The most tangible evidence yet of the ice thawing between the Packers and Jets came Monday when Green Bay GM Brian Gutekunst admitted his team won’t necessarily get a first-round pick for quarterback Aaron Rodgers. That statement could well be interpreted as an indication that the Packers have finally abandoned their insistence on a package highlighted by a 13th overall pick transfer in the upcoming draft.
But it also hints at the possibility of a first-round pick in 2024 based on future events.
Yahoo Sports’ Charles Robinson has the latest from Arizona, where all the teams are gathered and the two teams at the current center of the NFL universe could be settling their differences over an increasingly inevitable deal.
The Jets, we’re told, were poised to part with two second-round picks. As Robinson characterizes the current talks, Green Bay would get a second-round pick in 2023 and a second-round pick in 2024, which could move to a first-round pick depending on how the Jets with Rodgers on the team go in the year Cut off 2023.
Also moot is the possibility that Rodgers, who claims he was 90 percent in the mood for retirement when he began his recent retreat into obscurity, will only spend a year in New York before calling it a career. The Jets want to guard against that possibility in the form of a pick that would flow back to New York in 2025.
While pushing an agreement across the finish line may not be easy, it sounds like discussions have finally moved beyond first place, where the Packers are faced with anticipation of New York’s first-round pick of the year had fallen behind in 2023.
Why wouldn’t the Packers allow the 2024 pick to be based on team and/or player performance in 2023? The two franchises used such a device when Brett Favre made the journey from Frozen Tundra to Oversized Apple in 2008. And why not protect the Jets from the possibility of Rodgers deciding to retire after just one season?
The Packers are clearly done with Rodgers. Anything they get for a guy who will never play for them again is a bonus. If they end this year with a second-round pick, next year with a first-round pick, and ultimately have to return a mid-round pick in 2025, that’s a hell of a parting gift for the franchise, which has already done it mentally parted ways from another franchise quarterback – just in time to find out if they’ll end up going three-for-three in the awkward handover from Favre to Rodgers to Jordan Love.
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