleep over them, nor should anybody else.

The reason this works for Rodgers is because of all the mistreatment and the fact that he is the reigning MVP and best player of all time

I'm sorry, I forgot about all of the mistreatment he's had to endure. He was paid in the 30 plus million dollar range last season. To be paid 37 million this season [ guaranteed, if he's not dehydrated from all of the crying ]

Not that I care about Gutey, but if Rodgers was to get him fired, how is that not a form of mistreatment? A GM doing his job and trying to put together the best roster he can with limited money to spend, because of big contracts on players such Aaron Rodgers.
But the little sensitive diva wants him gone so he can flex his muscles for all of his sycophant's and show everybody what a man he is.

All because he drafted a QB. And a black QB at that. Lets play the twitter game and start calling him a racist. Aaron Rodgers refuses to play on same team as black QB.
That's how it would play out if the Packers were " mistreating " Love.

And this is to all of the people on here crying the Packers didn't draft a WR last year. The team had the number 1 offense, how would a WR made it any better?

And as for the best player of all time, prove it. I can think of plenty of players who can be called that.

As they say, championships are what counts. Right now he has as many as Trent Dilfer.

[Labrev]

Just to be clear, I UNDERSTAND why Rodgers is upset.

It's just that the reasons are stupid, his feelings aren't particularly valid, and his behavior right now is abhorrent.

But yeah, I understand where it's coming from. He's just wrong.

I am somewhat more sympathetic to Rodgers than you are, but yeah, I agree with this stance overall.

[Labrev]

re: "Rodgers wants Brady control" ... HAHAHA okay, there's an easy response to that: you're not Tom Brady, sit your ass down. More gifted passer, but a decidedly inferior leader. Also, for all the Packers' management's faults, they are not Tampa Bay, either. That team is so incompetent that having a HOF QB come in and be the quasi-coach and active player recruiter, while unorthodox, is not a bad idea.

More pertinently, Brady would have put the 2015 and 2020 Packers over the top. Rodgers would not have engineered The Comeback. When you bring up winnable games that Rodgers-led teams pissed away, the response from his apologists is always to pin those losses on other players. Rodgers apologists have internalized his defeatist attitude: oh well, what could he/I do? Brady does not have that attitude, and quite bluntly, that's why he is a winner and Rodgers is not.

Also, some have invoked Boss/Employee logic in this discussion. I don't care about that angle of it at all (surprise surprise). In fact, we had this discussion a few months ago and I am *in favor* of players having somewhat more of a say on things. But like... *not* 1 star player unilaterally getting to decide to can the GM (lol).

[YoHoChecko]

I read this great book during the pandemic--it was actually a long history of debt and money throughout human civilization--all 5000 years of it. But it was written by an anthropologist and he does a lot of philosophical musings about things along the way.

One thing that stood out to me was his take on traditional views of "honor." His view is that "Men of Honor" gain honor by extracting it from others. That sounds weird, but when you think about a soldier who gains honor through the men he kills and the battles he wins. Or the prisoners he captures to be made into slaves. Kings, too, gain honor by conquering, and the honor of wealthy and powerful was often "measured" in terms of how many slaves he had, how many wives he had, how many people he had defeated in combat, etc.


It was a really fascinating understanding of a "transactional" view of honor in which honor is a form of currency that is almost zero-sum, gained or lost.

That's what I think about this whole Rodgers thing. Rodgers feels that he has lost honor or respect due to the way he has been treated, and his only method of attempting to build up his honor is to extract it from others--to bend the organization to his whim particularly at the price of Gutey's honor. It's a really crappy system and way to view the world, and while I still really like Aaron Rodgers as a player and the person he seems to be, this flawed mentality has always been a part of him and it's definitely showing its ugliest side right now, as he sits silent.

If Rodgers had a single true thing to say that would make him look better and de-escalate right now, he'd say it. And he's not. He'd rather extract honor.

[Raptorman]

One thing I'm not sure how it works.

