5 reasons Aaron Rodgers and Green Bay Packers will be fine

After a testy interview on ESPN Radio earlier in the offseason, recent reports of Aaron Rodgers’ frustration with the Green Bay Packers may have fans on edge. But there’s no need to panic. Here’s why.

Frustration with the 2017 season reached such a critical boiling point from some cheeseheads, there was a dark section of Packers Twitter that even advocated trading Aaron Rodgers just to get him out from underneath the burdensome thumb of an inept front office.

Of course, that was always a ridiculous take, one that was mostly a criticism of Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy rather than a sincere belief from Packers fans that the team trade its best player and one of the best ever.

But Rodgers himself fanned the flames, even as a new front office takes over, implying in an ESPN radio interview he didn’t appreciate being cut out of the process of allowing his quarterback coach to leave (there’s a misnomer out there Alex Van Pelt was fired. He wasn’t. His contract was up).

More recently he lamented the loss of Richard Rodgers and fired what appeared to be a shot at the front office with a “players play, coaches coach” line. That may have less sting, in retrospect, that it was given credit at the time given the quarterback’s repetition of the phrase before the media on Tuesday in a rebuttal to reports he was dissatisfied with management for the release of Jordy Nelson and the exit of Van Pelt.

The Packers and Aaron Rodgers, like any marriage, is going to have peaks and valleys. One side will inevitably upset at the other for myriad reasons. That’s not an indication of a path to divorce, and in fact, could be just the opposite.

Here are five reasons not to worry about Aaron Rodgers and the Packers.

5. He already walked it back

On Tuesday, Rodgers spoke to the assembled media for the Packers offseason program and used a popular phrase in Philly with a “Trust the process,” drop.

Once again using the “players play” reference should serve to counter the narrative his original line was meant as a criticism of the team. In this content, he clarifies by saying that’s how the league works and he has to trust the front office to make the best decision for the team.

That’s the PR answer to be sure, but it doesn’t make it untrue. Rodgers has a way of finding an avenue to say what he really means when he knows he can’t state it outright. If he wanted to send a message to the thing, he could have and chose against it.

He saw what a disaster the end of the Favre era was in Green Bay; it’s what earned him a chance to start in the first place. Rodgers is smart enough to know that’s not a fate worth risking.