Getty Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers.
As the San Francisco 49ers’ fanbase currently parses the report by Ian Rapoport that general manager John Lynch has fielded calls about third-year quarterback Trey Lance, rumors are abound that another signal caller — California native and former Bay Area collegian Aaron Rodgers — might be considering other options after a trade to the New York Jets has yet to materialize. Former running back great Tiki Barber said on his “Tiki & Tierney” show that there might be a kernel of truth under all of the smoke.
“All of this little simmering — it’s not even like smoke coming out of this thing. It’s just [that] a little crinkling of flames starting to burgeon up under the leaves about Aaron Rodgers actually going to the 49ers, as opposed to the Jets, now has some validity,” Barber said on the April 19 episode of his show on WFAN.
“If they trade Trey Lance and Brock Purdy isn’t available to play this year because of UCL surgery, Sam Darnold is not — I promise you, is not — starting for the 49ers,” said Barber, who played for the New York Giants from 1997 to 2006. “They will go get [Rodgers], and they’re OK to mortgage their future because they don’t care, they’re not worried about losing their jobs. They’ve done it before. They’ve gotten to the championship game, they’ve gotten deep in the playoffs. This team will go get Aaron Rodgers if he’s available, and the Jets — the premise we started this with — will be stuck sitting out in the cold with their underwear on, and that’s it.”
Could Barber’s theory actually come to fruition? If the 49ers do, in fact, trade Lance and then decide that Purdy and Darnold aren’t the right combination to lead the team to the Super Bowl, could Lynch make a call to Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst and work out a deal that mortgages some of the 49ers’ future for a short-term return? Potentially so, especially since the 49ers have a first-round pick in the 2024 draft, and the Jets aren’t looking to give up theirs, according to a Yahoo Sports report.
Is the sky crumbling on Florham Park?
Tiki thinks so.
The San Francisco 49ers Could Benefit From the Jets’ Gridlock
Discussing the reasons the Jets haven’t landed Rodgers in a trade just yet, Brian Costello of The New York Post explained what has been holding up the deal between New York and the Green Bay Packers.
“The sticking point in the negotiations remains the Packers’ demand that the Jets include their 2024 first-round pick in any deal,” Costello wrote. “As the Packers see it, Rodgers is a four-time MVP, and the Jets clearly feel he will make their team a contender.
“The Jets do not want to exchange an unconditional first-round pick for a player who will turn 40 on Dec. 2 and who may not play for the Jets in 2024,” Costello wrote. “The Jets’ preference is to send Green Bay a conditional 2024 pick, a second-day pick that can become a first-round choice if certain conditions are met. It is unknown what conditions the Jets are putting forth. Examples of such a condition would be: If the Jets go to the AFC Championship game, then the pick would become a first-rounder, or if Rodgers wins an MVP, it would become a first-round pick.
“If either side concedes on the 2024 draft pick, this deal can happen quickly,” Costello wrote.
In the NFL, trading away incentive-based conditional picks, which rise or fall in value depending on a traded player’s performance, has become more popular. It happened with both of Carson Wentz’s trades, from Philadelphia to Indianapolis in February 2021 and from Indianapolis to Washington in March 2022, with both trades featuring escalators based on playing time. If the Jets aren’t willing to give up a conditional pick and the 49ers are willing to surrender a first-round pick with new strings attached plus 2023 compensation, Barber’s “little crinkling of flames” idea could grow bigger and brighter.
Aaron Rodgers Is Rumored to Only Have Eyes for the Jets
With conversations stalling between the Jets and Rodgers’ camps, rumors have been running wild about the trade, including one in particular that has been gaining steam from the account NFL Notifications on Twitter.
“Packers QB Aaron Rodgers has told his agent its either Jets or nothing. Things could change, but this is not good for Green Bay,” NFL Notifications wrote. “They can: A) Trade Rodgers for whatever the Jets are willing to give and still pay him $40M. B) Rodgers can retire, and they still pay him $40M C) Rodgers can be Jordan Love’s back-up and force Green Bay to pay $68M.”
Is NFL Notifications necessarily the most reliable source? Not per se, but many of the top Jets blogs have begun to aggregate the report as yet another layer in the Jets-Rodgers saga.