Green Bay Packers

The Rodgers-Adams era is over — what happens next in Green Bay?

Published Mar. 18, 2022 2:05 p.m. ET

Davante Adams and Aaron Rodgers both got paid … by different teams.

Thursday's blockbuster deal saw Green Bay ship their venerated wide receiver — and Rodgers' favorite target — to Las Vegas in exchange for two "prime" 2022 NFL Draft picks. It's a move that shocked Packers fans and the NFL world alike, who in recent years saw the marriage between Rodgers and Adams blossom into a forever honeymoon.

Las Vegas will give Adams a new five-year, $141.25 million contract (about $28.25 million per season) and he is set to become the highest-paid wide receiver in NFL history.

According to one report, the Packers were willing to give Adams a similar deal to what the Raiders are giving him, but he was ready to move on.

Just two days prior, Rodgers agreed to a three-year, $150 million contract with the Packers. The hope was that despite Adams not wanting to play under the franchise tag, he and the Packers would eventually come to a new agreement so that Rodgers could keep lobbing bombs up for Adams in the end zone.

But was the Rodgers-Adams connection not as deep as the NFL landscape was led to believe? After all, Rodgers famously called Adams "the most dominant player I’ve played with" back in December.

While Rodgers was in negotiations, he reportedly knew that Adams' days in Green Bay were numbered, according to NFL insider Rapoport.

With that, on Friday, Chris Broussard took Rodgers to task for the latest developments in Packer-land.

"For all the talk about 'Davante's the best player I've ever played with,' and, 'Oh, how it brought me to tears when Davante Adams and Randall Cobb left a space for me during the national anthem in the game I couldn't play' — remember that IG post? For all of that talk, it was about money. That's what it's about," Broussard said on "First Things First." "So Aaron Rodgers can wake up happy because he's rich."

The demise of the duo couldn't happen at a worse time for Green Bay, Nick Wright added.

"If there was ever a team that should be putting things on the credit card — win immediately by any means necessary — it would be the Packers, whose quarterback is turning 39 this season," Wright said.

As for the future of the Packers offense, Rodgers will be without a true stud.

Adams, 29, has earned All-Pro honors each of the last two seasons and was a unanimous selection in 2021. Last season, he set Packers single-season records for catches (123) and yards receiving (1,553) while also scoring 11 touchdowns.

In 2021, Adams’ 169 targets were tied for second-most in the NFL. He was targeted by Rodgers on 31.8% of his pass attempts — no other Packer had more than 65 total targets. Since the start of the 2018 season, Adams has the most targets in the NFL with 614.

"He had 100 more targets than the next closest which was Aaron Jones, the running back (65 targets). It was almost like Aaron Rodgers was throwing the ball to Davante or out of bounds," Shannon Sharpe said on "Undisputed."

If the Packers truly want to be in "win now" mode, they will need to get aggressive with their draft picks, according to Sharpe.

"They do have four [draft] picks in the first two rounds. It's hard for me to see a scenario in which they don't take a wide receiver. But they've had a lot of picks before when they haven't taken a wide receiver. They were like, 'We got Davante. We're just gonna take other positions.'"

Green Bay hasn't drafted a wide receiver in the first round since 2002.

Chances are, that's about to change.