Yes, I can indeed imagine that, though it is of course laughable to imagine the NFL as being on “the left.”
But even assuming Dennison can catch some fire this year with a GoFundMe or some speaking engagements and rake in some dough, what about next year or the year after that? Do you think anyone will even remember this guy’s name next year?
Insanity.
I agree, although there is this: https://youtu.be/fzBWMUW1juY
For the first time in a long time, I find myself applauding the league for just about everything they’re doing.
The Packers are holding their annual shareholders’ meeting today. I’m a shareholder, but I have not yet ever gone to the annual meeting; I considered going this year, but my work schedule doesn’t allow for it.
Anyway, both team president Mark Murphy, and GM Brian Gutekunst, said in their remarks today at the meeting that they are hopeful for a positive outcome to the Aaron Rodgers situation. More-or-less simultaneous to the meeting came a report from Ian Rappaport that Rodgers is planning to play for the Packers this year.
Latest COVID update:
All teams have at least 60% vaxxed.
10 teams are at 90%+
84% of players have gotten at least one shot.
I’m guessing COVID will be pretty much a non-issue this year. Some players will be out, but no crazy rescheduling or backup WRs playing QB.
I think that’s unlikely. Hope I’m wrong.
Latest reporting seems to indicate that a non-trivial number of fully vaccinated people will contract the virus, will have mild-to-no symptoms, yet will test positive and need to be put on COVID-IR. Unclear what the league will do with the rest of the team if it’s found that person was infected and practicing fully with the rest of the team. Last I heard they are only testing vaccinated players once every two weeks, so the contact tracing over that span could be dicey if they still contract it.
Hopefully the real numbers of vaccinated people contracting it is much smaller than the news is suggesting, but maybe the Delta variant changes that.
Looks like the Green Bay soap opera is over – for this offseason, anyway.
As a Bears fan, I had little doubt that the drama queen would be back as a Packer.
Same here. His contract really made him untradeable this year, so unless he was willing to retire and walk away from ~$70 million, he was going to be back with the Pack this year.
Rodgers answering questions was interesting. He was pretty clear about the things the Packers did that pissed him off. Some of them were very valid. (It was incredibly stupid to draft Love in the first round when Rodgers had more than a couple valuable years left and Rodgers would be a very good recruitment tool). Some were simply whining (Yes, the Packers let more than a few veterans go instead of waiting until their wheels fell completely off, but that’s just business in the NFL, not animosity, and IT FUCKING WORKED to keep them competitive). Some were hypocritical (its the same team that let Favre walk so Rodgers could start). But, in the end, he’s back for this year and another shot at the Super Bowl. That’s what matters.
You know what shouldn’t matter? Brian Gutekunst’s fucking ego. He needs to stop worrying about whether people think his dick is bigger than Rodgers’s and just do his job. Listen to the fucking MVP, nod and smile, make the best decision for the franchise, and shut the fuck up about how you’re the one in charge.
This is the bit that has never made any sense to me. I kind of get it, in that no one wants to be replaced, and it can be taken as a sign that the team is getting ready to move on. But players get injured, just, like, all the time. And eventually they’re going to retire. Or leave as a free agent.
It just seems weird to me to take it as some sort of personal affront that a team is doing its best to make sure it has both a capable player and one or more capable back-ups at the single most important position in North American professional sports.
Cole Beasley wants “proper info” whatever the fuck that means. Did he not go to college? Can he not do his own fucking research?!
All true, but (as I have probably noted earlier), for a team that fell one game short of the Super Bowl in 2019, and which had publicly stated that they had planned to invest in order to get over the hump in 2020, to spend your first round draft choice (and to trade up) for that eventual replacement, does nothing for helping your team get better now.
It means he will listen to some non MD on YouTube. These people are exhausting. Sure, there’s definitely a good debate between experts on the capital gains tax and there’s no wrong answer. There’s also no public health risk.
I wish the NFL could just suspend him and his anti vax (HIPAA!!!) cronies
But that’s the thing. He’s not necessarily an eventual replacement. If Rodgers tears up his knee tomorrow, which is a thing that happens to NFL players, the Packers are going to want the best possible back-up they can get. And quarterback is a really unique position. It’s not necessarily the best use of draft capital to get your back-up QB with a first round pick by trading up. But it seems odd to me for an NFL player to view it as a personal insult (and, yes, I realize this isn’t a personal idiosyncrasy unique to Aaron Rodgers, it’s widespread among NFL players and commentators.)
I don’t disagree with you; the Packers have had two seasons (2013 and 2017) in which their playoff hopes were seriously damaged when Rodgers got hurt and missed significan time.
That said, Jordan Love was generally seen (including by the Packers) as a developmental pick. He spent 2020 as the Packers’ third-string quarterback (behind both Rodgers and Tim Boyle), and was never on the active roster for a regular-season game. So, in the Packers’ view, their best possible back-up for last year was Tim Boyle, not the guy whom they had drafted in the 1st round.
I mean, the Packers did the same thing with Love and Rodgers as they did with Rodgers and Favre. Rodgers comes across to me like a mistress who marries the guy then gets mad when he gets another mistress.
It’s not weird at all, he’d have to be dumb to not take it as a personal affront.
What the Packers did was pretty unusual. It’s not at all normal to give up as much draft capital as they did in order to acquire a “backup” QB. You don’t do that sort of thing unless you intend that person to be a starter pretty quickly (at most a year to prepare). That’s telling Rodgers pretty clearly that they intended to replace him, or at least a warning that he was replaceable. For someone relatively young and healthy, and still successful (he had made it to the NFC championship the previous year) it was a really unusual move on their part. It made things worse that he wasn’t given any indication that they planned to do that, which normally you’d do if you cared about your QB being worried. That means they wanted him to be worried.
I’m not a huge fan of Rodgers (at least off the field) but this is one of the few times where he is justified in having a grudge.
When I say “weird”, I don’t mean it’s unusual for the NFL. I get that this is the conventional wisdom. I mean the whole way this sort of thing is treated by everyone in the NFL and the commentariat strikes me as weird.
If the Packers project Love to be a valuable back-up and potential starter in years 2-4 of his rookie contract (when he’ll be much cheaper than a veteran), it may not necessarily be the best possible use of draft capital, but I just don’t think it’s an insult to Rodgers to draft him.
Again, I get that by NFL standards, it’s an insult, but it just seems to me like it’s only insulting to Rodgers because it’s the NFL standard that it’s insulting to a starter to spend a high draft pick on his position. It’s just circular.
My viewpoint is probably also shaped by my QB trauma as a Bears fan. Going the other route, trying to patch together the position with overpaid veterans, cast-offs, re-treads, cheap journeymen, and low draft-picks has been fairly disastrous for us. Of course, we were doing all of that without an elite QB to begin with…
But that’s just one casual fan’s opinion.
Great analogy, but the situations aren’t exactly parallel.
Rodgers was projected as a top 5 pick, and when he fell all the way to 24 it was opportunistic for the Packers to grab him. They almost certainly didn’t start the day planning to take him.
But they obviously had Love targeted from the jump, and traded up to grab him.
Favre and Rodgers both reacted almost the same way, but IMO Rodgers was more justified. Doesn’t mean he’s not a prima donna.
Julio Jones might be in hot water with a case about diverting legal marijuana to the black market. Also mentioned is former Falcon Roddy White.