The Packers have seen all they need to see from their new starting quarterback. And going into the weekend, they decided to pull the trigger and make a deal that will keep Rodgers in Green Bay for the better part of his career. Rodgers signed the deal Friday morning that makes him among the highest paid quarterbacks in the league. The new contract will put Rodger’s yearly salary above all quarterbacks but Peyton Manning, Carson Palmer, Matt Ryan and Tony Romo. Romo’s deal beats Rodgers’ by about $5m total.
According to NFL.com, the deal is worth $65 million over 6 years and comes with $20 million in guarantees. The good part about the deal is the Packers got Aaron sigend in time to count the deal against the ’08 cap (they had just a hair under $20 million to spare).
The deal is of course getting some criticism from fans and the media, mostly due to the struggles of Ryan Grant after getting his big payday. While there is some merit to the failures of Grant this season, one can only wonder what his performance would be like had he attended training camp and if he didn’t regularly have offensive linemen thrown into him in the backfield. In the end, you can’t compare this to Grant’s deal. I think Grant was somewhat of a desperation move after the Packers thought of the possibility of not only being without one of their best offensive players of ’07 in the post-Favre era, but also the idea of having Brandon Jackson fumbling his way through the starting job is not very appealing.
Congrats to Rodgers and the Packers. So far, at least in some sense, you could say Rodgers has earned it by being a good teammate, being patient while Favre was doing his thing and performing well when given the chance. Now it’s time for Rodgers to start paying the Packers back with some wins.