While the Detroit Lions kick off their rebuild under head coach Dan Campbell in hopes of turning the franchise around, one of the team’s biggest rivals is teetering on the brink of an epic collapse.
The ongoing feud between reigning NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers, the team he’s starred with for over a decade, continues to boil over. Rodgers’ very public dissatisfaction with the Packers management and decision-making process threatens to bring an end to one of the greatest eras of all time.
It is still unknown if Rodgers will even play for the Packers in 2021. A variety of issues with the only franchise he’s ever known have bothered the notoriously irritable quarterback enough that he’s strongly considering just walking away. Even some of his close teammates aren’t sure if Rodgers will be back, and they’re not shy about speaking on it publicly either.
The fire under the kettle got hotter with this tweet on Tuesday morning from ESPN’s Adam Schefter,
This off-season, the Packers offered Aaron Rodgers a two-year contract extension that would have tied him to Green Bay for five more seasons and made him the highest-paid QB and player in football.
Rodgers declined the offer, proof it’s not about the money.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) July 20, 2021
Rodgers has groused about various moves in recent years, but the big beef stems from drafting Utah State QB Jordan Love in the first round of the 2020 NFL draft without consulting Rodgers himself. Love was unable to beat out Tim Boyle for the No. 2 QB job as a rookie, and Boyle is now no safe bet to top David Blough as Detroit’s backup behind Jared Goff after fleeing in free agency.
This offseason has seen Rodgers fare relatively well as a guest host on Jeopardy and take an extended Hawaiian vacation with his starlet fiancee. He’s done very little to stop the boiling kettle from whistling discord, and that leaves the Packers in very real peril of falling from Super Bowl contender to potential last-place team almost overnight.