What’s the point of bringing in a 41-year-old veteran to a team that likely isn’t ready to compete for a Super Bowl? It’s a fair question. But there may be an overlooked upside to adding future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers. Rookie sixth-round pick Will Howard could benefit in a big way.
Rodgers has been (perhaps unfairly) negatively portrayed in the media as a bad teammate because of some of his opinions off the football field. According to his longtime QB coach and later OC Tom Clements, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“The guys that played with him or have played with him for a long time, they can’t say enough good things about him,” Clements said via 93.7 The Fan. “He’s a very good teammate…If there’s a young quarterback in the room, he’s very good at mentoring them and helping them along because he didn’t, when he was a young QB, Brett [Favre] didn’t come to the offseason program and he didn’t really have anyone helping him like he has helped people in the past. So he’s good with the young guys. He’s good with the old guys. The guys who play with him love him.”
One caveat to this statement of course is that Rodgers did not show up to the first part of the offseason program. OTAs would have been the perfect place to give pointers to a young quarterback like Howard or even Mason Rudolph to a lesser degree. But at least he will get to work with them at mandatory minicamp next week with the breaking news of his intention to sign on Friday.
Rodgers’ actions indicated he wasn’t thrilled when the Packers selected first-round QB Jordan Love while he was still on the roster. But that doesn’t mean he was intentionally a bad teammate to Love along the way. Love admitted it wasn’t the easiest position to be in, but told NFL.com that they have a good relationship and appreciates the opportunity to learn from him.
That was when Love was very clearly his replacement. Now, Rodgers has one or maybe two years left in him at the most. He has no reason to feel threatened by somebody like Howard at this stage of his career, so there would be no reason for anything for a great mentor relationship between the two.
Howard told Kay Adams last month that he grew up idolizing Rodgers and would love to play with him in Pittsburgh. He will get his wish, and it sounds like Rodgers will make the perfect mentor for him.
