Random Packer News & Notes

[Isherwood]

12 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

Andy doesn't know what he's talking about.

Correct 

[squire12]

So what does it take for Rodgers to be back in GB for the 2022 season?

From my view it hinges on a few key pieces

1. What does Aaron Rodgers performance look like?
2. How do the GB Packers do in terms of playoffs?
3. How does Jordan Love look?

These items are certainly intertwined and a significant high/low outcome for any can influence the decision

1.  I am not expecting 2020 MVP level play.  Regression is probably more likely.  Something like 67% completion, 4000 yards, 35 TD 5 INT 100 passer rating.  If it drops to more like Cousins/Stafford/Tannehill, it would be hard to pay $40M in 2022 for that 

2.  GB probably needs to make a deep playoff run and NFCCG at the least.  Feels like it is superbowl or bust given the 2022 cap set up.  Now, where the success comes from, is it the D and running game, or is it more on Rodgers certainly could swing the stats  vs the end results.  Does a team that gets deep into the playoffs think paying Rodgers $40M when the D and running game were responsible for the deep run?

3.  Does Jordan Love have the ability to play like a Cousins/stafford/Tannehill and rely on the rest of the roster in addition to the possible additions in players/pick assets from a Rodgers trade and cap savings?  

 

I think in the end, there is around a 5-10% chance Rodgers is back in 2022.  It would take a combination of 
1.  top 3-5 level QB play to reflect the salary
2.  Superbowl appearance and Rodgers being a key reason why that type of run is made
3.  Love is viewed as not ready to be a QB that could guide a team on a deep playoff run. 

[Leader]

Peter Bukowski -  The TLDR of the Rodgers cap adjustments is the #Packers are as all-in on this season as we've ever seen Green Bay. And if they can't convince Rodgers to stay for 2022 and/or work out an extension, there will be real financial pain. Maybe that's the real compromise here.

• Ken Ingalls - Packers Cap  -  I am struggling to find enough characters on Twitter to update my kick the can tracker tweet...That's how bad it is

[ThatJerkDave]

3 hours ago, JaireAlex said:

No one knows what Love is.

 

[Leader]

Bill Huber / SI -  Aaron Rodgers’ revised contract with the Green Bay Packers has provided much-needed flexibility to get through the upcoming season.

Rodgers was due to have a cap charge of just over $37.2 million in 2021. Now, according to ESPN, it’s down to just more than $27.57 million.

Of course, there’s no such thing as a free lunch and the Packers will have to pay the piper. And, with the 2023 season voided, the piper will be paid in 2022. Rodgers’ cap number will soar from more than $39.85 million in 2022 to $46.14 million.

With that and all the contract shifting Gutekunst did this past offseason just to get in compliance with this year’s salary cap, the Packers are $49,421,101 over the 2022 salary-cap ceiling of $208.2 million.

It’s that line that will force the Packers and Rodgers to come to some sort of agreement next offseason. Either Rodgers and general manager Brian Gutekunst will find enough common ground this season to come up with a long-term contract extension to drastically lower that cap hit while giving Rodgers the job security he had coveted. Or, the Packers will be forced to trade Rodgers. There will be no middle ground or half-measures. It will be one or the other because the financial numbers are just too big.

If the Packers trade Rodgers after the upcoming season, they’d save just short of $19.3 million against the cap but have to swallow just shy of $26.85 million of dead cap. That would be $12.9 percent of the cap devoured by Rodgers’ dead money. Those numbers essentially flip if the trade were to be made after June 1, with the cap savings up to $26.97 million.

For the short term, Over the Cap has the Packers with about $9.65 million of cap space following the Rodgers and Cobb transactions. A decent chunk of that money will be needed just to get through the season with practice-squad moves, gameday roster elevations and the like. That won’t leave much room to put toward contract extensions, such as for receiver Davante Adams.

Edited July 30, 2021 by Leader

[Leader]

Conor Orr / SI - Did Aaron Rodgers “eviscerate” the Packers front office in an oratory “master class,” as the Twittersphere would have you believe? Not really. Rodgers’ presser had some satisfying moments, a few contradictions, and in the end the MVP is just as much at the team’s mercy as he was last week.