If Rodgers holds out until the start of the season to be traded and then retires he has to pay back his guarantees. I get that. But at that point youve missed out of the opportunity to sign people with the money allocated to him. Then next offseason right before the FA period opens again he comes out of retirement and again demands to be traded. His contract has to be honored again if my understanding are correct. He can just do that over and over and youre wasting cap space on a guy not playing until hes traded or cut.

It would be a douchey thing to do but if hes dead set on leaving and it isnt worth it for him to stay then its one way of eventually getting what you want. Hes got other business ventures and has made enough money that it shouldnt matter to him if he doesnt get another dime from his NFL career.

My understanding of how it works is this. Say Rodgers retires. He has to pay back any money paid to him for the rest of his contract, Pro rated of course. And, the Packers own the "rights" to Rodgers because he still has two years left on his contract. So, if he wants to come back, the only way he gets to another team right away is if the Packers trade his "rights" or release him. He can't retire this year, sit out a year and come back as a FA next year.

[Christo]

One thing I'm not sure how it works.

If Rodgers holds out until the start of the season to be traded and then retires he has to pay back his guarantees. I get that. But at that point youve missed out of the opportunity to sign people with the money allocated to him. Then next offseason right before the FA period opens again he comes out of retirement and again demands to be traded. His contract has to be honored again if my understanding are correct. He can just do that over and over and youre wasting cap space on a guy not playing until hes traded or cut.

It would be a douchey thing to do but if hes dead set on leaving and it isnt worth it for him to stay then its one way of eventually getting what you want. Hes got other business ventures and has made enough money that it shouldnt matter to him if he doesnt get another dime from his NFL career.

My understanding of how it works is this. Say Rodgers retires. He has to pay back any money paid to him for the rest of his contract, Pro rated of course. And, the Packers own the "rights" to Rodgers because he still has two years left on his contract. So, if he wants to come back, the only way he gets to another team right away is if the Packers trade his "rights" or release him. He can't retire this year, sit out a year and come back as a FA next year.

Actually, they have his rights for 3 years.

[Raptorman]

One thing I'm not sure how it works.

If Rodgers holds out until the start of the season to be traded and then retires he has to pay back his guarantees. I get that. But at that point youve missed out of the opportunity to sign people with the money allocated to him. Then next offseason right before the FA period opens again he comes out of retirement and again demands to be traded. His contract has to be honored again if my understanding are correct. He can just do that over and over and youre wasting cap space on a guy not playing until hes traded or cut.

It would be a douchey thing to do but if hes dead set on leaving and it isnt worth it for him to stay then its one way of eventually getting what you want. Hes got other business ventures and has made enough money that it shouldnt matter to him if he doesnt get another dime from his NFL career.

My understanding of how it works is this. Say Rodgers retires. He has to pay back any money paid to him for the rest of his contract, Pro rated of course. And, the Packers own the "rights" to Rodgers because he still has two years left on his contract. So, if he wants to come back, the only way he gets to another team right away is if the Packers trade his "rights" or release him. He can't retire this year, sit out a year and come back as a FA next year.

Actually, they have his rights for 3 years.

Well, whatever is left on his contract. If you say 3 years, I'll believe you.

[YoHoChecko]

Actually, they have his rights for 3 years.

Well, whatever is left on his contract. If you say 3 years, I'll believe you.

No it's a regular year. It was just one year longer than his prorated signing bonus so it's a year with no dead money or guarantees. One of the sticking points, it seems. So it is a somewhat important nuance to the conversation, but yes. If he retires and comes back next year, he is still under contract with the Packers, not a free agent. He has no real options aside from showing up to the team and then intentionally sabotaging games with poor play.

[go pak go]

I read this great book during the pandemic--it was actually a long history of debt and money throughout human civilization--all 5000 years of it. But it was written by an anthropologist and he does a lot of philosophical musings about things along the way.

One thing that stood out to me was his take on traditional views of "honor." His view is that "Men of Honor" gain honor by extracting it from others. That sounds weird, but when you think about a soldier who gains honor through the men he kills and the battles he wins. Or the prisoners he captures to be made into slaves. Kings, too, gain honor by conquering, and the honor of wealthy and powerful was often "measured" in terms of how many slaves he had, how many wives he had, how many people he had defeated in combat, etc.


