Jayden Reed met with the media for the first time since his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, talked to the Packers to discuss the wide receiver’s role. Reed said he knew about the meeting beforehand, but he he wasn’t worried about his standing with the team after the draft.
The Packers selected Matthew Golden in the first round and Savion Williams in the third.
“A lot of people misinterpreted that,” Reed said, via Rob Demovsky of ESPN. “I hired a new agent [Rosenhaus], and we talked about it before even the draft, really, that he said he was going to talk to the front office and everybody here to just catch up and make sure everybody’s on the same page. As a new client, he told me that’s the way he was going to do it, and he did it.
“Now, I don’t know how it got out, because it was supposed to be confidential. But that’s how it goes sometimes. People get a different perception; they make their own perception, which is OK. That’s how it goes sometimes.”
Reed led the team in receptions and receiving yards in each of his first two seasons, but he has yet to have a 1,000-yard season. Davante Adams, who had 1,553 yards receiving in 2021, was the last Packers wide receiver with 1,000 yards.
As Packers running back Josh Jacobs said this offseason, the Packers need a No. 1 wide receiver to go with Reed, Romeo Doubs, Christian Watson and Dontayvion Wicks, among others.
“As long as, at the end of the day, we end out on top and we win, that’s all that matters,” Reed said. “I’m not the type to care about targets. I really don’t care about it. I could have two targets. If we win, I don’t care, you know what I’m saying? That’s just how I look at things.
“I’m a very unselfish person. Whenever anybody fall, I try to be the first person around to pick ‘em up. I try to pick players up when they got they head down, so yeah, that’s just what kind of player I am.”
It’s safe to say Terry Bradshaw won’t be offering to allow Aaron Rodgers to wear No. 12 with the Steelers. It’s even safer to say Rodgers wouldn’t accept.
Bradshaw was blunt, as he often is, regarding the Steelers’ decision to wait indefinitely on Rodgers.
“That’s a joke,” Bradshaw said on 103.7 The Buzz in Little Rock, Arkansas (via CBSSports.com). “That is just to me is a joke. What are you gonna do? Bring him in for one year? Are you kidding me? . . . . That guy needs to stay in California. Go somewhere and chew on bark and whisper to the gods out there.”
Bradshaw believes the Steelers should have given 2022 first-rounder Kenny Pickett more of a chance.
“I liked Kenny Pickett,” Bradshaw said “I liked him at Pitt. I know him, I know what he’s like. And when they got him to Pittsburgh, here’s what they didn’t do. They didn’t protect him . . . they didn’t get him an offensive line. They wanted to run the football, but they didn’t have an offensive line that could protect, and they didn’t have weapons. He had no wide receivers to speak of.
“And then they throw a kid in there for two years and you’ve got an offense that doesn’t fit and doesn’t work, and they can’t run because their offensive line’s not even good enough for a run blocking team. And therefore they say Pickett was a failure. He wasn’t a failure, the Steelers were a failure.”
The Steelers are willing to give Rodgers as much time as he wants because they believe, with Rodgers at quarterback, they won’t fail in 2025.
It all depends on what counts as success. Making the playoffs? Winning a playoff game? Getting to the conference championship?
Rodgers simply needs a season strong enough to cause his 2024 experience with the Jets to be viewed as an aberration. The Steelers and their fans could be aiming a lot higher than that.
Former Colts quarterback Peyton Manning recently credited the late Jim Irsay as making Indianapolis a football town. Manning’s comment gave us an idea.
On Tuesday’s PFT Live, we did a draft of the best football towns.
It’s a subjective analysis, based on a variety of quantitative and qualitative factors. It’s based on what we’ve seen and what we’ve heard over our years of following pro football.
To those who made the list, congrats. To those who didn’t, we apologize.
For the full list, check out the video. But be advised: One of the teams picked, however, currently doesn’t have an NFL team.
Even if it should. Maybe it will again, one of these days.
The Packers are hoping to get cornerback Jaire Alexander to take a pay cut, and they’ve presented him and his agent with the framework of such a deal.
Green Bay proposed a restructured contract to Alexander that Alexander and his agent have not yet agreed to, according to Matt Schneidman of TheAthletic.com.
The Packers would like to keep Alexander but do so at a more affordable price than the $16.15 million base salary he’s due this season. None of that money is guaranteed, which gives the Packers some leverage with the looming possibility that the Packers could cut Alexander and he ends up elsewhere, making less money than the Packers are offering in their restructure.
Alexander has chosen not to attend the Packers’ voluntary in-person workouts, but he did participate in the virtual portion of the offseason program, and he plans to attend the Packers’ mandatory minicamp — assuming the Packers haven’t cut him before then.
Once one of the top cornerbacks in the NFL, Alexander has missed more games than he has played the last two years after dealing with a string of injuries.
It’s highly unlikely that Aaron Rodgers would ever play again for the Packers. A ceremonial one-day contract remains possible.
During his recent appearance with “Mike Stud,” Rodgers addressed the possibility of officially retiring as a Packer. He’s on the fence, for now.
“You know, I’ve thought about that and I don’t understand what the reason for that is,” Rodgers said. “You know, at the same time, I grew up a Niner fan and most of my favorite players retired as a Niner. You know, Jerry Rice, who went to three other teams, really, he came back and retired as a Niner. So I understand the cool thing about it but, if I didn’t do it, would that make a difference in how I’m viewed in the Packers’ eyes? . . .
“If I do or if I don’t, I don’t think it should make a difference. I’m not sure yet. If they approach me about it, I probably would.”
He’s right. It’s a meaningless gesture for the team and its fans. It seems to be, if nothing else, a way for the player to get closure on his career. If the player doesn’t need it, why do it?
The bigger question is how Rodgers’s time with the Packers will be remembered.
“When I retire, in four years I’m gonna go into the Packer Hall of Fame — may or may not get my number retired — whether they do or not that’s fine,” Rodgers said. “But in four years I’ll be in the Packer Hall of Fame. . . . There’s a lot of love from me and how I feel about the team.”
Despite my very strong belief that no team should permanently retire numbers (and that, if they do, it should truly be permanent), the Packers have crossed that bridge. They retired Brett Favre’s number (and Bart Starr’s). They should also retire Rodgers’s number.
Both Rodgers and Favre won a Super Bowl. Unlike Favre, Rodgers was a Super Bowl MVP. He won the league MVP award four times. (Favre won three.)
Rodgers has nearly as many passing yards for the Packers as Favre did (61,655 vs. 59,055). Rodgers has more touchdown passes (475 vs. 442) and far fewer interceptions (105 vs. 286).
Rodgers’ touchdown-to-interception ratio remains uncanny. For his career, he’s at 503 touchdown passes and only 116 interceptions.
So, yes, the Packers should retire Rodgers’s number 12. Regardless of whether Rodgers wants to sign a one-day retirement contract.
