Four-time NFL Most Valuable Player Aaron Rodgers will join the New York Jets in a trade deal reached on Monday with the Green Bay Packers, the Packers confirmed.
The Packers will send 39-year-old signal caller Rodgers and their 15th overall first-round pick plus a fifth-round pick in Thursday's NFL Draft to the Jets, provided contracts are signed on the details that the clubs finalized.
The Jets will send Green Bay their first-round pick Thursday, 13th overall, second- and sixth-round picks this year and a 2024 second-round pick that could become a first-round pick if Rodgers plays 65% of plays for the Jets this season.
"I have so much respect for Aaron and the person he is. He has done so much for this organization," Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst said.
"I know this. He will always be a Packer. He'll be one of the best who has ever done it around here. He'll be missed. Players like that don't come around very often.
"But we are very excited about where we are going. This has all got to get finalized to get done. But we have a great appreciation for him."
Rodgers was the 24th pick in the 2005 NFL Draft and has played for the Packers every season since joining the league.
Rodgers, who said last month he was planning to play for the Jets in the 2023 campaign, was named Most Valuable Player of the 2011 Super Bowl, when he led the Packers to a 31-25 victory over Pittsburgh.
Gutekunst said the contracts have to be signed by Tuesday on the deal hammered out with his Jets counterpart, Joe Douglas.
"We've been working on this for a while," he said. "To get beyond the draft would have been tough for both teams."
It's not the first time the Packers have sent an iconic quarterback to the Jets. In August 2008, they traded Brett Favre, a three-time NFL MVP who had won a Super Bowl for Green Bay, to the Jets.
Favre turned 39 in that campaign and retired after one injury-hit season in New York, then came out of retirement six months later and spent two final seasons with Minnesota before calling it quits for good after the 2010 campaign.
The deal will bring Rodgers to the white-hot Broadway spotlight from the smallest market in the NFL. The glare also figures to intensify on the rest of the Jets as a result.
The 2023 NFL schedule will be released next month and the Jets figure to have more prime-time contests with Rodgers directing the offensive unit.
Rodgers directed the Packers into the playoffs 11 times over 15 seasons.
He'll need to bring some magic from his glory days to help revive the Jets, who haven't had a winning season since 2015 and haven't reached the playoffs since 2010 — the NFL's longest active drought.
The Jets, who last won a division crown in 2002, captured their only Super Bowl title on January 12, 1969, when they upset the then-Baltimore Colts 16-7. (AFP)
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