It was a really fascinating understanding of a "transactional" view of honor in which honor is a form of currency that is almost zero-sum, gained or lost.

That's what I think about this whole Rodgers thing. Rodgers feels that he has lost honor or respect due to the way he has been treated, and his only method of attempting to build up his honor is to extract it from others--to bend the organization to his whim particularly at the price of Gutey's honor. It's a really crappy system and way to view the world, and while I still really like Aaron Rodgers as a player and the person he seems to be, this flawed mentality has always been a part of him and it's definitely showing its ugliest side right now, as he sits silent.

If Rodgers had a single true thing to say that would make him look better and de-escalate right now, he'd say it. And he's not. He'd rather extract honor.

I don't think I can see myself liking Aaron Rodgers anymore.

I mean I really, REALLY liked him last fall. He was hilarious. But man this whole sh*t he has done has just really rubbed me the wrong way. Not saying he doesn't have the right to retire and to not play for us anymore, but it's also not saying I have to like him anymore as a person.

He can still win me half back if he denies everything at some point in the future and does play for the Packers in 2021, but it will be tainted.

I just don't like seeing people get joy out of watching things they supposedly love burn. And that is what he is doing. I mean think of all his coaches, teammates, fans, friends, etc. getting hurt by this decision he has made.

[YoHoChecko]

I just don't like seeing people get joy out of watching things they supposedly love burn. And that is what he is doing. I mean think of all his coaches, teammates, fans, friends, etc. getting hurt by this decision he has made.

This is why I'm such a hardline, anti-Rodgers stance in all these arguments. This, right here. Yes, he has the right to be upset and to "look out for #1," as they say. But the WAY he is doing this, it's representative of pure petty selfishness.

But I can forgive it very easily because I've always thought him to be a bit petty and a bit selfish and definitely smarmy. So I KNOW these things about him. It doesn't change my opinion of him very much. I also generally keep my distance from ever letting anyone I don't know be any sort of "hero status" in my book because they very likely will disappoint you. We're all just human.

When you know that someone has some pretty deep character flaws and you like them anyway, it's because of the other things. When those character flaws show themselves, for me, it doesn't change the other stuff. I already knew this about Rodgers. It's just a reminder to keep him in the right category of adoration for me. He's a guy whose interviews I can enjoy and whose activism I generally am pleased by and whose play on the football field is capable of being the very best.

But he's biologically incapable of accepting fault or blame for anything (this was abundantly clear when he was putting together mediocre seasons and saying things like "my down year would be a career year for most guys"), he holds grudges, and he's petty. Some of that has helped drive him to the player he is today, so I take the good with the bad. But it's also what has driven him to this place, right now.

[Waldo]

He has no real options aside from showing up to the team and then intentionally sabotaging games with poor play.

Which, one can convincingly argue, he has done, and which was likely one of the reasons GB was seriously looking at QB's.

[YoHoChecko]

He has no real options aside from showing up to the team and then intentionally sabotaging games with poor play.

Which, one can convincingly argue, he has done, and which was likely one of the reasons GB was seriously looking at QB's.

I've never bought that narrative at all. It's an apologist's narrative. It's for someone who believes that the only way Rodgers can fail is if he means to do it. It's just not true. Rodgers' failures were very apparent and natural progressions of NFL QB life.

He was a top-notch escape artist with great athleticism and ability to extend plays early in his career and then he stopped being able to escape. It's the same reason why "running" QBs often have the highest sack numbers. Because they THINK they can get away. Rodgers thought he could get away and his age and loss of elite mobility failed him. He took a while to adjust to extend plays less often. He was never a big "check-down" guy, and he didn't want to become one.

And then, of course, in a system that relied on winning one-on-ones, having declining receiver talent really did hurt at the end of the McCarthy years. I don't consider it a "failure" by anyone in personnel, more so just McCarthy's failure to adapt to his personnel. Because the team had Jordy and Cobb and Adams and the wheels fell of two of those guys a lot faster than I think we expected.

