Aaron Rodgers arrived at Lambeau Field on Tuesday just in time for the veteran players’ reporting deadline.
Prior to this, he had skipped the entire offseason program, passed up on a $500,000 workout bonus, and missed the mandatory minicamp in June.
Rodgers’ decision to return to the Green Bay Packers’ fold came as a result of the concessions the team made to him, including but not limited to agreeing to void the final year of his contract and seemingly consenting to deal him to a team of his choice after this season should he still want out.
Despite all the reasons Rodgers hates the Packers still being true, the sacrifice the organization was willing to make to him earned some goodwill from the 37-year-old for one more year.
While this is obviously great news for the Packers, it’s terrible news for the Denver Broncos – the team most closely linked to acquiring him via trade when he was on the outs with Green Bay.
The Broncos also happened to be the team Rodgers blatantly signaled he wanted to land with via trade.
This past week, the truth came out regarding why the Broncos didn’t pull the trigger on a Rodgers deal: the cost was too steep.
According to Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk, the price tag of three first-round picks and a second-rounder (plus cash considerations) was overly hefty.
“The price paid in draft picks and/or players to accomplish the trade necessarily reduces the team’s willingness to pay Rodgers, since the combined price becomes a sliding scale of cash to the player and stuff to his former team,” he wrote.
“The more a new team would have to give the Packers to get Rodgers, the less it would want to give Rodgers. In turn, the more the new team has to give Rodgers, the less it would want to give the Packers to make it happen.”
Earlier in the offseason, when everything was just unfolding, one of Rodgers’ Packers teammates went into great detail regarding just how petty he is. It will be interesting to see how that same pettiness ultimately shapes his perception of the Broncos going forward.
That’s one way to celebrate a birthday. https://t.co/kR0Coa801w
— Game 7 (@game7__) July 28, 2021
Rodgers has spent his entire 16-year career in Green Bay and led the Packers to a Super Bowl title at the end of the 2010 season. Along the way, he has also picked up three regular season MVPs and is widely regraded as one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time.
That sounds like someone that you break the bank for if you’re the Broncos, but apparently the front office disagreed. Many believed that with Rodgers, Denver could legitimately compete for a championship next year. Now it looks like that won’t happen.
Related: Patriots Deliver Harsh Message To Tom Brady
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
