Sports Time Radio

The 1st round of the National Football League draft starts tomorrow and fortunately the New York Jets and the Green Bay Packers were finally able to agree on a deal that sends Rodgers to New York.

Here’s how the trade breaks down. The Packers send Rodgers along with the 15th and 170th pick which are 1st and 5th rounder to the Jets. I return Green Bay receives the 13th, 42nd and 207th pick of this draft. That’s a 1st, a 2nd and a 6th round pick. Green Bay also receives a conditional draft pick in 2024. Right now, that conditional pick is a 2nd round pick, but if Rodgers plays 65% of snaps for the Jets this coming season, then the pick becomes a 1st round pick.

It doesn’t appear as the Packers got as much as a lot of people thought they would for Rodgers, but you have to look at the fact that he’s talked about retirement the past couple of off seasons, and he is 39 years old. Rodgers is actually signed through the 2026 season, but with the way he’s acted the past few off seasons you have to wonder if he’ll fulfill his contract.

Yesterday I heard this deal compared to Tom Brady joining the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and when Matthew Stafford was traded to the Los Angeles Rams. Both Tampa Bay and Los Angeles won the Super Bowl the first year that they brought in a new veteran quarterback. Are the Jets a legitimate Super Bowl contender with Rodgers under center?

The Jets had the 4th best defense according to the rankings last season, so that side of the football should continue to be solid coming into this season. The offense however was ranked 25th overall last season. They were also 29th in points per game scoring just 17.4 points per game.

Now almost all of the blame for the Jets offensive struggles was placed on Zach Wilson which is the biggest reason the trade for Rodgers happened. I guess the question now becomes, is just making a quarterback change enough?

The Jets did add wide receivers Allen Lazard and Mecole Hardman as free agents. They’ve also signed two new offensive linemen as well as bringing back two from last season. According to the experts’ offensive line is were the Jets need to improve the most and obviously they want to protect Rodgers to the best of their ability. You have to wonder if that 15th overall draft pick will be use to try to plug what might be a hole in the offensive line or would they be more likely to try and add another weapon for Rodgers.

So, after months of speculation and mock draft after mock draft there seems to be a change at the top of the draft board. I’m sure you’ve heard over and over again that there would be three quarterbacks drafted within the first four picks of the draft. Well just this week there has been a lot of talk that the Houston Texans who have the 2nd overall pick in the draft might go another way.

All of a sudden, the people who have been saying quarterback after quarterback would be pick now think that the Texans will select Will Anderson the defensive end/linebacker from Alabama.

This doesn’t seem like it would be a bad pick for the Texans as Anderson is considered one of if not the best defensive player in the draft. Anderson also doesn’t have the baggage that the other top defensive player in this draft Jalen Carter has.

I caught an evaluation of Anderson yesterday and the person who was doing the evaluations thinks that he could get 10 sacks a year for 10 plus seasons as an NFL player. That would be the type of player that the Texans and their new head coach DeMeco Ryans could build a defense around.

Luckily for all of us we’re not that far away from finding out what these teams are going to do with these picks. The 1st round of the NFL draft is scheduled to start at 7:00 p.m. It’s available on ABC, ESPN and the NFL network and I believe there are some streaming options as well. The 2nd and 3rd round of the NFL draft will air on the same networks Friday and they are scheduled to start at 6:00 p.m. The 3rd through 7th rounds of the NFL draft also airs on the same three networks and it is scheduled to start Saturday at 11:00 a.m.

Let me know what your draft watching habitats are. Do you sit through the entire clock when your favorite teams is picking? Or do you flip back and forth waiting for them to make a pick? I have a difficult time sitting through the 15-minute clock waiting for a pick to be made, so I do a lot of channel flipping during the draft. Fortunately, whatever way you end up watching the NFL draft you can always catch up since every station that shows it runs a crawler with the draft picks somewhere on the screen.

Don’t forget to look for me on Twitter, I’m @Burketime.