Dianna Russini: Aaron Rodgers Likely to Leave Packers After This Season

Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers are one of the best teams in the NFL and a legitimate argument can be made that they should be considered Super Bowl favorites. This is not necessarily a surprise, given they were in a similar spot at this time last season and brought back the same roster, but after Rodgers nearly forced his way out last offseason, nobody knew how 2021 would go.

It has (mostly) gone about as well as the Packers could have hoped. They hold the top spot in the NFC with four games to go. The defense has gotten better each week and Rodgers has kept the offense humming. Hopes for a championship are very high in Green Bay, and after the Packers re-structured Rodgers' contract so he could be traded without much trouble in the 2022 offseason, a title appeared to be the only way Rodgers would agree to stay with the only team he's ever known.

Things have been quiet on the Rodgers front this season in terms of his future. Dianna Russini broke that spell of silence today when she said on Get Up that the general consensus around the NFL leans towards Rodgers leaving the Packers, no matter what happens this season.

This brings a new light to what Rodgers' actual problems with the organization might be. From all the reports we got during his holdout over last offseason, his biggest issues seemed to be around roster construction and his voice not being heard. The Packers tried to solve the latter by trading for Randle Cobb, who has actually been pretty good, and appear to have solved the former given they lead the NFC.

But if Rodgers still leaves after all those concessions and bringing another Super Bowl to the organization... the problems here must be foundational and entirely unfixable. It is unprecedented for a quarterback to win a Super Bowl and then force his way out immediately. Winning a championship is really hard! Nobody is eager to leave a roster and an organization that ended up in just the right circumstances to bring home the big one. Rodgers doing so would rock the football world.

Of course, there is a strong possibility that the Packers peter out in the playoffs, again, and Rodgers leaves. That would make sense to everyone. But Russini's report suggests a possible future that seems nearly incomprehensible.