The Los Angeles Rams shook up the football world on Saturday night. After making it to the postseason and beating their division rivals, the Seattle Seahawks in the Wild Card round three weeks ago, the Rams now have a new quarterback. The team sent Jared Goff to Detroit and sent him and three draft hooks to the Lions for veteran signalman Matthew Stafford.
But Stafford apparently wasn’t the first quarterback the Rams asked about. According to Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times, the Rams called the Green Bay Packers to ask about the possibility of acquiring Aaron Rodgers.
That conversation was apparently extraordinarily short.
When the Rams “took flight,” the Packers apparently quickly shot down any conversation with little to no serious consideration. The Packers were “adamant”, in Farmer’s words, that they wouldn’t move Rodgers, a feeling that team chairman Mark Murphy’s recent comments underscore that the Packers will indeed keep number 12 for the foreseeable future.
It should come as no surprise that the Rams would be interested in Rodgers. After all, he will likely win the AP MVP award for the 2020 season – to be announced next Saturday at the NFL Honors. The Rams also got a close-up and personal look at Rodgers as he shredded LA’s top-ranked defense in the Divisional Playoffs. It shouldn’t be surprising, however, that the Packers wouldn’t be happy to let him go for the same reasons, especially if the Rams had insisted on letting Goff be part of the deal.
Instead, Rams general manager Les Snead and head coach Sean McVay turned to Matthew Stafford after the Packers closed all of Rodgers’ trade talks, ultimately resulting in Saturday’s trade deal. The Rams will send a third round draft pick in 2021 and the team’s first round in 2022 and 2023 to the Lions to exchange Goff for Stafford.
The price for Stafford is astronomical in large part because of Goff’s contract, as the Rams apparently had to add additional draft picks to relieve Goff at Detroit. He will owe $ 43 million in guaranteed money for the next two years, the first two new years on a deal he signed for the 2019 season, so that the Lions will have Goff as their starter in 2021 unless they have another taker for him. can find. .
Detroit signals a complete rebuild with this move, adding picks for a quarterback who has slipped significantly over the past two years after posting excellent campaigns in his second and third NFL seasons. Stafford, meanwhile, gives the Rams a proven, big-arm veteran who should be a good fit for McVay’s play-action pass game. This is definitely a short term upgrade for the Rams at that position, but how much of an upgrade is up for debate.
Aaron Rodgers? That would have been an incredible upgrade for LA. But the Packers had no intention of letting that happen at any cost.