The wait to see if Aaron Rodgers finally does indeed agree to join the New York Jets has been a long and sometimes painful one. But the sense is the wait will be worth it in the end and Wednesday could bring some light at the end of the tunnel. It may even be the end of the tunnel.
There are two reasons for this. First, Wednesday marks exactly one year since Rodgers signed his most recent contract extension with the Packers that included the nearly $60 million in compensation for 2023 that has become famous over the past few weeks. That’s key because per the rules in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (Article 13, Section 8), “the contract of a Veteran Player may not be renegotiated to increase the Salary to be paid to the player during the original terms of the contract for a period of twelve months.”
There's a section in the CBA that **seems** to indicate (if I'm interpreting it correctly) that a contract cannot be renegotiated until 12 months after it was first signed
Rodgers signed on March 15… one year ago today.
Could this have been the holdup? pic.twitter.com/IyWaxVByjL
— Michael Nania (@Michael_Nania) March 15, 2023
The key there is a contract renegotiation cannot include a raise until a year has passed since the contract was originally agreed to. Whether or not the Jets would give a raise to Rodgers if they were to restructure the deal — which in all likelihood, they would — the Jets will at least have more freedom to work on the contract once they land Rodgers since a year will have passed since Rodgers signed the extension.
The second reason is that Rodgers will be a guest on Wednesday’s Pat McAfee Show, as McAfee announced on Instagram on Tuesday.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CpyOB1PvorQ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Needless to say, this may be the most popular episode of McAfee’s ever. A popular thought for a while has also been that if anyone was going to break the Rodgers news, it would be McAfee, since the two are very close, Rodgers is a consistent guest on the show and one of McAfee’s co-hosts is one of Rodgers’ former teammates, linebacker AJ Hawk.
The deal may not be “done done” on Wednesday, but there’s a chance Rodgers will come out and say that yes, he will be joining the New York Jets. The framework of a trade may still have to be figured out between the Jets and Packers, but Rodgers could make that road much smoother after his appearance with McAfee.
Rodgers will join the show at 1:00 eastern and you can check out the show at YouTube.com/ThePatMcAfeeShow. We’ll see by then how close we are to the end of this roller coaster.