According to multiple reports including Mike Florio, Aaron Rodgers is on the verge of retiring. Sports books reportedly brace for an Aaron Rodgers retirement – ProFootballTalk (nbcsports.com) Excuse me, what?
What is happening in Packer land right now? Clearly, someone has a screw loose. The Packers would rather let Rodgers walk and look like the team that ended his career, rather than steal away at least three first-round picks and good players away from another team in a trade? Make it make sense to me.
The Packers are clearly an organization in turmoil at this moment in NFL history. A team that was a quarter away from going to the Super Bowl last year, through strange draft choices and play calling mistakes has somehow forced the best QB to ever play for the franchise to consider retirement. All while having no clear ownership group, refusing to pay top end wide out Devante Adams, and according to Rodgers fostering a culture where players feel left out in the cold about organizational decisions.
One wonders how much of this would have been solved if the Packers actually had an owner. The team is currently a publicly traded entity and if you pay for it, you can get a piece of paper that says you are an owner. Yet nobody in the organization has the gumption to take control and let go Brian Gutekunst. Gutekunst has done a good job, but drafting Utah State QB, Jordan Love without consulting his head coach or franchise QB was a mistake.
A team with an owner would simply remove Gutekunst from the equation, trade Love and move forward as Super Bowl contenders with Rodgers.
But the Packers lack any semblance of leadership, so here we are, an all time great in the prime of his career on the brink of early retirement because the Packers are a fundamentally flawed organization. A team that lacks all leadership, a team potentially about to be thrown into chaos, with no one to blame but themselves.
If you had a clear ownership group this would not be an issue.
Yet the Packers continue to fight and tell themselves they are special because of the way they run their organization, they are wrong.
They are special because they have a top ten QB of all time coming off an MVP year, they are special because they have an emerging hall of fame wide out in Adams. Because they are the Packers though, they refuse to play ball with either and will push both out and become a heap of nothing in the cold midwest.
Don’t fool yourself Green Bay if Rodgers retires, you are nothing without Rodgers, just another also ran NFL team in search of an elite signal caller. You could have prevented this, you could have listened to the most important player of the last thirty years of your franchise, but you didn’t. You were also stupid enough not to trade him and recoup tremendous value, enjoy purgatory, it isn’t fun.