SI

Aaron Rodgers Catching Heat on Social Media After Davante Adams Trade

Whether or not it’s fair, plenty of fans have been chirping the quarterback after his top wide receiver left for the AFC West.

Dan Lyons

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Just a few months ago, Davante Adams got emotional after discussing a text he received from Aaron Rodgers, in which the league MVP said the superstar receiver was the best teammate he’s had with the Packers. Rodgers doubled down on that assertion in December.

After a year of speculation about his future, Rodgers is returning to the Packers for 2022, and potentially beyond. But, he will not have Adams out wide anymore. The move presents an interesting situation as Rodgers enters the twilight of his career, after back-to-back MVP seasons capped by disappointing playoff losses.

After rejecting the idea of playing on the franchise tag earlier in the week, Adams was traded to the Raiders on Thursday. He leaves Rodgers to team up with his former college quarterback, Derek Carr, with Green Bay receiving Las Vegas’s first and second-round picks in the 2022 NFL draft in return. Rodgers was reportedly aware that Adams would be moved when he signed his new deal with the team. The Packers were also reportedly willing to match the record deal that Adams is receiving from the Raiders, adding even more intrigue to the situation.

Adams and Rodgers are close, by all accounts, so this decision by Adams certainly seems to involve much more than that relationship. Even so, Rodgers has become a frequent target for football fans, and a browse through Twitter on Thursday night made it seem like the Adams deal was a referendum on Rodgers.

Rodgers’s bristly personality may not have been an issue for Adams, and the team was reportedly set to figure out how to fit a massive Adams contract in with it’s historic offer to Rodgers despite significant salary cap concerns entering the 2022 season. However, the events of the last year do indicate that Rodgers has at least some role to play here.

Rodgers made a large issue out of his lack of input into the team’s moves, something that he admits has been rectified between he and general manager Brian Gutekunst, whom he now calls a friend. With that being the case, Rodgers can no longer turn around and accuse the front office of failing to build a championship team around him.

SI‘s Connor Orr discussed this interesting predicament for Rodgers in a Thursday night column:

The difference between now and any other time in Packers history is that Rodgers isn’t able to bundle the loss of Adams into some rolling grievance against the organization when the season goes south, which he has skillfully done in the past. While we have no problem personally with Rodgers’s honesty (about 90% of his gripes about issues unrelated to the current public health crisis or the media or Ayn Rand make a lot of sense), the fact that he never had any difficulty pointing out the shortcomings of the team’s personnel department makes being somewhat involved in the process a new dimension to his time in Green Bay.

[…]

When the path to being a was this complicated though, this public and acrimonious, how believable will it really be? And more importantly, how will Rodgers in the personnel department help Rodgers the quarterback now that the best receiver he’s ever played with is gone?

The Packers have an extra first-round pick with which to potentially, at long last, take a top wide receiver in the NFL draft, and Adams absence may help with the team’s significant salary cap issues to an extent. It is hard to see the 2022 Packers, still seeking a second Rodgers-era Super Bowl, as better than the ’20 or ’21 editions of the team, and that is troubling given the large commitment it is handing Rodgers at this point.

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Dan Lyons
DAN LYONS

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