It doesn’t happen often, but it’s not unheard of to watch a legendary quarterback spend a decade-plus with one team before departing to spend the twilight of his career somewhere else. Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Joe Montana all retired wearing jerseys foreign to the fans who saw them through glorious highs in their 20s and early 30s.
Aaron Rodgers is primed to join them. A trade from the Green Bay Packers to the New York Jets has hung in the air over the 2023 NFL offseason like runoff from a rendering plant, tainting headlines and keeping the attention-heavy quarterback in the spotlight even when he’s not doing anything.
The two sides are currently haggling over trade value. The Packers want to maximize the return on a four-time MVP. The Jets are looking for a bargain considering the guy they’re adding is nearly 40 years old. History shows both sides have valid points.
If we look at every prolific passer who spent at least 10 seasons as a starter for one team, then left for (mostly) greener pastures elsewhere since 1990, we get six veteran quarterbacks with six lessons New York can glean from its potential acquisition.
The arbitrary cutoff here is age 35, so guys like Matthew Stafford, Russell Wilson or Donovan McNabb each fail to make the cut thanks to their relative youth. Since his rookie year stay as a Falcon was brief and the parallels between him and Rodgers cannot be ignored, we’ll add Brett Favre to the mix as well. And since one of the biggest selling points for the former MVP’s departure is a stocked lineup of playmaking help, we’ll also consider whether each QB’s new home was an upgrade compared to the one he left behind.
Some guys thrived. Others failed. How can each apply to Rodgers’ move east? Let’s go down the list in chronological order.
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1
Matt Ryan: From the Atlanta Falcons to the Indianapolis Colts
Age at move: 37
EPA/play before move (rank among QBs): .046 (22nd)
EPA/play after move: -0.024 (28th)
Was his offense an upgrade? Kind of? The move from a bad Falcons team to a bad Colts team was mostly a lateral move, however.
Lesson learned? Sometimes the warning signs are very real.
Ryan rode an easy schedule to a 3-2-1 record, but threw as many interceptions as touchdowns in his first seven games. The Colts saw the writing on the wall and shunted him to a backup role, then fired Frank Reich, then hired Jeff Saturday as an honest-to-god NFL head coach (!!) and then reintroduced him to the starting lineup for a team solely interested in its draft position.
Ryan didn’t exactly get a fair shake in Indianapolis, but it’s clear he was no longer Matty Ice. His sack rate rose to a career high and his touchdown rate dropped to a career low as he struggled to make plays and finish drives. He was clearly no longer the athlete he once saw, as his average target distance dropped from 8.5 yards in 2020 to 6.0 in 2022 — the shortest average in the NFL by a significant margin.
Ryan was a low-ish cost acquisition who turned out to be the worst case scenario for an aging quarterback. His skills had degraded and what was supposed to be a caretaker offense around him backslid thanks to blocking issues and injuries at tailback. The only silver lining was that these losses put the Colts in position to draft a franchise quarterback, though Ryan’s early season competence under Reich may force the team to trade up from the fourth overall pick to find its guy.
2
Tom Brady: From the New England Patriots to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Age at move: 43
EPA/play before move (rank among QBs): 0.116 (15th)
EPA/play after move: 0.247 (fifth)
Was his offense an upgrade? 100 percent. Brady got to play with Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Rob Gronkowski and Antonio Brown (and his sack rate dropped by a full percent). The Patriots top three wideouts that year were Jakobi Meyers, Damiere Byrd and N’Keal Harry.
Lesson learned? Absolute legends with multiple MVP awards can pull this off.
Brady is the most recent model of the plan the Jets hope to follow to glory. The upper bound of all quarterback aging stats switched teams at age 43 and immediately brought the Buccaneers a Lombardi Trophy.
Touchdown Tom didn’t just win games. He threw the hell out of the ball (more than 41 attempts per game as a Buc) and reclaimed the efficiency that marked his 2017 MVP campaign. Moving to Tampa gave him slightly better protection, but his upgraded receiving corps allowed him to rediscover his deep game. His average target distance rose from 7.6 to 9.1 in his first season in Florida (tops in the NFL). He attempted 117 throws of 20-plus yards downfield in his final two seasons as a Patriot (completing 36.8 percent of them) and 160 such throws in his first two seasons as a Buccaneer (completing 42.5 percent).
