Now that Aaron Rodgers is back in camp and “all-in” for this season he says, most national sports commentators who claimed that Rodgers was never going to play for the Packers again are knocking themselves out trying to wipe the egg off their collective faces; the current story line is that Rodgers’ cave-in to reality was really a “win” for him. But putting that all aside for now, one thing should be perfectly clear: 2021 is Rodgers’ put-up-or-shut-up year. Over the past several years management has been juggling the dollars to keep a Super Bowl contending team on the field so long as this supposedly “elite” quarterback remains upright. A truly “elite” quarterback should at least have made it to one Super Bowl over the past decade with the teams that Packer management—oh so maligned by the media and Rodgers—has put on the field; that just has not happened, and it is simply wrong to blame just coaching or management: players have to play—especially the team “leader.”
While Rodgers didn’t exactly return with his tail between his legs, he did because he had no other choice if he wanted to play anywhere this season. In order to “explain” himself, he had that press conference in which he tried in vague, subject-to-interpretation allusions to paint the team management in a bad light, mainly in regard to his personal sense of “security,” seeing how his buddies on the team were cut or let go. Rodgers wanted a “say” in the team’s personnel deliberations, but that betrayed a lack of understanding of how much money the Packers actually had to “play around” with. That lack of understanding and how to best use limited funds was shown when Rodgers insisted that they bring back Randall Cobb, whose best years are behind him, and who missed significant portions of two of the past three seasons from injury. The Packers picked Clemson’s highly-rated Amari Rodgers relatively high in the draft to play the same slot position as Cobb will be, and this is the kind of thing that tells you why some people should stay out of the personnel department.
The Packers were facing major salary cap issues this year, and next year it will be even worse, with potentially $50 million over the cap. In order for the Packers to get from under this year’s salary cap debit, they had to do that old “fix” of kicking the problem down the road, and at some point that can is going to reach a brick wall and just ricochet back into the team’s face, which it will likely happen in 2022 as things stand now. For example, offensive lineman David Bakhtiari’s roster bonus was to be almost $11.5 million this season, but it was renegotiated into a signing bonus, to be prorated over the next four seasons. A roster bonus is usually paid in full if a player is on the active roster by a certain date, while the signing bonus is usually prorated over the life of a contract; since a signing bonus is guaranteed, if there is any such money still to be owed by the team to the player after the contract ends, or is traded or cut, it is called “dead” money and still is counted against a team’s cap hit even if the player is no longer on its roster.
The Packers shaved over $8 million alone this year from the cap on the Bakhtiari restructure, and they also made a similar deal with Za’Darius Smith, shaving off another $7 million from the cap, but that creates problems sooner because Smith has only one additional year of “proration,” unless he is signed to an extension after the 2022 season. He will be owed $28 million in mostly delayed payments (his “base” pay is only $990,000 this season, but will balloon to over $14 million next season). Even if he is cut before the 2022 season, the Packers will still be hit with $12 million in dead money. It could be even worse with Bakhtiari, who signed a four-year, $92 million deal, most of it guaranteed; he suffered a knee injury last season and still isn’t 100 percent. The Packers are going to be in deep cap shit if Bakhtiari winds-up an injury bust.
As for Rodgers, some similarly “creative” numbers crunching shaved $9 million from the salary cap, but since the 2023 contract year was voided, that means that the Packers owe Rodgers more than $46 million if in fact he does play for the team in 2022. But even if he is traded, the Packers will still be hit with almost $27 million in dead money.
And these are just the “big” numbers players; there are others who had to take pay cuts with performance incentives, or were simply cut or not offered extensions. After all of this—or because of all the “restructuring” that was done to save this season—the Packers are still facing that cap hit of $50 million next season if this year’s team remains intact—and that isn’t even considering Davante Adams, who is a free agent after this season; if he has another great season the Packers can hardly afford to resign him to an extension.
Whether or not Packer management was actually “happy” to see Rodgers back this reason is moot point now, but what it does mean is that this team is Rodgers’ team for 2021, and this is probably his last chance to lead this team that was built to go to the Super Bowl to actually get there; the last four opportunities he failed to do that, including the past two seasons. After this season, the principle “restructuring” of this team will be in converting this from Rodgers’ team to one conceived in coach Matt LaFleur’s mind. All those media commentators claiming that Rodgers’ has been “disrespected” by the organization are simply wrong; the “organization” built a Super Bowl-caliber team around him, and it was up to Rodgers to fulfill his part of the “deal.” The Packers now find themselves in a position where the team simply cannot waste any more money on him after so many failures; the need to “rebuild” a new team around a new quarterback should be obvious.
As a long-time Packer fan, I am tired of national media types telling me how I am supposed to feel about Rodgers. It is one thing to put up regular season numbers like an “elite” player, but it is quite another to win the games that count that an “elite” player is supposed to win. If Rodgers can win those games this season after so many years of failure, then that will only be what should have been expected of him, media “darling” or not.
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