On at least two different occasions during his NFL career, Northern California native Aaron Rodgers has wanted to play for the San Francisco 49ers. He wanted them to draft him in 2005, and they didn’t. He wanted them to trade for him in 2021, and they couldn’t.
An article from Ian Rapoport of NFL Media technically doesn’t plow new ground (then again, many Sunday Splash! reports don’t), but it’s worth pointing out again that Rodgers, as Rapoport writes, indeed wanted to go to the 49ers.
The wish list, as PFT reported when all hell broke loose on the first day of the draft, consisted of the 49ers, Raiders, and Broncos. On the eve of the draft, the 49ers tried to pry Rodgers away from the Packers. San Francisco wasn’t simply throwing a dart in the dark. They knew that Rodgers wanted out. They also may have known (as we’ve heard many times in the aftermath of the failed effort to make a deal), that Rodgers believed the Packers had promised to trade him during the 2021 offseason, and that they reneged.
The fact that the two teams are meeting for the fourth time in fewer than two calendar years in Santa Clara gives this one a little extra heft. If Rodgers had his druthers (that word doesn’t get used nearly as much as it should be), he’d be playing for the 49ers tonight, not the Packers.
It’s also hard not to wonder whether the 49ers would have had a better chance to get Green Bay’s attention if the effort to trade for Rodgers had happened before San Fran converted the No. 12 pick in 2021, a first-round pick in 2022, a first-round pick in 2023, and a third-round pick into the third overall selection in 2021. The Packers, with Jordan Love in line to succeed Rodgers, wouldn’t have pivoted to one of the top quarterbacks so close to the draft, a la Kevin Costner. Surely, the Packers had spent no time seriously considering Trey Lance or Mac Jones or Justin Fields. So what would they have done if the No. 3 pick had landed in their laps with limited time for figuring out what to do with it?
The 49ers surely were aware of those practical impediments. But that didn’t stop them from calling. Which shows that the 49ers were more than willing to scrap their entire quarterback plan for Rodgers, if the Packers had been receptive. Maybe, if the 49ers had something other to offer than the third overall and Jimmy Garoppolo, the Packers would have been receptive.