INDIANAPOLIS — You can practically hear Aaron Rodgers champing at the bit to repeat Tom Brady’s infamous line a few years from now.
Appearing on an episode of HBO’s “The Shop” in the summer of 2021, Brady incredulously recalled his reaction to how few teams pursued him in 2020 free agency and how one unidentified team in particular dropped out at the end rather than change quarterbacks: “You’re sticking with that motherf—er?”
Rodgers isn’t a free agent, but his future — specifically his trade market if the Packers go in that direction — is a popular talking point at the NFL Combine, whether at the podiums or in the corners of hotels and restaurants where business gets done among coaches, executives and agents.
So, what better way than Rodgers to lead off a list of five things Post Sports+ learned while jumping into some of those conversations over the first four days of the league’s offseason meeting headquarters?
1. The league is about to make the same mistake with Rodgers that it made with Brady, who found only the Buccaneers and Chargers seriously interested when he left the Patriots with six Super Bowl rings.
There should be a five-year ban on complaining about how hard it is to find a franchise quarterback for any pseudo-contender that elects not to upgrade to the four-time MVP Rodgers, especially after watching Brady take the Buccaneers from a decade-long playoff drought to a championship in Year 1.
If the Raiders are not interested, as reported by The Athletic, Rodgers’ trade market might be just the Jets.
“It’s not completely apples-to-apples,” said one executive whose team does not need a quarterback. “You have to trade draft picks and pay a ton to Rodgers. Tom was a free agent. And you never doubted Tom’s commitment. There’s concern that you could make a trade for one year of Aaron, and then what? He retires in his next game of ‘will-he or won’t-he’ after the season — just like Brett Favre did to the Jets.”
Pieces of the puzzle later suggested Brady’s “mother—-er” comment was likely directed at the Dolphins and Ryan Fitzpatrick. Who might get the scorched-earth treatment if everything breaks in the direction that Rodgers wins big with the Jets and gets the last laugh?
“The Titans, Dolphins, Colts, Patriots and Steelers all have teams good enough that Rodgers would push them into contention,” one coach said, suggesting upgrades over Ryan Tannehill, Tua Tagovailoa, Matt Ryan, Mac Jones and Kenny Pickett, respectively. “And that’s just in the AFC, assuming the Packers want him out of the NFC.”
2. It’s a popular opinion that Jonathan Gannon inherited the most difficult job of the five head coaches hired this offseason. That’s an ominous sign for the Cardinals, who also started fresh with general manager Monti Ossenfort.
Most of the doubt is linked to quarterback Kyler Murray for three reasons.
First, he is signed to a five-year, $230 million contract that does not equate to his true value.
Second, he could miss the start of the season recovering from a torn ACL.
Third, according to one rival coach, “the last staff felt it had a hard time getting through to him about things that would make his job easier on the field and things that would make him more like ‘one of the guys’ with his teammates.”
3. The draft-eligible quarterbacks speak to the media Friday and take the field Saturday. All eyes will be on Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud, Kentucky’s Will Levis and Florida’s Anthony Richardson, with Alabama’s Bryce Young opting not to throw.
“Young is ready to play right now,” one scout said. “The best overall quarterback for the future is Levis.”
Levis checks all the prototypical size boxes, but he took a step back last season during since-fired Rich Scangarello’s one year as the Wildcats’ offensive coordinator.
“If you watch 2021 tape,” the source said, “he’s the best quarterback in this draft.”
4. Where will the Giants spend their free-agent money? With an underwhelming class of receivers, one place to turn is inside linebacker, according to league sources. The Giants finished last season starting in-season additions Jaylon Smith and Jarrad Davis.
The most obvious target given familiarity to general manager Joe Schoen, head coach Brian Daboll and inside linebackers coach John Egorugwu is Bills free agent Tremaine Edmunds.
But a name to keep an eye on is familiar for a different reason: T.J. Edwards of the rival Eagles is thought to be in the Giants’ sights.
5. With fewer dynamic receivers than normal atop the draft, some needy team is going to overpay a free agent and send shock waves through free agency, similar to when the Jaguars inked Christian Kirk in 2022.
Kirk’s four-year, $72 million deal — the same as what the Giants gave to bust Kenny Golladay one year earlier — surprisingly worked out as he set career highs with 84 catches for 1,108 yards and eight touchdowns.
Who could be this year’s overpay? Two agents who represent NFL receivers both agreed: The Lions’ D.J. Chark because of his deep-threat speed. Chark signed a one-year, $10 million contract last offseason.
Today’s back page
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Kane’s Broadway debut
The curtain rises, the lights come up. The crowd roars. The star takes the stage…
…and then the Rangers lose Patrick Kane’s gala debut on the Broadway marquee, 5-3 to the Senators, for their fifth loss in seven games in an odd stretch before the NHL trade deadline.
Such was the letdown Thursday night at the Garden, when the fanfare surrounding the arrival of a future Hall of Famer in Kane — “It’s an amazing place to play. They have great fans. It was a great reception,” Kane said afterward — didn’t match what actually happened on the ice.
Oh well. As The Post’s Larry Brooks described it: “It seemed as if Kane was coloring by numbers, not playing by instinct, and those colors were foreign to the 34-year-old winger who’d suited up in Chicago red, black and white for the first 1,161 regular-season games and all 136 playoff games of his career.”
So when will we see the full, colorful expression of this reimagined Rangers squad loaded with superstars? They visit Boston on Saturday to face the Bruins — generationally good, winners of nine in a row — before a break of four days and then a trip to Montreal next Thursday.
