GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – The decision has apparently been made.
According to Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network, the Green Bay Packers have agreed upon a contract extension with four time NFL Most Valuable Player Aaron Rodgers that will for the third time in his career, make him the highest paid player in league history. Rapoport says Rodgers will return to the Packers on a mind boggling 4 year, 200 million dollar contract with 153 million dollars guaranteed. The deal will significantly lower his 2022 salary cap figure which would have been over 46 million for this season.
The contract will allow Rodgers to finish his career where it started as the 24th overall pick in the 2005 draft. After spending three years as the apprentice to Hall of Famer Brett Favre, Rodgers has led the Packers to the playoffs 11 times in his 14 years as the starting quarterback with a Super Bowl MVP winning performance after the 2010 season. The team has reached the NFC Championship game five times since then but haven’t been able to return, losing the last two at Lambeau Field to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and last January, to the San Francisco 49ers.
Following the 2020 season, after the Packers traded up in the first round and drafted his potential successor in Jordan Love, Rodgers earned his third MVP award but then made it known he was unhappy with the organization over how some veteran players were treated and how he was left out of the decision making process. The team was able to coax him back for the 2021 season by voiding the final year of his existing contract and allowing him to explore the possibility of a trade. Rodgers finally ended his exodus just as last summer’s training camp got underway and then became just the fifth player in league history to win back to back Most Valuable Player honors.
After the 13-10 shocking loss to San Francisco as the NFC’s number one seed, Rodgers told the team he wouldn’t leave the organization hanging over his decision to return and the Packers helped make the decision easy be putting forth easily the biggest contract in franchise history.
With Rodgers now in the fold, attention turns to All-Pro wide receiver Davante Adams. Today is the deadline for NFL teams to apply the franchise tag. If the Packers tag Adams, he would make 120% of his 2021 contract, roughly 20.5 million dollars. What would still be more financially beneficial for the team is a long term extension for Adams to further reduce their strapped salary cap situation. Before the Rodgers deal, Green Bay was about 29 million dollars over the 208.2 million dollar salary cap for 2022 and they have until March 16 to reach that figure.
Getting both players back in the fold will likely force Green Bay to restructure even more veteran deals, they’ve already gone that route with Kenny Clark, Aaron Jones and David Bakhtiari to save about 20 million on the cap. If more existing contracts can’t get worked out, some veteran high priced talent that will hit the open market as unrestricted free agents as of March 16, probably won’t be coming back.
But the quarterback will.
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