The Packers Will Not Trade Greg Jennings
By Jayme Joers on Sep 13, 2012 with 19 Comments
Last night as I was starting to drift off to sleep, planning to write about how the lack of offensive rhythm from the Packers was worrying me, Bob McGinn posted that the Packers should trade Greg Jennings.
I respect Bob McGinn. I sometimes have a Corey Behnke type fandom for the guy, even despite him recently calling A.J. Hawk marginal. But it would be a cold day in hell before the Packers trade Greg Jennings.
In theory, he’s not wrong. The NFL is a money game and there is only so much money to go around. Considering the recent Jordy Nelson contract and the list of other Packer players whose contracts are expiring, Jennings might have drawn the short end of the stick. So why let him walk in the off season for a compensatory pick – one whose value is not assured – when you can try to get something, and possibly something more, for him now?
And the Packers have a lot of needs. The idea of getting someone who can tackle, or replace Jarrett Bush in the starting lineup, or additional help on the offensive line or a couple of high draft picks is more than appealing. But the same logic of why get nothing for him next year also works in reverse. Why pay for Greg Jennings now, when you can get him for less in a couple months?
There are teams out there, with desperate needs in the receiving corps. McGinn lists potential trade partners as: Miami, Buffalo, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Oakland, Carolina, Seattle and St. Louis. The majority of those teams are in rebuilding mode. Teams themselves that are collecting draft picks. These teams aren’t “all in” this year. They aren’t one piece away from making a run.
The NFL is not known for block buster trades in the same ways that baseball and basketball are. You don’t hear of 4 team, 8 player trades in the NFL. Comparatively, the trade market in the NFL is boring. To its part, the NFL did decide to move the trade deadline back two weeks this year.
Maybe between now and then some high profile team, determined to finally live up to its potential, will find itself with an injury depleted receiving corps and be desperate. Maybe someone, the likes of Dallas or the Chargers, will come calling and maybe they’ll be desperate enough to pay what will surely be a huge bounty that Ted Thompson will demand. But also maybe the Packers will have an injury to a wideout and be unwilling to part with a key piece to their post season aspirations.
Just like potential trade partners, the Packers are in a small window of opportunity for success. The Packers should not be willing to make that window smaller this year in hopes that it turns into a door next year.
A quick glance at recent NFL trades also are enough to make one nervy about the idea. Kevin Kolb and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie. A backup and someone who had zero interceptions last season. The Donovan McNabb to Washington to Minnesota merry-go-round can be more upsetting to a stomach than an actual merry-go-round. Jabar Gaffney and Jeremy Jarmon, Washington got a receiver and Denver got someone whom they cut before the season started and no other team deemed worthy enough to pick up. Carson Palmer is probably the best in season trade in recent years, and that was because he simply refused to play for his original team, and they had no choice but to deal him.
After trading up in the most recent NFL draft, Packers GM Ted Thompson joked about these out of character actions saying, “I’m not my father’s son.” If Ted Thompson suddenly became the type of GM who makes splashy mid-season moves with high risk and not assured reward, he wouldn’t simply be “not his father’s son,” he’d be cyborg Ted from another planet.
Jayme Joers is a writer at CheeseheadTV’s Eat More Cheese and co-host of CheeseheadRadio. She also contributes to Pocketdoppler.com and brentfavre.com. You can contact her via twitter at @jaymelee1 or email at Jaymelee1@gmail.com.
Filed Under: Featured • Go Pack Go • Greg Jennings • Packer Offense • Wide recievers
I am not a fan of Bob McGinn – he’s a negative nancy.
But I agree with him on this one. GJ is a name – and a good one – at a high demand position on the field.
Teams are all hot for DB’s now because they have to guard so many good WR’s. WR’s like GJ don’t materialize out of thin air. You have to pay to get them.
GB simply doesn’t have enough money left under the cap to pay GJ a top 3 WR salary. They don’t.
Other teams do. They’ll trade for him because they have his rights at that point and can get him for cheaper than they could on the open market.
Add in that GB could use him this year for sure, but they don’t NEED him to survive. WR/TE is the deepest position on the team. Period.
Who’s a better player – CM3 or GJ? Probably GJ. Who’s more valuable to GB? CM3, and it’s not close.
TT probably won’t do it. But if he does do it right before the trade deadline, for a 2nd rounder or a starter on D, I’m all for it.
McGinn is not a negative nancy. He’s an unbiased journalist.
I hope you’re joking.
He’s both IMO. They’re not excludent. I don’t think I’ve ever read a positive article by McGinn, and I’ve read plenty negative. And it’s not like the Packers have sucked all this time.
McGinn. Is. A. Negative. Nancy.
RS is right. McGinn has had very few positive things to say about GB’s D or OL since… ever.
Granted, it’s not been all world – but over the past 20 years, GB’s D and OL haven’t been perennially awful either.
People say negative things because it’s easier to do and more popular. Praising someone is harder to do and usually isn’t received as well.
McGinn is in the business of getting clicks online. Hence the negative Nancy bit.
No, McGinn’s bosses are in the business of getting clicks.
Yeah, I think McGinn has credit enough to not have to suit his text to others’ demands. If he’s fired from the JSO I’m betting the GBPG will hire him in a heartbeat.
I think that’s just his style, to bang on the negatives more than to praise the positives. It doesn’t necessarily mean he has an agenda.
