The man is back in Titletown, but has off-season ruined this year?

Months in the making, the circus offi cially arrived in Green Bay around midnight Tuesday morning –– just as I always thought he would since I last wrote about number 12’s soap opera on April 15, two weeks before his spring and summer fiasco began.

Aaron Rodgers’ contractual obligations and Green Bay’s unwillingness to trade him narrowed the quarterback’s options considerably. Either show up for training camp or not show up and lose a chunk or all of about $35 million this football season.

He was going to show up.

What happens between now and March becomes, as Rodgers termed it last January, “the beautiful mystery.” Will it, however, be beautiful?

Rodgers finally ended his months of silence Wednesday with his first press conference of training camp –– probably the most anticipated camp session in Wisconsin sports media history –– and it didn’t paint a happy picture.

Even before the press conference, my gut was not feeling many positive vibes heading into the start of camp. After it, there is an uneasy feeling because it seems like the 2021 season can go any number of different ways for the team and the organization is at a meaningful point when it comes to its future.

As for 2021, the nagging question I’ve had for weeks is how committed is Rdogers to this team? While it became obvious during Wednesday’s presser that there are lots of little nuggets adding up to one big frustration with his employer and an apparent desire to leave –– and we can all agree he has some legitimate beefs –– the rift basically comes down to Rodgers wanting to know what his future is. As we all know, that future was clouded with the stupid 2020 decision to trade up to draft Jordan Love. Now knowing who the planned successor is to the great one was a jolt for everyone –– fans, players, opponents and Rodgers himself. Love too.

Now, with the Packers and Rodgers reportedly working on a tweaked contract that further opens the door for a possible departure after 2021, I’m finding it hard to believe Rodgers will be as mentally locked in as he was in 2020 when he was brilliant, won his third league MVP and should have led the Packers to the Super Bowl. But as we all know, whatever Tom Brady, the world’s most fortunate human being, touches turns to gold.

Can the differences between Rodgers and the organization be set aside to the

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Matt Frey

point that everyone can focus on the here and now and the daily grind in the march toward a championship? That is the $35 million question.

As a fan, the biggest frustration for this off-season is that the focus should have been on the team. The Green Bay Packers have a roster full of talent. The organization made sure some of that topend talent –– mainly David Bakhtiari and Aaron Jones –– stayed. The Packers undoubtedly have their sights set on keeping Davonte Adams and Jaire Alexander in town for the foreseeable future. Some other contracts were re-worked to keep the core intact.

Not everyone could be retained. Corey Linsley would’ve been great to keep as the anchor of the offensive line. But everyone knew the salary cap wouldn’t allow mega-deals for he and Bakhtiari.

It’s always a crapshoot, but it feels like for the first time in years, the Packers played their cards darn well early in this year’s draft. Eric Stokes has the tools to be a great cornerback. Josh Myers seems like a perfect second-round pick to replace Linsley. Wide receiver Amari Rodgers could be a third-round steal.

The off-season should have been about the tweaks that needed to be made and were made to the roster and a team resolve to get back to the NFC title game for a third straight year, fix what went wrong and then get to the Super Bowl and win it.

Instead, an entire organization’s energy was spent dealing with one player. No matter how good or how valuable that player is, that’s just something that rarely works in team sports, especially in a sport like football where so many significant roles need to be executed to accomplish a singular goal.

The story has been told that in 2008 the Packers’ front office was ready for Brett Favre to leave because his shadow loomed so large over the rest of the team. Obviously, the Rodgers influence has loomed very large in Green Bay for years as well.

It’s the blessing and the curse that goes with having one of the NFL’s elite quarterbacks on your team. At a minimum, you need very good quarterback play to succeed as a team in the NFL. You want those kinds of guys leading your offense. But having one of the great ones requires sacrificing a huge chunk of your salary cap and affects other roster decisions and, apparently, now it means appeasing that quarterback to the point where he needs to be helping make those roster decisions.

And now the light has been shed that’s where Rodgers’ biggest beef is. He wants input on who comes and who goes. It’s crushed him to see some of the biggest names in the Packers’ recent and successful history let go in what he believes to be a disrespectful manner.

I guess he can’t really be blamed for that. He has seen just about everything in 16 NFL seasons, obviously has done his job very, very well in those 16 seasons and can’t do everything on the field himself. It does help to have teammates he can trust. He can help recruit free agents to Green Bay. His success is a big reason why the Packers bring in the revenue they do and get the worldwide exposure they do. His opinion should matter.

But where does that blurred line end? The front office has a job to do and players have a job to do. Rodgers said all he wants is to have his input heard. Maybe general manager Brian Gutekunst and the front office use his input, maybe they don’t. Rodgers can say all he wants is for the front office to listen, but at what point do rifts still develop if they don’t see things his way?

The news that the Packers are trading with the Houston Texans to bring back wide receiver Randall Cobb is kind of ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, Cobb was a great Packer for eight seasons. But sacrificing any future draft pick plus cap space in a trade for an aging, brokendown Cobb is a move no other NFL general manager would make. For Rodgers to convince Gutekunst to do it is just weird. And what is the message that sends to Green Bay’s current wide receiver group that, despite some of the negative rhetoric of the past, already seemed to be on the upswing?

Hey the NFL is a tough business. Feelings get hurt, jobs are lost in a heartbeat. Respected veterans are let go every year by every team in the league. It sucks, but with the salary cap, there are sometimes few alternatives.

We’ll see what happens. Rodgers’ focus obviously was razor sharp last year. He can act like the smartest guy in the room because, most often times, he is.

He owes it to the 53 guys in that locker room during the regular season and to the millions more who support this organization to be all-in in 2021. Because beyond that, this could be the mess the Packers have been fortunate, for the most part, to avoid in 30-some years.

Matt Frey is the Sports Editor at The Star News.