6:03 PM ET

It finally happened: The New York Jets traded for Aaron Rodgers.

It's a move that seemed inevitable for weeks, and now that it's done and the compensation is known, should the Jets have traded for the four-time MVP? Should the Green Bay Packers have dealt him?

Let's break down the deal from all angles, from where this puts the Jets in the AFC to whether the draft compensation and financial burden ($59.5 million for the 2023 season) are worth it. Let's dive into this blockbuster, franchise-altering move for both teams.

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Packers trade QB Rodgers to Jets

Jets get: QB Aaron Rodgers, 2023 first-round pick (No. 15), 2023 fifth-round pick (No. 170)
Packers get: 2023 first-round pick (No. 13), 2023 second-round pick (No. 42), 2023 sixth-round pick (No. 207), 2024 conditional second-round pick that becomes a first-rounder if Rodgers plays 65% of snaps in 2023.

There are real, serious risks here. The Jets just traded major draft capital for the right to pay at least $59.5 million for a 39-year-old quarterback who had worn out his welcome in Green Bay and is coming off the worst season of his career. How can that not be risky?

But the point of the game is to win the Super Bowl. Despite a good roster, winning the Super Bowl in 2023 was not a realistic aspiration for the Jets prior to acquiring Rodgers. Now it is.

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In Rodgers, the Jets land one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, but also a player who is coming off a season with a 39.3 QBR, which put him between Matt Ryan and Russell Wilson -- awfully poor company in 2022 -- in the metric's rankings. Perhaps Rodgers' play was a one-year blip partially fueled by the Packers' stubborn years-long lack of investment in the receiving game (Christian Watson's second-half-of-the-season breakout notwithstanding), or perhaps it was just the beginning of a major decline. It's not unreasonable to think Rodgers has another year or two of strong play left in him, but it's far from a guarantee. That's the bet the Jets are making.

The possibility of Rodgers playing at a 2020 or 2021 level means the Jets do have Super Bowl upside, though they are not the best team in their own division (behind the Buffalo Bills) and still are presumably underdogs to the Kansas City Chiefs and Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC, too.

The reason this deal can happen at all is because the Packers elected to go with another former first-round pick at quarterback in Jordan Love. As odd as it seems to want to move on from a Hall of Fame quarterback, if they believe Love has a real chance to turn into a franchise quarterback, then it's reasonable to cash in -- both in terms of draft capital and money saved -- on Rodgers off his worst season while they still can.

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But now to the compensation, because the negotiation here was interesting. The Jets, in some ways, lacked leverage because they badly wanted Rodgers. But contrary to the way they handled this negotiation, the Jets did have other options.

They could have gone after nonexclusively franchise-tagged Lamar Jackson, for example. Jimmy Garoppolo was available for cheap in free agency. Ryan Tannehill, Kirk Cousins and Trey Lance all might have been available in the trade market. They also sat at pick No. 13 in the draft -- within striking range for a rookie QB. None of those were guaranteed acquisitions and none would have offered the immediate upside Rodgers does, though some would have been cheaper to acquire.

The Packers really did lack leverage, though. Once they decided to move on from Rodgers, they needed to move on from him. Rodgers is guaranteed $59.5 million for playing in 2023, and if he wasn't going to be the Packers' quarterback, they had to get that money off their books. The only way the Packers could generate leverage would be a second interested team, but that never seemed to materialize.

Despite that, the Packers were able to extract major assets from the Jets. Even if we assume the 2024 selection in this trade is a mid-second-round pick, by our AV-based draft value chart, the Packers traded Rodgers for something like the equivalent of a No. 10 overall pick (if we don't discount future year selections). In all likelihood, though, that 2024 pick will become a first-round selection, making this trade even more valuable for Green Bay.

Think about it this way. In a vacuum, Rodgers doesn't offer substantial surplus value over his contract because he's already paid at the peak of the quarterback market. In theory, that means he should be worth little in terms of draft capital. It made sense the Jets would still be willing to give up something to acquire him because of the circumstances. (He was probably the best player available and it gave them Super Bowl aspirations.) But the Jets didn't give up just something -- they dealt major trade compensation.

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We'll never know, but it's hard not to think that had the Jets seriously explored other options and/or waited the Packers out that they could have brought the price down.

In addition, the deal doesn't appear to offer retirement protections for the Jets. This is an oversimplification, but the Jets very conceivably might be paying a second-round pick (in 2023), a first-round pick (in 2024) and $59.5 million in exchange for one year of Aaron Rodgers.

That is a lot.

The Jets have a good roster. But it's not that good that they should make this kind of investment in what might be a one-year gamble.

Trading for Rodgers was a fine plan. But the Jets gave up too much.

Jets' grade: C

Packers' grade: A-

Aaron rodgers jets trade grade green bay packers

2023-04-25 19:30:57