Aaron Rodgers Could Totally Screw the Packers By Retiring After This Season
By Liam McKeone
Aaron Rodgers is having a fine start to the 2022 season considering the Green Bay Packers traded away his top receiver over the offseason. The team is 3-1 and Rodgers has thrown six touchdowns with three interceptions. Not great, but acceptable taking it all into account.
Rodgers' play is not the center of discussion this week, though. He was on the Pat McAfee Show on Wednesday and mentioned retirement, which had everyone's ears perked up. Rodgers said he planned to re-evaluate where he's at once the end of the season rolls around and doesn't yet know what he'll do. Which is not a surprise. He is 38 years-old, after all. Not everyone is like Tom Brady, both willing and able to play well into middle-aged status.
But the retirement talk has reignited discussion about Rodgers' contract, and it turns out he can screw the Packers pretty badly if he decided to walk away after this season.
Aaron Rodgers' contract was structured "year to year" for retirement purposes, starting with a 1 year, $42M deal this season. If he retires after 2022, the #Packers will be left with $40.3M of dead cap, and Rodgers will be walking away from $59.5M cash.https://t.co/AyJn3ATlIq
— Spotrac (@spotrac) October 6, 2022
As you can see, doing so would require Rodgers to miss out on quite a bit of money, so it's no sure thing. Green Bay was smart to incentivize him in such a manner so that it wouldn't be easy to saddle the team with $40 million in dead cap.
On the other hand, Rodgers has already made over $300 million in his career. He doesn't necessarily need an extra $60 million. If this season ends as the last several have-- with a bad loss far too early in the postseason-- then anything can happen. The Packers might want to prep some contingency plans in case Rodgers ends up leaving them with $40 million of dead cap.