Running back Aaron Jones was the heart and soul of the Green Bay Packers after Aaron Rodgers was traded to the New York Jets.
Sure, it's Jordan Love's show now, but Jones proved just how important he was to Green Bay both in the locker room and on the field in 2023 when he rushed for 656 yards and two touchdowns while catching 30 passes for 233 yards and a touchdown.
No, those numbers don't look like much but keep in mind that Jones missed several games with a hamstring injury. Anyone who watched the games last season knows, anyhow, that Green Bay's offense was so much more explosive with Jones on the field than without.
And yet, despite general manager Brian Gutekunst saying at the end of the last season that Jones would return for 2024, he's now a member of the Minnesota Vikings.
Talk about whiplash. It had to have hurt for Packers fans to see Jones go, but to go to the Vikings?
What happened between "We'd love to have Aaron back" and now?
“The landscape changed,” Gutekunst told Cheesehead TV. “We weren’t able to come to an agreement that we thought we might be able to with Aaron, and then, quite frankly, some opportunities opened up that we didn’t expect as well. As hard as that is when you’re emotionally attached to a player like Aaron and everything he’s done for the club, you have to do what’s right for the Green Bay Packers…I feel I owe that to the organization."
Clearly, the opportunity that opened up was the chance to sign Josh Jacobs — a former All-Pro who's three years younger than Jones and clearly has plenty of juice left in the tank. Jacobs rushed for 805 yards and six touchdowns last season in just 13 games and put up 2,053 yards from scrimmage and 12 rushing touchdowns the year before while fully healthy, and the Packers clearly saw him as an upgrade to Jones' do-everything style.
Still, Jacobs may be an on-field upgrade but won't the Packers suffer from the lack of leadership with Jones now with one of their arch-rivals?
That's the calculation Gutekunst had to make while the landscape was changing, and he clearly felt Green Bay would be okay finding a new heartbeat in 2024 and beyond.