Asking anyone on social media what they thought of a given event is like asking a child for their takes on Christmas morning or vegetables. We’ve made an art form out of hyperbolizing our language to the point of suffocation, rewarding—in the form of our attention—only the commentary that makes what is happening seem like the best or worst thing that has ever existed.

And so Aaron Rodgers’s return press conference cannot just be a well-prepared word salad. It’s—allegedly—an evisceration of the Packers or a master class in oration; words we likely would not use when describing the delightful feats of our own children or the prevalent dangers that populate our day, but language that is apparently perfect for some aired grievances on an otherwise dull Wednesday in sports.

To suggest it was anything more than a moment, though, would be ignoring the ultimate contradictions in what Rodgers was trying to get across. For example, Rodgers chided the organization for getting rid of a slew of key veteran players—he listed a handful—without acknowledging that this was largely the same decision-makers, utilizing the same process, who could eventually replace them with other players that could contribute similar value but at a cost that would benefit the team more down the road. Sure, Clay Matthews is gone and the locker room must have taken a major hit. Ask the coaching staff what they think of Marcedes Lewis, though. He is still there, still being paid into his age 37 season to perform a similar task of lead-by-example culture-building. Not all of Green Bay’s culture-building players are gone. Some culture-building players that Rodgers happens to like were not retained. Rodgers himself later admits that there has been a great deal of success in Green Bay over the last few decades utilizing this somewhat callous, separated church-and-state (player and personnel) system. He also admitted that the talent on the roster was part of the reason why he was excited to return and compete. Again, a roster he didn’t have a hand in building.

He encouraged a trade for Randall Cobb, which could ultimately delay the development of third-round pick Amari Rodgers, and cost the organization a draft pick and roughly $5 million in salary for a player whom the Texans might have cut anyway. And this push to bring back Green Bay’s 2016 roster is also puzzling in that these were the teams that were notoriously stuck in neutral, which led to the creation of the Rodgers has no help narrative, which he has himself perpetuated at times.

It raises the question of whether Rodgers really thinks he’d been ignored, or at least not sufficiently catered to, all along. Mike McCarthy, one of the winningest head coaches in NFL history, was fired after just his third sub-.500 season in almost 15 years after the pair spent a season engaged in one of the most obvious displays of passive aggression we can ever remember. While he was not consulted on the hiring of Matt LaFleur, Green Bay wanted to install a system and hire a coach who had a strong track record of extending the lives of veteran quarterbacks and limiting their exposure to free rushers and punishing hits. Any team hiring from the Kyle Shanahan tree is making a quarterback-centric decision. Ask any of the quarterback coaches of the Mike McCarthy era about how diligent and on alert they were expected to be, specifically for Rodgers.

[Leader]

Matt Schneidman -   As of yesterday, the Packers were not at the 85% player vaccination threshold, Matt LaFleur says. Both LaFleur and Mark Murphy don't seem thrilled with where they're at in that regard.

[Norm]

10 hours ago, ThatJerkDave said:

 

Hahahaha

[incognito_man]

11 minutes ago, Leader said:

Matt Schneidman -   As of yesterday, the Packers were not at the 85% player vaccination threshold, Matt LaFleur says. Both LaFleur and Mark Murphy don't seem thrilled with where they're at in that regard.

Do we have reports of who the slackers are?

[Leader]

1 minute ago, incognito_man said:

Do we have reports of who the slackers are?

I'll ask Matt

[R T]

1 hour ago, Leader said:

Bill Huber / SI -  Aaron Rodgers’ revised contract with the Green Bay Packers has provided much-needed flexibility to get through the upcoming season.

Rodgers was due to have a cap charge of just over $37.2 million in 2021. Now, according to ESPN, it’s down to just more than $27.57 million.

Of course, there’s no such thing as a free lunch and the Packers will have to pay the piper. And, with the 2023 season voided, the piper will be paid in 2022. Rodgers’ cap number will soar from more than $39.85 million in 2022 to $46.14 million.

