Julio Jones. Aaron Rodgers. Deshaun Watson. Russell Wilson.
We’re there, right?
All four of those guys are in situations with their teams that are awkward at best, untenable at worst, with a little more than three months left until the 2021 season opener. And in the old NFL, their respective teams could have probably just waited them out, gotten to camp and told them to, in effect, buckle up their chinstraps, strap on their pads and shut their mouths.
But this isn’t your dad’s NFL, or even your older sibling’s. Today, there’s almost an assumption out there that if a player wants out and has sharp-enough elbows to push the right buttons, he’ll eventually wind up like Jamal Adams and Jalen Ramsey—and get his way.
This offseason has given us some interesting test cases.
Matthew Stafford quietly went to Lions management asking for a trade, and he was granted it within a month to his desired destination. Carson Wentz presented his case to the Eagles in a similar fashion to how Stafford approached Detroit, on the premise that both sides could use a reset, and also landed in the place he most wanted to go, just a few weeks later.
Conversely, between the 2020 playoffs and beginning of the ’21 league year, Jones, Rodgers, Watson and Wilson let it be known that they’d at least be amenable to trades, and all four remain with their longtime teams.
And we’re all waiting to see what happens with them.
We’re waiting, because the impact the fate of those four will have on the 2021 season is huge. But truth is, the impact it’ll have on how the NFL does business going forward could be even bigger. And reverberate for a long time to come. Everyone in the league is well aware of what’s on the line in the collective of these four high-stakes games.
