Aaron Rodgers injury will cost Packers big-time in 2024 NFL Draft

You never want to see any player go down with injuries, which are undoubtedly the worst aspect of the NFL. They are an unfortunate reality but you certainly hope for the best, especially with your star players. Green Bay Packers fans were likely watching with curiosity as the Aaron Rodgers era started off in New York on Monday night against the Buffalo Bills, but it lasted just a handful of snaps.

Rodgers went down with an injury early against Buffalo, and an MRI confirmed the worst on Tuesday morning: arguably the biggest offseason acquisition for any team in the entire NFL in 2023 is done for the year.

A ruptured Achilles prematurely ended Aaron Rodgers' 2023 season, leaving major question marks about his future with the Jets and in the NFL, in general, as he will be 40 years old and attempting to come back from a severe injury next year.

You obviously wish the best for Rodgers in this situation, and hope for a speedy recovery for him, but the impact of this injury on the Green Bay Packers is fairly significant.

Although nobody's really going to feel the effects of it until next Spring.

Aaron Rodgers injury costs Packers a 2024 first-round pick

There was a condition in the trade between the Packers and Jets, one in which Rodgers had to play 65 percent of the snaps this season in order for the Packers to receive a first-round pick from New York in the 2024 NFL Draft. Well, with Rodgers's season now over, that's not happening.

If Rodgers had played the whole season, you had to figure the best-case scenario for the Green Bay Packers was probably a pick just inside the top 20. Maybe Rodgers would not quite do enough to help the Jets get into the playoffs again and the Packers would get the 18th or 19th overall pick, or something like that.

Worst-case scenario? Maybe the Jets make it into the AFC Championship game with Rodgers and send the Packers a pick 29th or later. At any rate, the Packers are now looking at a dropoff of probably at least 10-15 spots with the pick they get from the Jets in 2024 from the Aaron Rodgers trade.

It's a luxury to have that extra pick, sure, but you undoubtedly would have loved to see what Brian Gutekunst could do with an additional first-round pick. Now, the new best-case scenario for the Packers with that pick is that the Jets lose a lot of games with Zach Wilson at QB, and find a way to be picking within the top 10 of round two. That would set Green Bay up with another piece of pretty prime NFL Draft real estate.

With the second-round pick coming from the Jets, the Packers will have had additional picks in either the first or second round every year from 2022-2024. As of right now, it looks like Green Bay has been batting 1.000 on those selections, which is why we saw such an awesome performance from this team in Week 1, and why the Packers could be surprisingly good (to many) not only this year but going forward.