With that and all the contract shifting Gutekunst did this past offseason just to get in compliance with this year’s salary cap, the Packers are $49,421,101 over the 2022 salary-cap ceiling of $208.2 million.

It’s that line that will force the Packers and Rodgers to come to some sort of agreement next offseason. Either Rodgers and general manager Brian Gutekunst will find enough common ground this season to come up with a long-term contract extension to drastically lower that cap hit while giving Rodgers the job security he had coveted. Or, the Packers will be forced to trade Rodgers. There will be no middle ground or half-measures. It will be one or the other because the financial numbers are just too big.

If the Packers trade Rodgers after the upcoming season, they’d save just short of $19.3 million against the cap but have to swallow just shy of $26.85 million of dead cap. That would be $12.9 percent of the cap devoured by Rodgers’ dead money. Those numbers essentially flip if the trade were to be made after June 1, with the cap savings up to $26.97 million.

For the short term, Over the Cap has the Packers with about $9.65 million of cap space following the Rodgers and Cobb transactions. A decent chunk of that money will be needed just to get through the season with practice-squad moves, gameday roster elevations and the like. That won’t leave much room to put toward contract extensions, such as for receiver Davante Adams.

Just one comment about the post June 1st trade option, it is not an option. The Packer have no way of getting under the cap without doing something with Rodgers before the first business day of the 2022 season (March 1st-ish).

Rodgers will be traded before the first business day of the 2022 season or a new contract will be signed and Rodgers  will live out his playing days as a Packer and Love will be traded. There is no something in the middle.  

[Leader]

2 minutes ago, R T said:

Just one comment about the post June 1st trade option, it is not an option. The Packer have no way of getting under the cap without doing something with Rodgers before the first business day of the 2022 season (March 1st-ish). Rodgers will be traded before the first business day of the 2022 season or a new contract will be signed and Rodgers  will live out his playing days as a Packer and Love will be traded. There is no something in the middle.  

Could very well be.

Love being traded is a maybe yes / maybe no situation. He might not sign a second contract - thats certainly possible - but with contract guarantees in hand, AR might actually recognize the value of having a talented backup - and allow the team that privilege.

We trade Love and have continued success with AR - we're putting ourselves in selecting talent from the back of the bus (so to speak) - whereas Love (in theory at this time....) has greater value.

Who knows. Thats the future and our horizons are closer than before.......

[Norse65]

38 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

Do we have reports of who the slackers are?

Have them tour a long COVID ward. Maybe you won’t die but this could be you.  Good lesson for a world class athlete who doesn’t believe COVID will kill him.  
 

Agents are already getting the backlash from teams when they find their clients unvaccinated.  Click. If you’re bottom of the roster type this could be the difference for you. 
 

Patience will wear thin. Examples will be made. Teams will not allow themselves to be caught in a forfeit situation over it when there is an alternative. 

[{Family Ghost}]

1 minute ago, Norse65 said:

Have them tour a long COVID ward. Maybe you won’t die but this could be you.  Good lesson for a world class athlete who doesn’t believe COVID will kill him.  
 

Agents are already getting the backlash from teams when they find their clients unvaccinated.  Click. If you’re bottom of the roster type this could be the difference for you. 
 

Patience will wear thin. Examples will be made. Teams will not allow themselves to be caught in a forfeit situation over it when there is an alternative. 

Maybe Aaron Rodgers could do some leading amongst the players on this issue.  I'm guessing he's vaccinated. 

[craig]

43 minutes ago, R T said:

...the post June 1st trade option, it is not an option. The Packer have no way of getting under the cap without doing something with Rodgers before the first business day of the 2022 season (March 1st-ish).

Rodgers will be traded before the first business day of the 2022 season or a new contract will be signed and Rodgers  will live out his playing days as a Packer and Love will be traded. There is no something in the middle.  

Yes, absolutely.  

No complexity.  No nuance.  It couldn't be more simple.

This is the value of the restructure such that both 2023 was deleted and franchise-tag is blocked.  Playing out the 2022 contract under the existing terms is impossible at that cap hit.  So the options are completely well-defined:  new-contract extension or a trade.  No other way.