While I do agree he’s probably pessimistic more often than the average Packers writer, here are some quotes from an article pre Super Bowl XLV:
“the Green Bay Packers are going to make the Super Bowl seem like old hat by the time Aaron Rodgers and the stacked lineup around him are finished.”
“If any player, coach or scout for the current Packers failed to use the plural case to state his objective (winning championships), he would be guilty of grossly underselling the capability of what has been built in Green Bay or not telling the truth.”
“I’m spending my first non-football weekend in what seems like forever trying to make sense of a team whose future appears brighter than at any time since the Lombardi era.
Get ready, Wisconsin. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
I don’t see anyone giving up a second rounder (or more) for Jennings at this point. If you are Dallas or SD or a team that just needs a stud WR to get over the top, I think you would want to at least have a training camp to get everyone acclimated. If you are rebuilding and are a few years away (even if you have surplus draft choices), how much do you give up for a soon-to-be 30 year-old that may be starting to show significant wear and tear? If it was going to happen, I think it would have by now. It can’t have been a surprise to TT, Russ Ball, et al, that Jennings is looking for a mega-deal (as he should), so the fact that he’s still there likely means that GB isn’t going to move him. I don’t necessarily agree with McGinn that TT is averse to making “bold strokes”, as cutting Favre loose was probably as bold a stroke as there has been in the recent past, but I do agree with his premise that it would have been in the Packers’ best interests to deal Jennings rather than wait for a compensatory pick.
> If you are Dallas or SD or a team that
> just needs a stud WR to get over the
> top, I think you would want to at least
> have a training camp to get everyone
> acclimated.
I wonder if this is the reason that trades are rare in the NFL. In baseball, the game strategy doesn’t change if you plug someone into the 5-hole or starting pitching rotation. But the level of coordination required between players on both sides of the ball in football means that training camp is really important. You can’t just plug someone in. It takes time to get acclimated.
And this convinces me that Jayme’s right. This isn’t going to happen.
I’m not really sure where I stand on this. I’ve always been a believer in the “build for the future” model, but if Ted did this, I think it probably crosses the line. I just don’t think when you’re a Super Bowl contender that you should be trading away good players mid-season. There was a similar debate about James Jones in a chat on this site a few weeks back.
As the column points out, football trading is not like baseball and basketball. Doesn’t mean that it can’t be. However, those trades tend to involve “buyers” adding talent and “sellers” giving it up, I’m pretty sure the Packers won’t be sellers if they turn this thing around. Now, if the Packers stink it up and start 3-4 or something, maybe I’d be more okay with it.
What annoys me most though, is why is McGinn writing about Greg Jennings’ impending free agency after Week 1…when the Bears are coming to Lambeau within 24 hours? I guess he wants to say “I told you so” if in fact a trade would go down, or if it doesn’t and people say “oh we should have traded Greg.” But seriously write about the very important intradivisional matchup, don’t write something that could create such a distraction, at such an unnecessary time.
I think the reason he chose to write about it now is that Jennings is starting to have issues with injuries, and after not making it thru the entire 49ers game on Sunday, his current & future status with the team is an important factor that should be discussed. I don’t think McGinn is making it a distraction by writing about it — it already is a distraction, which is probably why he is advocating there is some rationale to possibly pursuing a trade before the year is out. If the Jennings situation gets any larger, it has the potential of infecting the locker room this season.
As intriguing as the idea of getting a quality DB sounds right now, I just have a really hard time seeing this happening. TT doesn’t sacrifice the future for the now, but he also does not sacrifice the now for the future. He didn’t ship out Matt Flynn last year because he had a quality back-up for a Super Bowl caliber team, and he’s not going to ship out a top-10 WR this year unless he thinks he will make the team better now by getting a needed player in return. Oh, and in the process it would be good if GJ didn’t end up on a competing NFC team. Let me know who the trading partner is, then I’ll pay more attention.
Totally agree. Right now, we’d have a better chance of getting a quality DB by converting GJ to a cornerback rather than trading him. No team has a stock pile of DB’s equal to GJ caliber.
“So why let him walk in the off season for a compensatory pick – one whose value is not assured…”
Jayme, w/ what he would sign for we would get a 3rd round pick.
That said, I still think tagging him in 2013 is the way to go. Ball could negotiate w/ Raji and CM3 whose contracts don’t expire til after the 2013 season. TT could resign them soon as the season is over when GJ’s contract is up. IIRC, we would still get a comp pick only
The fact of the matter is trades rarely happen in the NFL, esp. to star players. It is more likely they let him walk after his contract is up, or tag him and try to trade him for picks then. It would be nice to get a CB or safety for him, but probably not anytime soon. I do think another big WR like Jordy would be help our offense alot.
To those saying that McGinn is always negative, remember that he wrote a column just before the KC game last year DECLARING that the Packers would finished undefeated and win the Super Bowl. He is not always negative.
He is wrong about this one though. Handle GJ after the season unless disaster strikes (i.e. Rodgers goes down).
McGinn knows his stuff. And his evaluation of this being a less-than-dominant year for the Pack seems to be spot on.
If this does go down, I hope Ted accepts nothing less than a 2nd. I think having Jennings for even a half a season is worth nothing less.
If anyone signs Jennings for Megatron type money, they will stupider than the guys who signed Megatron for Megetron type money.