Before trading Aaron Rodgers to the Jets this week, the Packers were hoping to sit down at some point this offseason and have a conversation with their star quarterback about the future, but that never happened, because they couldn’t get ahold of him. Seriously. They couldn’t get him on the phone.
As explained by Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst back in March, the Packers tried to contact Rodgers on multiple occasions, but he never picked up his phone. It seems almost impossible to believe that a team wouldn’t be able to get its quarterback on the phone, but that was definitely the case here and we know that for sure because Rodgers confirmed the story.
During his introductory press conference on Wednesday, Rodgers had an interesting excuse for ignoring the Packers’ calls: He said he has bad cell service and that he doesn’t like to talk to people unless they FaceTime him.
“I’m fortunate to live in a beautiful house,” Rodgers said. “The only downside is I have very limited cell service, so if you want to get ahold of me, I have to see your face, you have to FaceTime me. So, the only response to the communication thing is, there’s records in your phone about who called you, when, FaceTime, and there wasn’t any specific FaceTimes from any of those numbers that I was looking at.”
Of course, Rodgers could have always called them, but it became pretty clear by February that he wasn’t very interested in speaking with the Packers anymore. Apparently, Rodgers would have preferred to see the Packers handle things differently this offseason.
“Obviously, that’s the direction they wanted to go as far as, the story, they couldn’t get ahold of me, which led for this to be the case,” Rodgers said. “My point was, if there was a change that wanted to be made, why wasn’t that told to me early in the offseason? Now, obviously, my future was undecided at that time, I didn’t know if I wanted to keep playing. I wanted to go into my darkness retreat and sit with it and contemplate, but when I came out, it was evident that it was retire or move on to a new team.”
On the Packers end, Gutekunst was asked about Rodgers’ comments on Wednesday and he stressed once again that the team did everything in its power to contact the four-time MVP.
“We tried to communicate on a number of levels,” Gutekunst said, via PFT. “Once we couldn’t, we communicated with his agents quite a bit. I’m not gonna get into that. It’s not good for us, not good for them. And we’re just gonna kind of move forward. But I appreciate the question. But there was no lack of effort and communication on that part from us.”
Although Rodgers wouldn’t pick up the phone when the Packers called, the Jets definitely picked up when Green Bay called and that’s how they were able to hammer out a trade this week that brought the Super Bowl winning QB to the Big Apple.
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Author: John Breech
April 27, 2023 | 3:26 pm
