Packers’ Gutekunst Discusses Aaron Rodgers’s Upcoming Retirement Decision

Green Bay will give Rodgers space to decide his future, but there’s no doubt they want him back under center.

After a season filled with offensive struggles and lack of team success, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers was noncommittal regarding his future despite signing a three-year, $150 million contract extension last March.

On Friday, Green Bay general manager Brian Gutekunst addressed Rodgers’s future when asked about his star quarterback in a year-end press conference.

“He’s certainly going to take some time,” Gutekunst said. “I think that’s fair. And as we work through this, I think as he takes his time, makes his decision just on his playing career in general, then we’ll get together and move forward that way. We made a really big commitment to him last offseason. So I think as we did that, it wasn’t certainly just for this year. So we’ll, like I said, he’s going to take his time and the communication will be pretty consistent as we move forward.”

Rodgers will turn 40 next December, and his statistics regressed a bit from his back-to-back MVP seasons as the Packers worked to revamp their offense after an offseason trade of Davante Adams to the Raiders. He completed 64.6% of his passes for 3,695 yards and 26 touchdowns to 12 interceptions. 

Even with the decline, Gutekunst made it clear that he still wants Rodgers under center moving forward.

“Well certainly this year, I think he was dealing with some moving pieces, some injuries and things like that. It wasn’t a great year offensively for us as a whole. But I mean, you guys saw, he can still play at a very high level. Really liked the way he led us. So I think as we move forward over the next month or so, we’ll start putting these things together and see how that transpires.”