Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst didn’t mince words on Thursday when asked whether or not the team’s star running back, Aaron Jones, will spearhead the backfield next season.
Whatever heights the Packers ascend to—or the just-as-realistic lows into which they’ll descend—he expects the 29-year-old to be there, despite the speculation surrounding his future. The Packers essentially gutted the savvy portion of their roster last off-season, allowing their most experienced faces—from starters to role players alike—to walk out the door, from Allen Lazard, Adrian Amos and Marcedes Lewis to Aaron Rodgers, who was traded to the New York Jets after a 15-year stint as the team’s signal caller.
Even amid a youth movement, there weren’t any known plans to move on from Jones, and perhaps rightfully so. Despite being the third-oldest player on the roster behind Preston Smith (31) and De’Vondre Campbell (30), Jones’ best football may be ahead of him—especially if the momentum with which he closed out the 2023 campaign carries over into next season.
“Yeah, absolutely, we’d love to have Aaron Jones back, but we’re still kind of putting those things together as far as how we’re going to move forward,” said Gutekunst, “he was such a difference-maker when he was out there this year. The offense was able to move, the way he—he changed a lot of the way we operated when he was in there and when he was healthy.”
The Packers may have to rework Jones’ contract to comply with their salary cap, but that’s not exactly uncharted territory for them. They’ve revisited the structure of his deal multiple times already, most recently last off-season when they slashed his salary by roughly five million dollars.
Undersized at 5’9″ and 208 pounds, keeping Jones upright has always been at the forefront of the Packers’ priorities, even when Mike McCarthy, Matt LaFleur’s predecessor, was the head coach. His usage was somewhat limited in favor of Jamaal Williams, who was snagged off the board by the Packers 48 spots ahead of Jones in 2017.
There are times when that has even been the case a handful of years later. The Packers have allocated a bulk of Jones’ touches to AJ Dillon, a 2020 second-round pick from Boston College—deciding whether that’s due to draft status or a legitimate belief that an infusion of Dillon’s 247-pound frame was needed is a fool’s errand, but more often than not, the offense didn’t operate at a similar pace as it did with Jones. However, to keep Jones fresh, it was necessary.
