Mend things with Rodgers
Is this even achievable at this point? I’m not sure that anyone other than the Green Bay Packers and Rodgers knows. Reports over the last week made the relationship sound unsalvageable, but recently, close friends of Rodgers, AJ Hawk, John Kuhn, and James Jones gave Packers fans hope and dispelled some of those wild rumors. So as I said earlier when discussing Adams, there is really just so much unknown at this point, and it’s difficult to decipher what is real and what isn’t.
With that said, if there is even a chance that this can all be fixed and Rodgers will be the Green Bay Packers quarterback Week 1, then obviously the Packers need to make that happen. While I don’t believe that money is at the root of this issue, one thought that I wrote about recently was giving Rodgers a massive extension that would take away Green Bay’s ability to get out of his contract–which I believe is what Rodgers ultimately wants, control of his own timeline.
Adding an infusion of new money would give him that, as it would make the dead cap charges so large in the coming years, that the Packers simply wouldn’t be able to cut him or trade him. Sure, that comes with some risk with a 37-year-old quarterback, but Rodgers is coming off an MVP season, the most efficient of his career, and is in the uber quarterback friendly Matt LaFleur offense–I’m not terribly concerned about his play falling off a cliff.
Now, will that do the trick and keep Rodgers in Green Bay? I have no idea. But if there is a solution to this problem, the Packers need to figure out what it is and take care of it.