Green Bay Packers: Time to Start Planning for Aaron Rodgers
The Green Bay Packers have Aaron Rodgers signed through the 2019 season. However, there's no reason to not start saving up for his next contract now.
Green Bay Packers fans may not realize just how spoiled they are. If you started following the team in 1992 or later, you've seen two primary quarterbacks. Those two would be Brett Favre, and Aaron Rodgers. Favre's already in the Hall of Fame, and Rodgers will be the moment he's eligible. Rodgers has already been with the Packers since 2005. He's still signed through 2019, but it's never too early to start planning on re-signing him.
The Packers currently have two players signed through 2020, David Bakhtiari and Nick Perry. The two players combined will make up $28,300,000 on the Green Bay salary cap. That leaves a lot of wiggle room for the rest of the roster.
The main concern will be Rodgers, though. The quarterback has led them to eight-straight postseasons. While he's had some help along the way, Rodgers has always been the main component.
The Packers will obviously need to be careful when spending money on Rodgers when they re-sign him. Due to other needs on the roster, this might be harder than it looks. While Rodgers will clearly be the top priority, they can't cripple the rest of the roster in re-signing the future Hall-of-Famer.
The plan is simple: start working on a contract now. However, if he doesn't sign within the next year, the Packers will need to start signing players for upcoming seasons. When that happens, they need to be aware of the amount of money that will be open in 2020. Sure, they could just give out plenty of one-year contracts, but that causes a big problem.
First, they'll need to keep trying to sign players every year until Rodgers is locked up. That will lead to an absurd amount of talent turnover. Second, one-year deals won't always entice top-level talent. A lot of players will pass on the Packers if they can get locked up on multi-year deals with other teams.
That means the name of the game is spending wisely. Keep around enough talent that Rodgers will want to come back, while keeping enough money to re-sign him. Neither of these should be too hard, but with a talent as high as Rodgers, there's no point in taking a chance.
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