Trading Aaron Rodgers to the Jets Is Complicated. Here’s Why.

The factors include Rodgers’s age, his recent performance, his possible retirement date and the enormous sum of money he’s due—variables that all affect the compensation both sides could expect to be involved in a deal. And whatever changes hands between the Jets and Packers figures to be far less than recent blockbuster deals involving star quarterbacks. 

Green Bay might be holding out for a haul befitting a player who has won two MVP awards in the last three years. But the Jets also know they’re seemingly the only suitor for a 39-year-old with a huge contract coming who is off a down season. They’re also the ones who can afford to wait. 

“He’s gonna be here,” Jets general manager Joe Douglas said at a recent event. 

As time has passed since Rodgers made his intentions public, there hasn’t been much pressure for either side to immediately buckle to the other’s demands. That’s quickly changing. Even though there’s no official deadline for any deal to get done, this year’s NFL draft begins a week from Thursday, and if the Packers want to recoup picks this year, time is running out. That’s one of the several reasons the Jets have a fair bit of leverage—even though they’re the ones utterly desperate for a quarterback. 

The Jets’ near-term future has become Rodgers or bust. Zach Wilson, the young quarterback they took with the No. 2 overall pick two years ago, has been a flop. They let other free agent passers get gobbled up by other teams. With a playoff-caliber roster—except for the huge void at quarterback—they need Rodgers more than their fans need a guy in a fireman helmet to lead them in the spelling of the team’s name. 

But that doesn’t mean the Packers can demand a ransom from the Jets and expect them simply to pay up. The Packers need the Jets just as much as they need a quarterback. 

Green Bay’s brass has already made it clear they’re forging ahead with Jordan Love, the quarterback who they took in the first round a few years ago to prepare for Rodgers’s eventual farewell. Rodgers, though, wasn’t ready to say goodbye when the Packers selected Love, and he was peeved with the decision to select his replacement. He responded with back-to-back phenomenal seasons, leading to a massive contract extension before this past season. 

Then in 2022, with a weakened supporting cast, and while playing through an injury, his play fell off. In the first year of a three-year, $150 million extension, Rodgers went from being one of the best quarterbacks in football to playing like a middling one. After the Packers missed the playoffs in the final game of the regular season, his future in Green Bay was as uncertain as ever. 

According to Rodgers, he was 90% leaning toward retirement when he entered a darkness retreat to mull his options. When he emerged, he met with Jets coaches and executives before deciding that’s where he wanted to play. 

The month-plus since has produced an impasse with both sides seemingly looking at the same asset and valuing it differently. 

The trade market for top-of-the-line quarterbacks in recent years has been robust. Last year, the Denver Broncos gave up two first-round picks in a package to get Russell Wilson from the Seattle Seahawks. During the same offseason, the Cleveland Browns gave up three firsts to get Deshaun Watson from the Houston Texans. 

Those trades fizzled in their first seasons—Watson was suspended for most of the season and didn’t play especially well, while Wilson struggled. But those packages also reflected something Rodgers doesn’t have: a long-term future. Rodgers has considered retirement for years now, meaning it’s unclear if the Jets will get him for just one or both of the years remaining on his contract. 

How much runway he has left may be the trickiest element of this deal. Whether he’s a one-year rental or something more figures to dramatically change his value to the Jets. If he retires after one season, that would be extraordinarily expensive for the Jets, who would have tens of millions of dollars in dead salary cap money in future years based on the structure of Rodgers’s contract. Those elements help to explain why it wouldn’t be surprising for a deal to include conditional future draft picks based on whether he decides to play past 2023 or not. 

These types of contingencies aren’t unfamiliar to these two teams: When the Packers traded their last legendary quarterback, Brett Favre, to the Jets in 2008, the future pick Green Bay received was based on factors such as how much he played and how far the Jets went in the postseason. (The deal also included a poison pill to restrict the Jets from trading Favre to the Vikings. Instead, after Favre fizzled in New York, the team released him and he simply signed with Minnesota.) 

One problem for the Packers is that, if they don’t like what the Jets are offering, they’re short on other options. At this point, there are no other known suitors for Rodgers. Even if another emerged, Rodgers would have to be willing to play for that team—and this is someone who had one foot out the door toward retirement. The Jets may be the only team willing to trade for Rodgers that Rodgers is willing to play for. 

Another issue working against Green Bay is that waiting out the Jets is a risky proposition in a couple ways. If this goes past the upcoming draft, the Packers may miss out on the opportunity to add assets that help this year’s team. There’s also a financial component on Green Bay’s end: If the team postures as if it will try to keep him through 2023, then the Packers would face even more dead money on its books then they’re already going to be saddled with. 

So it isn’t surprising that the Jets may think giving up their first round pick is too rich, even for Aaron Rodgers. But if a deal isn’t done by the time the first day of the draft, it might get even more intriguing on the second and third days—beginning when the Jets own two second-round picks, which could be part of a deal. 

Write to Andrew Beaton at [email protected]