Stacy Revere/Getty ImagesThere have been rumors that Aaron Rodgers perhaps wanted to reunite with Green Bay Packers offensive lineman David Bakhtiari in New York after he tagged him in an... unusual manner on Instagram.
But Green Bay isn't selling.
"First of all, we're not going to trade David," Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst told reporters Friday. "So just get that out of the way."
Bakhtiari, 31, served as Rodgers' left tackle between the 2013-22 seasons, earning three Pro Bowl bids and two first-team All-Pro selections in the process.
Injuries—including knee issues that have required multiple surgeries—have cost him 26 games in the last three seasons, however, including six last season.
In December, Gutekunst spoke to reporters about the veteran tackle's run of injury issues:
"Obviously, Bak's been through a tough stretch here. As he got through the beginning of the season, he went through a stretch of games, that Thursday night game coming off a Sunday game, where I thought he played really, really well, and (the knee) was holding up really well, and then just snakebit with the appendectomy and what he's going through right now. But he's playing at a very, very high level. Left tackles don't grow on trees."They also don't come cheap.
Bakhtiari has a $21.2 million cap hit in 2023 and a $40.4 million cap hit in 2024, so trading him would incur around $38.1 million in dead cap, per Spotrac. That's a lot of money counting against the salary cap for a player no longer on the team, and it makes it far less likely that the Packers would move him this summer.
So Jets fans hoping for an upgrade on the offensive line—arguably New York's biggest question mark heading into the 2023 season, one that has brought high expectations given the arrival of Rodgers—are probably going to have to bark up a different tree.
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