Aaron Rodgers caused a lot of headaches for the New York Jets when they were trying to acquire him, and it seems as though he’s causing them more problems now.
It’s fair to say that Aaron Rodgers’ move from the Green Bay Packers to the New York Jets wasn’t the most straightforward. To start off with we didn’t even know whether the move would take place because whilst the Packers and Jets had been in conversation for a large part of the months leading up to it, it wasn’t until he announced on the Pat McAfee Show that he wanted to play that things were able to really ramp up, especially when you consider that he was leaning towards retirement.
Then you had the constant back and forth over what his trade value was going to be worth, with the Packers wanting an instant big return whilst the Jets were looking to protect their future, before the deal was eventually sorted just days before the NFL Draft.
But when Rodgers came to town, he had one major problem that still needed to be fixed, and that was his salary after a move that the Packers had made before the deal was completed.
Aaron Rodgers not set to get all the riches just yet
Writing in a column for ESPN, Rich Cimini noted that after a move that the Packers and Rodgers made whilst he was still in Wisconsin, his contract looked rather lopsided, but now that he’s in New York, the Jets and their quarterback are in the process of tweaking a few things to make it a little bit more manageable:
The Jets and Rodgers are in the process of renegotiating his contract, which pays him $1.2 million this year and $107.6 million next year. When it's done, a chunk of his 2024 compensation will be returned to 2023. Rodgers restructured the deal with the Packers before the trade, lowering his 2023 salary to the minimum with the understanding that it was just temporary.
Aaron Rodgers making the right moves with his money
As per SpotRac, Rodgers has already made $305m in his career so far (that’s just from earnings, before we move into sponsorships), so it’s not as if he needs a lot of money to get by in the rest of his life, so whilst the negotiations are going on, he really should be looking to take a Tom Brady-like approach in how he handles his contracts.
The less money that Rodgers takes, the more that can be spent on the team, such as free agents that might want to be brought in during the season to help them get over the line, or to re-sign players for next year if Rodgers wants to play in 2024. That will be his best chance to get one more Super Bowl before the end of his career.