Further evidence the Broncos avoided franchise disaster with Aaron Rodgers

When the Denver Broncos seemingly missed out on the chance to acquire back-to-back MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers in the 2022 offseason, it felt like a catastrophic failure for the franchise. Two years later, and it looks like the catastrophic failure was actually avoided by missing out on Rodgers.

Even with the Broncos making a blockbuster trade to acquire Russell Wilson after they pivoted away from Rodgers, the team is in a much better position right now with rookie quarterback Bo Nix -- who has 30 total touchdowns and counting so far in his first NFL season -- than they would have been with Rodgers.

Of course, it's impossible to know exactly how things would have gone had Rodgers come to the Mile High City, but a recent report from ESPN's Adam Schefter that Rodgers is seriously considering calling it a career after Week 18 is evidence enough that the Broncos dodged a bullet.

Denver Broncos would have been in disastrous spot with Aaron Rodgers

Just about everyone in Broncos Country wanted Rodgers when he was seemingly available back in 2022. Of course, the Packers gave Rodgers a boatload of cash and didn't trade him until the 2023 season, but Rodgers has been on the physical decline since that 2022 season.

The Packers missed the playoffs after one of Rodgers's worst years with the team in 2022. After being traded to the New York Jets, he barely got out of the tunnel in his first game before going down with a season-ending injury. In 2024, Rodgers has barely looked himself on the comeback trail, and at the age of 41, he's not having any sort of Tom Brady-like late-career production.

Rodgers has been a total distraction for the Jets off the field and mostly a liability on the field.

The Jets fired both their head coach Robert Saleh and general manager Joe Douglas in the middle of the 2024 season. They traded for Rodgers's pal Davante Adams while demoting another old pal in Nathaniel Hackett, who was stripped of his offensive play-calling duties.

It was an utter disaster of a year for Rodgers and the Jets, and it appears as though the two sides are headed for separation in 2025 one way or the other. And for Rodgers to truly control the narrative and preserve his reputation and pride, retirement may be the only course of action. He's already carved his legacy as an NFL quarterback and has nothing left to prove, and a this point, it's hard to imagine another NFL team would want to bring him in with the gravitas of his presence and the potential for things to go sideways.

The Jets are going through a head coach and general manager search with dysfunctional ownership, who have solicited the help of some of the staff at The 33rd Team, a football opinion website. Granted, some of the staff there are former NFL employees, but it's a bizarre situation for them to be in.

The Jets are staring at a 2025 NFL Draft class which looks horrible at the quarterback position overall, and certainly not deep enough for them to get someone where they will end up selecting. They are going to have to gut the roster of all the "Aaron Rodgers guys" and rebuild in many ways while also dealing with the salary cap implications of Rodgers either being cut or retiring.

Meanwhile, the Denver Broncos moved on from Russell Wilson after two tumultuous seasons. They used the 12th pick in the 2024 NFL Draft on Bo Nix, who was 4th in the AFC in Pro Bowl voting and has been in the thick of the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year discussion most of the season. They rank in the top 10 in available cap space this coming offseason and are on the cusp of potentially ending their playoff drought in Week 18.

The Broncos have clarity for their future while the allure of a legend like Aaron Rodgers proved to be more fool's gold than anything else. The Jets not only wasted their time, but they set their roster and franchise back tremendously with no immediate answers in sight.

This is one situation in which the Broncos should be ecstatic they missed out.