The Green Bay Packers will find out what it’s like to enter a season without a franchise quarterback for the first time since 1992, when George H.W. Bush was president and a gallon of gas averaged $1.13.
A remarkable run of elite quarterback play that extended 31 seasons — beginning in 1992, when Ron Wolf traded for Brett Favre, and continuing after Ted Thompson drafted Aaron Rodgers in 2005 — has come to an end.
The Packers traded the 39-year-old Rodgers on Monday to the New York Jets, making Jordan Love, a first-round pick in 2020 by general manager Brian Gutekunst, the presumed starter.
The Halas Hall nightmare for the Chicago Bears is over as Rodgers, a four-time MVP and a shoo-in as a first-ballot Pro Football Hall of Fame selection, is no longer in the NFC North.
Rodgers was 25-5 as a starter against the Bears, including the NFC championship game after the 2010 season, amassing more wins against them than any quarterback in league history. He heads to the Jets, as Favre did via a trade in August 2008, having won eight consecutive games in the NFL’s longest-running rivalry and 13 of the last 14.
Jets GM Joe Douglas, the former college scouting director for the Bears, gets his top target to replace Zach Wilson, the failed No. 2 pick in 2021. The Jets also will receive the No. 15 pick and a fifth-rounder (No. 170) in this week’s draft and will give the Packers the No. 13 pick, a second-rounder (No. 42), a sixth-rounder (No. 207) and a conditional 2024 second-rounder that becomes a first-rounder if Rodgers plays 65% of the Jets’ offensive plays this year, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported.
Rodgers used almost two months from the end of the NFL season, including a darkness retreat, to plot his future. Other potential destinations came off the table when the New Orleans Saints signed former Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Derek Carr and the Seattle Seahawks re-signed Geno Smith.
Rodgers had been irked by the Packers’ hesitance and at times flat-out refusal to dip into free agency for help the past few years. They traded No. 1 wide receiver Davante Adams to the Raiders last offseason, and for the first time since Rodgers was a first-year starter in 2008, the offense sputtered as the Packers finished 8-9 and missed the playoffs.
Rodgers took his time before deciding to return to Green Bay last offseason, when the Packers signed him to a $150 million extension coming off his fourth MVP season. Now, nearly two decades after a high-ranking Bears executive said the Packers were about to find out what life is like for the majority of teams as Favre neared the end of his run, it’s actually going to happen.
Favre was 22-10 as the Packers starter against the Bears, and his dominant play — combined with that of Rodgers — allowed Green Bay to tilt the all-time series. The Packers are 105-95-6 in the rivalry, a record that heavily favored the Bears before the arrival of Favre.
The Bears have used 18 starting quarterbacks since Rodgers first started in 2008 and 37 since Favre took over in Green Bay in Week 4 of the 1992 season, which explains the lopsided nature of the rivalry for three-plus decades. Rex Grossman and Kyle Orton had the most wins against the Packers in that span, each going 3-1.
Rodgers’ final game with the Packers against the Bears was in Week 13 at Soldier Field when Green Bay scored 18 points in the fourth quarter to rally for a 28-19 victory.
“It has truly been a second home for me,” Rodgers said after the game. “It’s fun to come back here, get a win and let the fans know I’m still here.”
Rodgers drew the ire of Bears fans in 2021 after running for a touchdown, turning to the fans in the south end-zone stands and yelling: “I own you! All my (bleeping) life! I own you! I still own you!”
For all of the back-and-forth between the fan bases, though, Rodgers has always held the Bears and Chicago in high regard and has spoken at length about his respect for players such as Brian Urlacher, Charles Tillman, Lance Briggs and others.
“It’s a great sports town,” Rodgers told the “Pardon My Take” podcast. “If we’re beating up on a town that doesn’t have a great sports history, it’s just another win. Chicago is Chicago. You’ve got 100 years of Bears football, you have the Chicago Bulls. I grew up a Bulls fan.
“Back on my old TV, we had seven dials. You had to hit it just right with the antenna and we could get WGN. We could watch Cubs baseball and Harry Caray — that was iconic — and Bulls basketball. I grew up watching Chicago sports.”
Besides Favre, who played for the Packers and Minnesota Vikings, the only Hall of Fame quarterbacks to play in the NFC North during the Super Bowl era are Bart Starr (Packers), Fran Tarkenton (Vikings) and Warren Moon (Vikings).
As the Bears continue to rebuild this offseason with hopes Justin Fields will emerge as a legitimate franchise quarterback, the Packers enter the unknown with Love, who started one game as a rookie in 2021 and is 50-for-83 for 606 yards with three touchdowns and three interceptions in limited action.
Finally, the Packers will experience what it’s like to line up without a Hall of Fame talent at quarterback … unless Love develops into a star.
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