The Green Bay Packers had a soon-to-be 40-year-old quarterback who finished 2022 with the worst passer rating of his career. The team all but announced it was moving on from him when the season came to a close despite $59 million in guaranteed salary coming his way in 2023. There was one public suitor for his services.
This all pointed to a situation where the Packers would have to settle for peanuts in any trade. But because the quarterback in question was Aaron Rodgers — and because three years ago, Tom Brady carried the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl win — Green Bay got solid value in return for a four-time MVP just 15 months removed from being named the NFL’s most valuable player.
Trade compensation, per sources:
Jets get:
🏈Aaron Rodgers, pick No. 15, a 2023 5th-rd pick (No. 170).Packers get:
🏈Pick No. 13, a 2023 2nd-rd pick (No. 42), a 6th-rd pick (No. 207), a conditional 2024 2nd-rd pick that becomes a 1st if Rodgers plays 65 percent of the plays. pic.twitter.com/Q2vUMfyZGH— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) April 24, 2023
In effect, the Packers got:
- A pick swap, moving from No. 15 to No. 13
- The 42nd overall pick
- A sixth-round pick
- and a 2024 conditional pick that will be, barring injury, a first-rounder.
In exchange, the New York Jets get Rodgers and the 170th selection in this week’s draft.
All things considered, that’s a fair deal for both sides. The Jets should have been able to hold Green Bay’s feet to the fire, but the timing of the deal, New York’s public posturing that Rodgers was their guy despite other available options (passing on Derek Carr and Jimmy Garoppolo in free agency, announcing trading for Lamar Jackson wasn’t even an option, somehow) and the continued presence of Zach Wilson in the lineup meant the Packers could wait out a deal.
This turned into a stalemate; a showdown between two gunslingers who were out of bullets and had made that fact public knowledge. The Packers were in the market for a deal similar to the Matthew Stafford or Russell Wilson deals that net two firsts and more for the sending team, but they were selling a product far closer to its expiration date. The Jets wanted something more in line with the mid-draft pick the Tampa Bay Buccaneers sent the New England Patriots for Rob Gronkowski, but were never going to get a sweetheart deal for a Hall of Fame quarterback.
Instead, the two sides met in the middle. The Jets get a quarterback they can sell to fans as the difference between mediocrity and greatness. Rodgers is, on paper, the team’s best quarterback since Joe Namath. Even in a diminished age-40 state he could be the team’s best passer since Ken O’Brien or Boomer Esiason or Chad Pennington. Everything about those last two sentences should explain, in droves, why there was no price too steep to add Rodgers even coming off his worst season as a starter.
The Packers, on the other hand, picked up two spots in the first round, a high second-round pick and what will likely be a first rounder in the late-teens or early 20s, assuming Rodgers doesn’t get hurt (even if he’s bad, it would be truly disastrous for head coach Robert Saleh to bench him for Zach Wilson. It would also be the funniest possible outcome, but I digress). Per Rich Hill’s Bill Belichick-inspired draft pick value chart, that first round pick swap and the two bonus selections come out to an estimated 432 points of draft value — or the rough equivalent of the seventh overall pick. That’s a good deal for a guy whose 0.054 expected points added (EPA) per play ranked 21st among 31 qualified starting quarterbacks and behind both Andy Dalton and Marcus Mariota last fall.
Fortunately, there’s reason to be satisfied with the concept of giving away the equivalent of a top 10 pick for a player hoping to become just the sixth quarterback to throw for more than 1,700 yards in a season in which he turned 40 or older. Tom Brady’s 2019 passer rating with the Patriots was 88.0 — 14 points below his 2017 MVP campaign rating of 102.8. Like Rodgers, he was surrounded by a replacement-level receiving corps and tasked with elevating mediocre wideouts.
Then he went to Tampa Bay, boosted his passer rating to 102.2 and led a team that hadn’t won a playoff game since 2002 to a world championship. Brady was a comet streaking through the night sky, but if there’s any current quarterback who compares favorably to the future Hall of Famer is the guy who earned one more MVP award than Touchdown Tom over 18 seasons in Green Bay.
Giving up a haul for a Hall of Famer is an easy sell for the Jets; Rodgers is the kind of name-brand success story they’ve lacked at quarterback for decades. After watching Wilson go 5-4 as a starter last fall despite playing like he was controlled by a toddler smashing video game buttons, it’s not difficult to sell the idea of a New York Super Bowl — especially when Brady, a guy with whom Jets fans are intimately familiar, just pulled off the same feat.
That’s great news for Green Bay. The Packers get to start the Jordan Love era off with a little extra draft juice. Granted, history suggests they’ll turn those extra first round picks into defensive players and hope for the best with their offense in the later rounds, but still. Both sides got what they wanted here — and the Packers, despite having no plans to ever start Rodgers again, managed to chisel out the equivalent of a top 10 draft pick just to be rid of him.
