Several places have been mentioned, but I have seen columns pointing out pitfalls with two of them.
First, the Raiders have been mentioned as a great spot with Rodgers’s friend and former teammate Davante Adams there. However, this column notes that putting Rodgers and Josh McDaniels together might be like mixing oil and water:
Next, the New York Jets have been mentioned as a possible landing site. However, one of their legends seemed to throw cold water on that idea:
Personally, if I were the Packers I would cut bait and trade Rodgers for whatever I could get and move on. Of course, that assumes that Rodgers doesn’t retire first, in which case the Packers are screwed. Twenty-twenty hindsight says the Packers should have moved on from Rodgers last year.
I wonder if the Packers might have done a bit better last year had Rodgers worked out with his new receivers in the off season instead of staying away because it was his right to do so. Sorry, but I don’t care about what his rights were. When your team is paying you $50 million per year as its franchise quarterback, you do everything you can as a leader to make sure your team is ready to play.
He isn’t the first to act like this.
Ben Rothlesberger made it well known he was not going to be a mentor.
On the other side of the coin, Alex Smith probably deserves a Super Bowl ring for how he mentored Mahomes.
I am not talking about mentoring his replacement. I am talking about working with his new receiver teammates whom he will be throwing to in the upcoming season.
I am going on memory here, but Tom Brady used to participate in off-season work-outs and it was once a big story when he did not participate. Here is one story that I found from a few years ago:
I also recall the first game of the season when Rodgers missed connecting with receivers on what would have been touchdown passes, which could have made a difference in that loss. I also heard that recurring theme throughout the first part of the season, then later in the season when Rodgers and his receiver finally started to get into sync.
Rodgers has always been described as being on an island himself, and this is more proof of that. If the receivers that Rodgers had worked with in the past were returning, that would have been one thing. However, when you have a bunch of new young receivers coming in that you have never worked with before - and since the biggest reason for this is the team needing to bring in less expensive players because you now have a contract that is eating up $50 million in the salary cap - I would think you owe it to yourself and your team to do everything to get into sync with your new teammates. Rodgers apparently felt differently.