This was a perfect marriage between a quarterback who’d been let down by a franchise that could no longer stock him with viable targets and a suitor with one of the best receiving corps in the league. But it wouldn’t have mattered had Brady not been a thoroughly silly, age-resistant quarterback whose deep ball still worked well into his 40s. Rodgers’ numbers dipped below the Brady standard in 2022. He’ll have to do more work in New York to match his peer’s truly absurd resurgence.
3
Philip Rivers: From the Los Angeles Chargers to the Indianapolis Colts
Age at move: 39
EPA/play before move (rank among QBs): 0.148 (12th)
EPA/play after move: 0.226 (seventh)
Was his offense an upgrade? Kinda. A rookie Jonathan Taylor was a nice touch, but Michael Pittman and a 31-year-old T.Y. Hilton couldn’t match up with the Chargers’ Austin Ekeler/Keenan Allen/Mike Williams combination. However, Rivers’ blocking was significantly better, which led to the second-lowest sack rate of his career (which was helped by shorter throws and less time in the pocket, sure).
Lesson learned? You can plan around an age-related decline … but only for so long.
Rivers is the most successful quarterback the Colts have had since Andrew Luck retired. This, unfortunately, led to zero playoff wins.
Frank Reich worked around the limitations that came with Rivers’ aging, having him throw less and throw shorter passes. This boosted his efficiency numbers — his passer rating and completion rate both rose and his 2.0 percent interception rate was tied for third-best in his career — but ultimately lessened his impact in the offense. His 260 passing yards per game was his lowest mark in nearly a decade.
Rivers had been asked to throw the ball on 63 percent of the Chargers’ plays in his final season there. That number fell to 55 percent thanks in part to the presence of Taylor and a defense that ranked seventh in overall DVOA. If Rodgers’ 2022 drop in efficiency throwing the ball is real, the Jets can replicate that strategy, though obviously the lure of trading for the four-time MVP is specifically so they wouldn’t have to — a caretaker quarterback could be the difference between making and missing the postseason, but probably wouldn’t be enough to make waves in January. Even so, being able to hand off to Breece Hall is a wonderful contingency plan.
4
Peyton Manning: From the Indianapolis Colts to the Denver Broncos
Age at move: 36
EPA/play before move (rank among QBs): 0.227 (fifth)
EPA/play after move: 0.316 (first)
Was his offense an upgrade? Yes. Manning could have had Reggie Wayne and T.Y. Hilton at the stead in Indy. Instead he got Demaryius Thomas and Eric Decker in Denver and a sack rate nearly half of Andrew Luck’s in his debut season as a Colt.
Lesson learned? Beware an age 39 drop-off.
The other best case scenario for a Rodgers-led Jets team is the majesty that was Manning’s Broncos — even if they didn’t have the immediate Super Bowl success Brady’s Buccaneers did. The Hall of Famer’s first season in Colorado saw him mostly perform like the guy we’d seen from the previous decade in Indianapolis before a surprising playoff exit (Rahim Moore’s busted coverage was … not ideal). His second season, however, blended his prolific throwing capabilities with otherworldly efficiency en route to a fifth MVP award and one of the best quarterbacking seasons in NFL history.
His 5,477 passing yards remains the single-season record, as does his 342.3 passing yards per game. This all happened despite playing for a 13-win team that won 11 games by double-digits. There was no reward to grinding down clock with the run game when Manning was as good as he was. Denver went from throwing the ball 46 percent of the time in the last gasp of the Tim Tebow era to 60 percent of its dropbacks with Peyton. He was transformative.
Rodgers has never had to throw the ball that much; he’s averaged more than 282 passing yards per game only once in his career. But he can match that kind of efficiency. The concern Manning introduces revolves around his age; Manning won a Super Bowl in 2015 at age 39, but was more of a supporting cast member than a star. After his numbers dipped in 2014 they fell off a cliff as his arm strength waned and he looked like a shell of his former self. Rodgers is currently 39 years old and coming off a season where his performance dropped.