The one thing that was weird was that McCarthy totally bought into this "big play" theory of offense later in his tenure. He got "into analytics" but drew some pretty faulty conclusions with some causation/correlation confusion. And Rodgers seemed to go all in on that--in interviews and on the field. THAT I could see being some sort of schematic trolling. Like, ok, my coach says he wants big plays, I'll hold the ball and try to make big plays. Let's see how dumb that's going to be. But he kept doing it. That's the one thing that I always found a bit suspicious. Like, is Rodgers really being a good soldier? Is this how he wants to play? Does he really believe this flawed mentality? Seemed a bit unlikley.

But even that is still playing the way your coach is coaching you. Not "sabotaging" play.

I also take a bit of issue with the second part, about the team "looking seriously at QB." It IS true they did their diligence on the class that year, but by all accounts the team wanted a WR in round one and could not trade up for one. That was reported, stated, and fits well with the reality in which the teams that did trade up traded up from closer than we were, and the run really did happen.

Again, I would NOT have traded up for Love. I might have taken him if he was still there at 30. But I never had questions about how that happened. It seemed to make a general amount of sense.

So Rodgers wasn't playing very well, and either he was sabotaging his coach, which is abhorrent, or he just was having trouble adjusting his game to his diminished athletic ability (escapability) in the pocket and his coach's failure to adapt his scheme to diminished WR talent. But the flaws in Rodgers' game were still flaws. They were still easy to see. They didn't seem to be something intentional you could fake. I doubt "getting hit a whole lot more than I used to" was his master strategy. He just didn't perform as well without more ideal circumstances.

Now he has a good scheme and some slightly better talent (Adams' development, MVS and Lazard being 3rd year versions of themselves not rookie versions of themselves, Tonyan, Aaron Jones). And the dividends are paying off. And a BIG part of that is forcing him to get the ball out faster, take fewer sacks, and finally adjust his game to this stage of his career. He wasn't doing it on his own. He needed someone to make him.

[lulu]

I think theres validity to what Hawk said on the McCafee Show. Rodgers has wanted in the loop for a while. Rightfully so. TT ran the team into the ground. As much as you people love him and sure hes dead, respect and all that, but he $%@# sucked at his job towards the end. He was downright terrible. Then you bring in

Gutey comes in and instantly he gets the team in cap trouble, mismanages his resources, makes some strange decisions and here we are. Hes done well but hes made a lot of poor decisions. Signing both the Smiths to crazy big deals and then drafting Gary 12th. Paying big money to Graham who sucked, waited a year too long to rectify the mistake and cut him. The Billy Turner deal was ludicrous. He basically blew his first draft outside of Alexander which was a great pick and all but youve gotta get more than 1 player from a draft. The Love pick was downright stupid. Ive said before no one can convince me that was a good pick. Even if he ends up being a pro bowl QB you already had one and its not like hes already 40 or something.

Now insert Tom Brady who basically got the treatment Rodgers wants. They did everything he wanted. They supported him with the best offensive supporting cast in the league. He wins the Super Bowl. Meanwhile youve got Rodgers who loses to Tom in the NFCC. Youve got Lazard ducking a wide open pass on an option one play and missing his pick on another. to get Adams open. Both would have been TDs. Youve got King being bad, which Ive been telling you since day one he stinks. EQ dropping a 2pt conversion. Adams dropping balls.

Rodgers cant trust this team to do enough to get over the top.

Wait, how in the hell do you blame Ted for crappy drafts towards the end and then go on to say Gutey messed up the cap? I would agree with the former statement but we didn't have an edge rusher worth a crap so Gutey HAD to go out and drop big coin on the Smith brothers. By comparison, Amos was a bargain but it was a needed signing by all the misses drafting secondary guys. What other contracts have put the Packers in cap hell?
Pick a lane.

[Labrev]

Yeah, I don't believe the sabotage thing either. Not that I would put it past him, it just does not really hold up under scrutiny. He continued having the same issues in his first year under LaFleur (holding the ball too long, sandbox style play, etc).

For that matter, he also looked about that bad under Joe Philbin, which cannot really be blamed on as drastic of a scheme change as LaFleur's first year -- not quite as bad as he looked under Mac, but not *appreciably* better.