Sports Time Radio

The National Football League is holding its yearly scouting combine in Indianapolis Indiana. In case you don’t know this is where NFL teams get to look at the players, they’re going to make millionaires in a few weeks when they select them at the NFL draft.

Now a lot of the players that are projected to be high draft picks participate in all of the events at the NFL combine, but most if not all of them will have a Pro day at their college to show off their skills. You’d have to think that’s a more comfortable place for them to show their skills and they get to control the narrative unlike at the combine.

I don’t know enough about college football to know who’s going to be picked where and which players will turn out to be either the most surprising pick or even a complete bust for the team that drafts them. The one thing that seems obvious in this group of draft eligible players is that the focus isn’t on the quarterback position like it was last season.

Lat year quarterbacks were taken with the first three picks in the draft and then there were also two more selected in the 1st round. This season it appears as though there may not be a quarterback selected inside the Top 10 and their may only be two or three that go in the 1st round overall.

If you remember only one of those five quarterbacks from the 2021 NFL draft ended up being on a playoff team last season. That quarterback was Mac Jones who was the last of the five 1st round quarterbacks selected. Jones went to the New England Patriots with the 15th pick in the 1st round.

Obviously, the success of the quarterback depends a lot on the players around you and when you’re selected as high as some of those quarterbacks where last season they’re going to a very bad team. While it’s possible to turn an NFL team around very quickly with a good draft and some smart free agent signings it’s difficult to go from 1-15 or 2-14 into the playoffs and that showed last season with these quarterbacks.

Will this coming season be different for whichever quarterbacks are drafted in the 1st round? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what teams they end up on.

Once the NFL scouting combine ends the focus turns to free agency and even though he still has one year remaining on his contract the biggest off-season dilemma is what will Aaron Rodgers do.

Rodgers dominated last off season as he had a bit of a fallout with the Green Bay Packers and had talked about possibly walking away from the game. In the end Rodgers was able to get his contract restructured and added a clause that he couldn’t be franchise tagged by the Packers after this season. Rodgers mentioned that he’d let Green Bay know what his decision about the 2022 season would be before free agency started, but we’re getting down to the wire and it doesn’t seem as though Rodgers is anywhere near an actual decision.

Rodgers options are pretty much the same as they were last off season. He can retire or he can ask for the Packers to trade him. Now there was some belief that when Rodgers agreed to his new contract last year that there was an agreement that Green Bay would trade Rodgers if that was what he wanted, but Packers General Manager Brian Gutekunst has said that’s not the case.

Rodgers has mentioned that if he does return to Green Bay for the 2022 season, he’d like to see the Packers bring back wide receivers Davonte Adams and Marquez Valdez-Scantling. Both wide receivers are free agents, but you’d think that if a contract can’t be worked out with Adams before free agency starts Green Bay will use the franchise tag on him.

What is odd about the Rodgers situation is that the longer he holds the Packers front office hostage waiting for his decision the tougher it will be for them to prepare for the 2022 season and try to bring back Adams and Valdez-Scantling. That brings up the question of how much does he really want both guys to return or is this just his stalling tactic this off season.

Adams is one of if not the best wide receiver in football while Valdez-Scantling is a solid second receiver, but there’s very little chance that they’ll both be in Packers uniforms next season with or without Rodgers on the team. It’s a very good bet that Adams will be kept either through a new contract or with the franchise tag, but Valdez-Scantling will probably end up signing with another team and Green Bay might look to the draft to replace him.

Will see how long the Rodgers drama plays out this off season, but if he’s a man of his word the Packers should have his decision very soon, but will they?

Let’s play the game as well. What do you see happening with Rodgers for the 2022 season? Does he retire from the NFL? Or will he ask Green Bay to trade him? If you think he asks for a trade, where do you see him being traded?

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you can also find me on Twitter. I’m @Burketime.