Credit: Tom Pennington/Getty Images
After the Green Bay Packers drafted Jordan Love, the Aaron Rodgers trade rumors are heating up and these five teams should send them a trade offer.
The Green Bay Packers could have gone multiple directions with their first-round pick, including drafting a potential successor to Aaron Rodgers. Not only did they draft a quarterback, but they also moved up four spots to No. 26 overall to take Jordan Love.
In a first-round largely devoid of real shocking picks, the Packers pulled off the biggest stunner. Rodgers is under contract through 2023, but he’s also going to turn 37 in December and is clearly not what he was.
Let’s not get it twisted, Love looks like a project who will need to sit a year as he makes the jump from Utah State in the Mountain West to the NFL. So Green Bay is a situation that can work for him, with Rodgers not likely to be going anywhere anytime soon.
The Packers did this in 2005, stopping Rodgers’ fall in the first round of that draft when they still had Brett Favre. Rodgers sat for three seasons before the Packers grew tired of Favre’s annual retirement dance and seemingly pushed the envelope with Favre behind the scenes.
Ideally, the transition from Rodgers to Love will go better than the transition from Favre to Rodgers did. But Rodgers may see the writing on the wall, and he may start to push for a way out of Green Bay.
There’s a long list of Hall of Fame quarterbacks who ended their careers in a uniform beside the one they are best known for, and Rodgers might be next.
On the chance general manager, Brian Gutekunst would listen, these five teams should now send the Packers a trade offer for Aaron Rodgers.
5. San Francisco 49ers
Before ultimately making the trade for Jimmy Garoppolo in 2017, 49ers’ general manager John Lynch asked about the possibility of getting Tom Brady from the Patriots. Lynch has acknowledged a bit of a circle back to that idea when Brady was a free agent this offseason before he and Kyle Shanahan decided to remain committed to Garoppolo.
Like Brady, Rodgers is a California native. He also played his college ball at nearby Cal.
It was multiple regimes ago when the 49ers decided to take Alex Smith over Rodgers at No. 1 in the 2005 draft. So any resentment Rodgers had for the franchise should be gone.
The dynamics of cap savings and dead money adds complications, but trading Garoppolo and picks to get Rodgers in a 49ers’ uniform could be the difference in winning a Super Bowl.