🏈 How Will The Aaron Rodgers-Packers Drama Play Out?

The National Football League, especially at this time of year, is like one of the storybook compendiums you probably read as a kid. Lurking behind that iconic shield are all kind of bedtime tales and they run the full gamut.

Draft weekend brought us heartwarming stories galore and every now and then the league throws up quirky nuggets, like players getting paid in Bitcoin or trying bizarre diets or flossing their teeth during games (here’s to you, Cam Newton).

Then there are the blockbusters, the mega moves, when big names grab the leverage conferred by their stardom and take it for a spin, up against the monumental might of multi-billion dollar franchises that they’ve previously tried to win for.

Right now, there is a unicorn in the room and it all orbits around Aaron Rodgers. It is, simply put, every type of story you could ever wish for.

Rodgers’ rumblings with the Green Bay Packers have all the clickbait quirk and fascinating weirdness imaginable. How’s “NFL star uses TV game show to strengthen his negotiating force” for an eye-popping headline? And yeah, it is also a heavyweight monster, featuring an all-time great bristling with indignant fury.

I can’t tell you how it ends. I’d love to, believe me, because selfishly I’m desperate to know myself.

But I do know that this is a drama of epic proportions and I can offer only one piece of advice: believe that it’s real, this strange old saga, every bit of it.

Rodgers is mad. He wants everyone to know he’s mad. He’s mad at the Packers and, as the league’s reigning MVP, he’s poised to become one of the most sought-after players in the sport. That’s if you, and a couple of enterprising GMs, can get your heads around the thought that he might have played his final game for Green Bay and, indeed, it is time to begin making that mental connection.

For Rodgers, who previously wanted a contract extension but now seems most intent on a move, has leverage. And, believe it or not, much of it comes from the potential he could give up his football career to stand before the Jeopardy! cameras as host, his head topped by some expensively slick hair product instead of a cheese-colored helmet.

Last week’s flurry of news and speculation hit during the early part of the draft and the discussion surrounding it won’t end any time soon. Rodgers, it seems, is so frustrated with how things are in Green Bay that he no longer wants to be a part of the franchise he joined in 2005.

“Aaron told the Packers he doesn’t want to return,” according to FOX Sports’ Jay Glazer. “It’s more than a contract deal, I think he’s pretty strongly convicted that he doesn’t want to go back to the Packers.”

Per Trey Wingo, host of FOX Sports’ Draft Watch Party, Packers officials told Rodgers they would trade him in the offseason but then reversed on that line of thinking. “It’s been a bleep show between them ever since,” Wingo tweeted.

Speaking of shows, there is the remarkable oddity of how the Jeopardy! piece has become part of this plot. Honestly, it feels strange to even write about how it is connected, but it is.

With two years remaining on his deal, Rodgers’ only real shot at getting the Packers to move him to one of his preferred destinations (all West Coast-based according to multiple reports) would be if he could convince them he would otherwise retire and leave them with no return on their prime asset.

If he does step away from the gridiron, he would have to hand back $11.5 million to the team and another $11.5 million if he was still retired a year later. Never going to happen, right? Unless … retirement came with the Jeopardy! gig and the option to still make a ton of money while doing something he clearly loves. Alex Trebek made $10 million per year and asked the questions (actually the answers) for nearly four decades.

While Rodgers previously desired an extension that would keep him playing in Green Bay well into his 40s, now he has options and, if he wanted to borrow from Tom Brady and seek success elsewhere, the potential for opportunity.

There is still a lot to unpack, despite that the Rodgers-Packers affair has been a bona fide talking point for a long time now. You have to feel for Jordan Love, whose 2020 drafting gets mentioned as the widening of the rift every time, through no fault of his own.

You have to wonder about the Packers’ decision-making, all the way from their decade-long refusal to draft first round offensive help, to the Love pick, to Brian Gutekunst’s GM strategizing, to head coach Matt LaFleur not going for it on fourth down in the NFC Championship and never seeing the ball again.

“This is the Packers in a nutshell: Their complete and utter lack of urgency on that fourth down mirrors their complete and utter lack of urgency in roster construction,” wrote The Ringer’s Danny Heifetz. “And their complete and utter lack of communication with Rodgers in that moment mirrors their complete and utter lack of communication with him about plans for the future.”

Now, we must consider, comes the chance for a different kind of future.

Would it be beyond the realms of possibility that Rodgers works things out with the Packers and sticks around there, and that the organization comes to its senses? Of course not. But a lot of other things are in play too, including the wildest one of all.

“It’s an eccentric twist:,” wrote the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay. “An NFL player possibly walking away at the height of his powers to tell a panel of borderline geniuses they have their Roman history and Nordic geography tangled. It would make Aaron Rodgers unlike any other quarterback to ever play the game. Of course, he’s pretty much that already, which is why this is such a thing.”

Rodgers’ ongoing biopic is a different kind of story, laced with drama and truly unique. Until it all plays out and probably even afterwards, it is one heck of a game, and, in its own right, one heck of a show.

Here’s what others have said …

Greg Jennings, FOX Sports: “The Packers didn’t get what Aaron wants. They’re just throwing salt on the wound… This is how they operate.”

Nick Wright, First Things First: “This is very simple for the Green Bay Packers — on one hand you have someone who is irreplaceable and the second best QB in the world, and on the other hand you have just a guy. … You choose option A over option B 100 times out of 100.”

Shannon Sharpe, Undisputed: “It’s going to get messy. I knew this when the Packers told him ‘Don’t be the problem’ and selected a QB. I don’t see how they can make this thing work. Once you ruffle his feathers, Rodgers won’t forget.”