PHOENIX — As the Green Bay Packers and New York Jets work out the final sticking points in a trade for quarterback Aaron Rodgers, a pressure point is looming in talks — and it’s coming fast.
Mark April 17 on your calendar.
That’s the date Green Bay will start its offseason training program. And if Rodgers is still on the Packers roster, the contract between the NFL and the NFL Players Association dictates that the Packers can’t keep him off the team’s facility once practice begins. That means if Rodgers wants to make things extremely awkward while trade talks drag on — and he’s not on good terms with Green Bay’s front office right now — he could just show up.
That possibility raises two questions: Would Rodgers actually take such an aggressive move to put that kind of pressure on the talks? and would the Packers ever let talks drag on long enough to give him the opportunity? There’s a chance we’ll find out, though Packers head coach Matt LaFleur danced around this week’s annual NFL owners’ meetings about Rodger’s potential practice attendance if a trade isn’t finalized by April 17.
“It’s everything in between [Jets general manager Joe Douglas] And [Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst]’ said LaFluer. “I’ll leave that to you. We will train whoever is on our list.”
However, those involved in the trade talks have been a little less opaque about the significance of the training program, with a source putting the training start date on April 17.
“The [Packers] Starting the workout could certainly make it awkward if it gets to that point,” the source said. “And it could. We will see.”
Mark April 17 on your calendar because that’s when things could get really awkward if Aaron Rodgers is still a Green Bay packer. (Photo by Patrick McDermott/Getty Images)
On Tuesday there was some optimism that an agreement between the two sides is nearing. A second source in the talks said a window of “the next week or so” is a realistic time frame to close a deal. The final terms discussed included the Jets sending a pair of second-round picks in the 2023 and 2024 drafts to the Packers in exchange for Rodgers. The 2024 pick would include a team performance escalator that applies to the Jets and could make this pick a first-rounder. The sticking point of the deal Tuesday, however, was that the Jets wanted to “return” some sort of draft pick in 2025 if Rodgers declined to play beyond the 2023 season.
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Wrangling over this aspect has weighed on the trade discussions, which are now entering their third week and are publicly slipping into trickier territory. The latest twist came this week when Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst responded to Rodgers’ claim earlier this month that the Packers began buying him up for a trade while he was on a darkness retreat. Gutekunst suggested there was more to this story, claiming Rodgers did not respond to offers from Green Bay’s front office to have a discussion about his future plans and the direction of the franchise. Rodgers also claimed on The Pat McAfee Show earlier this month that the Packers originally told him to take as much time as he needed to make a decision about his future.
This he said/they said salvo about who failed to communicate and created an impasse is part of what weighs the coming days and the possibility that Rodgers could up the ante by attending training. But while this situation represents a crossroads, it is not unprecedented in recent history. The San Francisco 49ers and quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo reached an agreement last offseason that effectively kept him away from establishing the team while the two teams tried to find a trading partner last offseason. That trade bid never materialized, leading to Garoppolo taking a pay cut to stay with San Francisco in 2022 and then returning to the team in training camp.
At this time, there is no indication that Rodgers and the Packers have discussed that type of deal. That means when the trading clock ticks, so does the off-season training calendar — and Green Bay is grappling with the fact that this whole affair could get a lot messier in just a few short weeks.