This could be the precursor to disaster, but it seems unlikely. Rodgers maintained his plus-plus zip on the ball in 2022 as his deep throws and average target distance remained more or less in line with his MVP campaigns in 2020 and 2021. If a Manning-like dropoff is coming, it feels like it’s still a ways away.
5
Brett Favre: From the Green Bay Packers to the New York Jets
Age at move: 39
EPA/play before move (rank among QBs): 0.21 (sixth)
EPA/play after move: 0.09 (17th)
Was his offense an upgrade? No. Favre had a better running game behind Thomas Jones and Leon Washington, but he swapped out Donald Driver and Greg Jennings for Jerricho Cotchery and Laveranues Coles at wideout and his sack rate doubled from 2.7 to 5.4 percent.
Lesson learned? Beware the late-season drop off of a tired arm.
The most obvious comparison in the pile because it involves the same teams and Rodgers even played a role in it. A Packers’ MVP simultaneously overstays his welcome and flirts with retirement to the point where fans are mostly ready to watch him leave. A flawed New York team with a losing record stands out among the suitors. Favre wasn’t the savior for which the Jets had hoped, but he still provided an upgrade at quarterback who played competent football … for 11 games.
The Hall of Famer pushed New York to an 8-3 record and a place in the thick of the AFC playoff hunt before collapsing to 9-7. This included losses to a 8-8 Broncos team, a 7-9 49ers club with an interim head coach and a 4-12 Seahawks squad. Favre got through that 8-3 stretch with a 70.6 percent completion rate, a 20:13 touchdown:interception ratio and a 94.7 passer rating. He imploded in the final five weeks of the season by completing 56 percent of his passes, throwing just two touchdowns against NINE interceptions and recording a 55.6 rating — 15 points lower than Zach Wilson’s career rating to date.
This would be a bigger warning sign if not for Favre’s truly ludicrous revival the following year with the Minnesota Vikings. He put together the greatest age 40 season of any player in NFL history (even better than Brady’s age 40 MVP) while slashing his interception rate by two-thirds despite throwing longer, higher-risk passes.
But even that ended poorly. Minnesota started the season 10-1 and went 3-4 from there. Six of his nine total interceptions that season came in those final seven games, including the season-ending cowboy nonsense that cost the Vikings a possible Super Bowl appearance. Favre may not have fallen as hard as he had in 2008 and had climbed even higher in the first half of the season, but his decline was undeniable.
6
Joe Montana: From the San Francisco 49ers to the Kansas City Chiefs
Age at move: 37
EPA/play before move (rank among QBs): n/a (the data doesn’t go back that far)
EPA/play after move: n/a
Was his offense an upgrade? No. The 49ers still had a prime Jerry Rice, viable targets in John Taylor and Brent Jones and the power run game of Ricky Watters. Montana’s Chiefs had 33-year-old Marcus Allen, Willie Davis and JJ Birden.
Lesson learned? Absolute legends with multiple MVP awards can pull this off (and do so even better with three decades of medical advances).
Montana’s 1991 injury cleared the path for Steve Young to become a superstar. But it was clear the legend still had fuel in the tank after he swapped conferences and led the Chiefs to a 17-8 regular season record as a starter and a pair of playoff berths.
Like Rivers in Indianapolis, Kansas City’s original plan for an aging star revolved around limiting his workload. Montana’s offenses threw the ball roughly 55 percent of the time in his back-to-back MVP campaigns in 1990 and 1991 despite mostly destroying regular season opponents (Montana was 25-3). In 1993 that split dropped to 52 percent. But in 1994, his final season, he threw the eighth-most passes in the league despite missing a pair of games. He was equally capable in either offense; he finished the year with a top 10 passer rating each season, even if it wasn’t up to his typically lofty standard.
At the time, this was the best case scenario for landing a 35-plus year old quarterback who’d only played for one franchise. Montana was, once again, a tone-setter for greatness even if the outcome in Kansas City was merely “pretty good.” Given the last decade the Jets have been through, they’d take it.
