If Aaron Rodgers is "frustrated" over his lack of input in Green Bay, that's not what new general manager Brian Gutekunst had in mind.
Amid reports that Rodgers, the team's star quarterback, felt burned by the club moving on from wideout Jordy Nelson and quarterbacks coach Alex Van Pelt, Gutekunst pointed to an open-door policy in the front office.
"To be honest with you, I've been kind of all consumed with the draft, so I haven't had, really, hardly any discussions with our players since we kind of started," Gutekunst said Monday, per ESPN's Rob Demovsky. "I welcome them, but as far as -- I've certainly seen what's been reported. Nobody has voiced any frustrations to me or anything like that. I always want to listen to any of our players, our coaches, our scouts."
A writeup last week by Charles Robinson of Yahoo! Sports noted that Rodgers desired more input into major personnel decisions, but the quarterback later went out of his way to quell the drama, by saying: "I know my role, and that's to play as well as I possibly can at quarterback."
Gutekunst on Monday refused to rock the boat, talking about his first offseason in the role as a group effort in Green Bay.
"Ultimately, at the end of the day, it's my job to do the task at hand, which is make decisions for the Green Bay Packers on our roster," Gutekunst said. "But I've always felt like I was a good listener. I've been listening a lot the last couple weeks and will continue to do so."
Ben Roethlisberger is another example of an enduring starting passer who was openly miffed to see some of his teammates and coaches -- Bruce Arians, for example -- jettisoned from Pittsburgh without his buy-in. It's part of the job for these longtime blue-chip signal-callers.
Rodgers is at the point in his career where he's outliving some of his best friends on the roster, but that's the cost of being the guy they build around versus the guy they ship into oblivion.
