National writers react to Aaron Rodgers' expected exit from Green Bay and who has the leverage now

Wednesday was a massive day for Green Bay Packers nation, with Aaron Rodgers telling the Pat McAfee Show audience that he'd like to play for the New York Jets next year. Officially, he remains a Packers employee, pending the outcome of trade negotiations between the two sides.

Check out some national perspectives on the story:

Who has the leverage now?

Perhaps, you'd imagine, with a move to the Jets so clearly telegraphed, the Jets are now in position to offer less in a trade, knowing the Packers cannot reasonably bring Rodgers back past this point-of-no-return.

Not so, says Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated, who said it's the Packers who now have the leverage. The Jets are the ones in a position where the deal must get made considering the available alternatives, and the Packers have some flexibility in timing worked into Rodgers' contract.

"The Jets have to get Rodgers, and they have to go through the Packers to get him," Breer writes. "Green Bay, meanwhile, has no such urgency. Rodgers’s $58.3 million option bonus for this year is fully guaranteed, but the Packers have until Sept. 1 to exercise it (Flexibility that was very smart to build into the contract). Also, because of the contract tangled up in cap machinations, his hit will actually rise (from $31.62 million to $40.31 million) when he’s traded, meaning keeping him doesn’t prevent any other business from being done."

But Charles Robinson of Yahoo! believes it's Rodgers, and neither team, who holds the cards.

"It’s nonsensical for the litany of twitter jockeys or pundits to be so certain that Green Bay has a mountain of leverage heading into the next few months," Robinson said. "The Packers don’t. They surrendered that higher ground when they made it publicly apparent that they want Rodgers off the roster. Once that happened, it became a game of patience, public perception and the willingness to be spiteful enough to do what the other entity wouldn’t.

"Rodgers is going to win on all of those fronts. And he’s going to help the Jets win right alongside him. He wants to move on to New York, but if the Packers want to test him and bluff a potential return to the fold in Green Bay, they should be aware that he will call that bluff. He would go back at this stage just to embarrass Gutekunst, Murphy and anyone else who would publicly suggest he’s no longer wanted. That’s the true leverage in this situation. That’s the real power."

What comes next for the Packers?

Danny Heifetz of The Ringer looks at the obvious shift in Green Bay from stability to uncertainty.

"Plenty of people — including yours truly — shredded Gutekunst for taking Love and running back AJ Dillon in the first two rounds of the draft in 2020, and for a few years, those takes have held up," Heifetz wrote. "Both Love and Dillon have been backups — and Love specifically has played only sparingly in his first three seasons in Green Bay. But if Love ends up as the Packers’ next great QB, their quarterback of the next decade, Gutekunst will have been more than vindicated — especially considering the flak he took, both from the media and from Rodgers himself, as Rodgers wanted to have a say in front-office decisions."

USA Today's Nancy Armour wrote that "Aaron Rodgers plays the victim as well as he plays football. Maybe even better."

"Rodgers said he would have appreciated 'direct communication' from the Packers but I bet they would have, too, rather than the hints he’d drop here and there," she said.

"They went from one Hall of Fame quarterback to another, winning the Super Bowl in Rodgers’ third season as a starter … This wasn’t a one-sided relationship, though. Rodgers got plenty out of Green Bay, too. The Packers kept or brought back players and coaches because Rodgers wanted them to. When he lied about his vaccination status in 2021, when the NFL was hyper-vigilant about COVID protocols, the Packers and their fanbase had his back.

"Even his growing eccentricities were tolerated more than they would have been in other markets.

"But Rodgers wanted to be kingmaker and was shocked when the Packers were no longer interested."

The perspective from New York writers

Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post said Rodgers can silence critics of New York's ownership.

"In 334 days, Super Bowl 2024 will be played in Las Vegas, and the Jets’ eternal march toward happiness will have surpassed 20K days," he wrote. "And if the Jets are playing in that game … yes. This will all be worth it. The drama. The draft picks. The sky-is-falling assumption that Rodgers will forget everything he ever knew about brilliantly throwing a football once he changes shades of green, a by-product of so many destitute decades."

Pat Leonard of the New York Daily News noted that the move helps the Jets steal the spotlight from the Giants.

More:If Aaron Rodgers goes to the Jets, the New York media will have a field day

Clever New York headline alert

The New York Daily News ribbed Rodgers for his past vaccination status with the headline "A Real Shot in the Arm," noting "Johnson's Jets about to get a big boost." Johnson, of course, is Jets owner Woody Johnson, the billionaire heir to Johnson & Johnson, which manufactured COVID-19 shots (and, yes, boosters).

The New York Post went with something a little more wholesome and perhaps topical as a reference to Oscar nominee Top Gun: Maverick, with the headline "Jet Set" and the smaller headline of "Aaron Rodgers: I want to be Gang Green's Top Gun."

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: National writers offer their takes on the Aaron Rodgers saga