Acme Packing Company
How is the Packers’ big trade looking two years on?
On April 26, 2023, the Packers traded Aaron Rodgers to the New York Jets. The return for Rodgers was enormous, and it took multiple seasons for the Packers to get everything they were promised for the sure-fire future Hall of Famer.
With the conclusion of the 2024 NFL Draft, the Packers had used everything they received in the trade, some of which was used to trade back and maximize their overall return. In total, here’s what the Packers ended up getting, as recounted by APC’s Justis Mosqueda last spring:
Now that everybody acquired in the trade has at least a full season under their belt, how are we looking?
By and large, it’s still too early to tell how the Packers did in their deal for Rodgers, which feels kind of weird to say. Shouldn’t you know more by now? Well, probably, yes, but the top end of the 2023 draft class makes things a little difficult.
The jury is still out on Lukas Van Ness, and it might still have been even under the best of circumstances. Van Ness was about as raw of a prospect as you could imagine coming out of Iowa, and his early NFL career hasn’t done him many favors on that front. Changing coordinators midway through a de facto position switch is no way to start your NFL career. While he has flashed his prodigious athleticism at times, it’s been too inconsistent. It’s possible that Van Ness just isn’t that good, and I tend to lean that way overall, but he still has at least two years to go on his rookie deal, pending what the Packers decide on his fifth-year option after this season.
The same goes for Luke Musgrave, albeit for different reasons. Musgrave, like Van Ness, has struggled to find his footing (sometimes literally) early in his NFL career. Injured at Oregon State, Musgrave has been hurt plenty in his early NFL career, and it’s still hard to tell what he’s going to become, if anything. Even prior to his injury this season, he was squarely behind Tucker Kraft on the depth chart. That, in and of itself, is not a shame; Kraft is a good player. But Musgrave clearly struggled to get involved on offense early in 2024, and his season ended up basically a wash. 2025 will be critical, but he’s, at best, and incomplete grade right now.
Anders Carlson? The less said the better.
The 2024 class is where this gets interesting. Edgerrin Cooper looks like a star in the making. The Packers brought him along slowly, but he made a splash just about every time he was on the field and...
