Aaron Rodgers Isn't Worth the $60M to Packers nor a Cure-all for Other NFL Contenders

Good news! Aaron Rodgers has risen from his "darkness retreat."

Bad news! Lord Rodgers has yet to declare his future football intentions to the masses, and there's no telling how long the latest chapter in the Rodgers saga will span.

Earlier this month, the 39-year-old Green Bay Packers quarterback said on "The Pat McAfee Show" that he hoped four days and nights in isolation would give him "a better sense of where I'm at in my life." He noted that goes beyond his professional life as a football player, but we can all pray he gave that a thought or two while in seclusion.

In the process and presumably in full illumination, the Packers and other teams considering a run at Rodgers for the 2023 season might have also given more thought to how many of their eggs are worthy of Rodgers' basket.

The reality? It ain't the $59.515 million worth of eggs guaranteed to Rodgers (according to Spotrac) if he plays NFL football in the fall.

Why? For starters, Rodgers continues to make it clear he's not all-in, and that's often poisonous in NFL locker rooms.

Larry Radloff/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Alluding to en vogue franchise quarterbacks Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow and Jalen Hurts, ESPN analyst Louis Riddick said this week that "these are guys who are not going on darkness retreats trying to figure out if they still want to play football."

"There's no question that they're invested in their organization and trying to maximize themselves and everyone around them," Riddick said. "That's what endears them to their organizations and to their players. Their players say, 'This guy is us. He's for us. He's trying to make us better, and he's doing everything that he possibly can to make himself better. … [Rodgers] is trying to figure out what he wants to do for himself right now, and we don't even know if he wants to play for Green Bay. We haven't even heard that. So if he doesn't know if he wants to play for the organization that has paid him an ungodly amount of money and who he just signed a new contract with last year, what makes you think he's gonna that invested with this team that has all these young, impressionable players that is trying to find a way to get over the hump."

At the conclusion of that beautiful sermon, Riddick was referring to the New York Jets, who, according to ESPN's Jeremy Fowler, have inquired about Rodgers' services.

Go Long's Bob McGinn believes the Packers are "done with" Rodgers based at least partly on the effort he put into leading the team in 2022, which makes sense because people calling the guy selfish has become an annual offseason ritual. You'd think teams like the Jets would spot those red flags and focus instead on cheaper, younger and less potentially toxic alternatives like fellow impending free-agent signal-callers Derek Carr, Jimmy Garoppolo, Geno Smith or Daniel Jones, but as Wanda the Owl poetically put it in the Netflix classic BoJack Horseman, "when you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags."

Brad Gagnon

Even setting aside the fact Rodgers could become a distraction or a bad influence, let's not forget that the man has been doing this for 18 years and will turn 40 in the fall. We've possibly been conditioned to believe that quarterbacks can rock well into their 40s because of Tom Brady, but Brady is a massive exception to the rule.

Only 15 quarterbacks in NFL history have started games in their 40s, and the majority posted losing records as quadragenarians. Modern-era Hall of Famers Peyton Manning, Kurt Warner, Troy Aikman, Jim Kelly, Steve Young, Dan Marino, John Elway, Joe Montana, Ken Stabler, Dan Fouts, Terry Bradshaw, Bob Griese, Roger Staubach and Fran Tarkenton all failed to make it to 40.

Manning was NFL MVP at age 37 and a Pro Bowler at 38. As a 39-year-old in 2015, he and Ryan Mallett were the lowest-rated qualified passers in the league. The rest of those guys began to decline well before reaching Rodgers' current age.

And there's plenty of evidence Rodgers is indeed in the midst of a rapid decline.

His passer rating plummeted by more than 20 points in 2022, with his yards-per-attempt average dropping by nearly a full yard and his QBR sinking astronomically from 69.1 to 39.3. He had a lousy 86.1 passer rating in the second half of one-score games, a mediocre 88.7 rating on deep pass attempts and an awful 76.2 rating on third down. And he ranked well below the league median in completed air yards per attempt despite being one of the least-pressured quarterbacks in the NFL.

Rodgers was, in a word, bad.

What makes anyone believe that'll change in 2023? Sure, 2022 might have been somewhat aberrational, but Father Time is undefeated and this is a dude who—even at his very best and in his absolute prime and with teams that were usually talented enough to contend—won a grand total of seven playoff games in a 12-year span between 2011 and 2022.

Right now, you'd be foolish to buy Aaron Rodgers stock. The Packers and Jets and others would be better off navigating an otherwise talented and intriguing quarterback market, leaving Rodgers in the dark.