“Probably a week’s time when you get by all the trades and you just have your team,” Rangers coach Gerard Gallant said. “Every team is going through it, you’re getting different players in and out of your lineup. You’re trying to make everything work perfectly, and it doesn’t work perfectly every time. Two weeks’ time, you’ll look back and say, ‘There was a lot of stuff happening.’”
— Jonathan Lehman
Numbers of reasons to enjoy the Knicks
The conversations are happening around whatever passes for a water cooler these days:
“Hey, the Knicks are good.”
“The Knicks are really good.”
“The Knicks couldn’t … could they?”
No, no, you mumble. Then you look away, you blush, you turn off the camera on Zoom.
It’s the kind of wonder provided by a team that’s going weeks at a time without losing, that’s climbing up the Eastern Conference standings, that’s playing an uplifting, high-energy brand of basketball. To a fan base that’s starved for a team capable of making a run, any kind of run.
Peter Botte broke down the Knicks’ surge in this story: a 27-14 record since they switched up the rotation on Dec. 4, a stretch covering half the season in which they have put up the third-best offense and second-best net rating in the NBA. Look at these guys:
And it’s Brunson in the middle of it all. I saw a stat that said Brunson’s average of 29.1 points in his past 12 games — fun with arbitrary end points! — is the hottest 12-game stretch by a Knicks guard since Walt Frazier over 50 years ago.
So I went into the archives to find that Clyde heater. And here it is, spanning Dec. 23, 1971 to Jan. 16, 1972, on the Finals team before the last championship team. In those 12 games, Frazier averaged 29.6 points, shot 56.5 percent from the field on 19.3 shots per game, added 7.3 rebounds and 5.0 assists while playing 40.7 minutes a night. Also, the Knicks went 6-6 in that stretch.
“He’s super,” Al Attles said of Frazier in the Dec. 27, 1971 edition of The Post, in a story written by Leonard Lewin. “His shots are so straight they’re not even rippling the net. I looked up once in the first half and the net never moved.”
— Jonathan Lehman
Back in the day…at MIT
This weekend brings the return of the unofficial Super Bowl of nerd-dom: the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.
Now in its 17th year, the two-day event, presented by the Sloan School of Management at MIT, is designed to bring together execs from professional teams, sports media companies and the sports industrial complex offshoots (i.e., advanced stats groups, health technology companies, etc.) and give them a forum to spout their wisdom, reveal their innovative research and drop a little insider gossip to a couple thousand business students and anyone else willing to fork over up to $1,000 a ticket.
For more than a decade I made the yearly pilgrimage to Boston in hopes of soaking up how teams were using analytics to optimize lineups, minimize draft mistakes and alter the way the games were played.
Not every panel of experts was illuminating, but I never came away having not learned something about how statistical research was giving some teams an advantage over the slower-evolving clubs and quickly reshaping my view on what makes a player valuable (think: blocking shots that stay inbounds and lead to a fast break the other way) or overrated (think: mid-range volume jump-shooters).
As the years moved along, and the conference kept growing to include more attendees and more fan-service companies (ticket brokers, gambling interests), I found myself taking fewer and fewer notes.
Sure, part of that was because of my relative lack of interest in the mechanics of how tiered pricing helps fill ballparks, but a bigger part was because of the dwindling information flow coming out of the conference. Where once the statheads were arguing that teams and leagues could be run more efficiently, they had gradually become the ones running those teams and leagues.
The more pockets where the statistical revolution was won, the less insight into the revolution conference attendees received. The outsiders had not just become insiders, but been co-opted by the philosophy that pervades pro sports management: Reveal enough to make it seem like you’re saying something without actually revealing anything meaningful.
Watch any GM at the NFL Draft Combine this week, and you’ll hear what I’m talking about: There are “opportunities” everywhere. We’re happy with the development of the guys on the roster, but you never want to close the door on improving. It’s all code.
It all sounds pleasant, like every stone is being turned over.
None of it leaves those hearing the words any wiser.
And look, I get it. If you are running a team and feel you have defensive analytics that your coaching staff can take advantage of, it would be malpractice to reveal the game plan in Week 2 was to take advantage of the opposing free safety whose reputation obscures his inability to tackle. But when people are paying hundreds of dollars to understand how modern front offices work, and how they can work in them, revealing the secret to executive success is “passion” is a ripoff.
Like so many front office types before them and the ones likely to come after, the stats generation treats C-suite info as if national security clearance is needed to be read into the briefing.
Why?
Because revealing the statistical deliberations that led a team to draft the right winger from Boston College would spark a month-long losing streak?
Please.
Somewhere we allowed coaches and general managers to get away with treating information about enterprises whose existence is largely the result of their fans to treat us like we’re not worthy of understanding how the sports world works, even though there are plenty of fans and business majors who navigate a lot more complicated work scenarios every day.
Does this mean we should stop watching or attending games or nerdy sports conferences?
No, and to be sure, the research presentations at the conference about how strategies are evolving in everything from the NFL Draft to soccer to chess offer a welcome look into what fans will be watching in the future.
But the tight lips elsewhere make it a lot harder to enjoy.
— Paul Forrester
Numbers of the day
3,667: Points scored by LSU’s Pete Maravich, still the NCAA men’s basketball all-time record
3,664: Points scored by Detroit Mercy’s Antoine Davis, who went into Thursday night’s Horizon League tournament game needing 26 to surpass Maravich, and finished with 22 on 7-of-26 shooting from the field, including a last-minute 3 to tie the record that rimmed out.