It’s January, the Green Bay Packers season is done and Aaron Rodgers isn’t sure if he has played his last snap as a member of the team. And like it was after the last two seasons, the drama surrounding his decision will take center stage until that unknown is resolved.

Rodgers threw gasoline on that drama Tuesday when he made his normal appearance on the Pat McAfee Show and the topic of potentially playing somewhere else was raised by former teammate AJ Hawk. With the quarterback coming off the worst season of his career statistically, some have made comments that his best football is behind him. He referenced the 2019 season when he was playing in a new offense for the first time in his career and didn’t play well only to turn around and be named MVP the next two seasons.

“Do I think I can still play? Of course. Can I play at a high level? Yeah, the highest. I think I can win MVP again in the right situation,” Rodgers said. “Right situation, is that Green Bay or somewhere else? I’m not sure. I don’t think you should shutdown any opportunity. Like I said during the season, it has to be both sides like actually wanting to work together moving forward and I think there are more conversations to be had.”

Following Green Bay’s season-ending loss to Detroit in Week 18, Rodgers stayed around to have talks with members of the Packers front office, including GM Brian Gutekunst and head coach Matt LaFleur. While LaFleur made clear he wanted Rodgers back, Gutekunst was a little more tepid in his comments during his press conference last Friday.

“Like I said during the bye week, I want all these guys back. That’s part of that,” Gutekunst said. “He’s certainly going to take some time and that’s fair. As we work through this, as he takes his time and kind of makes his decision on his playing career just in general, then we’ll get together and move forward that way.”

The Packers are in a different spot this season than they were a year ago when Rodgers decided to return and signed a massive contract that made him the highest-paid player in the NFL. They pushed a lot of tough decisions down the road to get under the salary cap and try to make another run for a title. That didn’t happen and now quite a few familiar faces could be on their way out, including some of Rodgers’ best friends like wide receiver Randall Cobb, tight end Marcedes Lewis and kicker Mason Crosby. Other important pieces like wide receiver Allen Lazard, tight end Robert Tonyan and safety Adrian Amos are unrestricted free agents, while tackle David Bakhtiari could be asked to take a pay cut to stay around.

“I think no player wants to be part of any type of rebuild. I said that years ago. Reloads are a lot of fun because you feel like you’re close, you’re only a couple guys away,” Rodgers said. “This game is about relationships. It’s about the guys you rely on, even if they don’t maybe show up huge in the stat book.

“There’s a lot of interesting names that we’ll see (the Packers) desire to re-sign these certain guys who are glue guys in the locker room. Will be interesting conversations to be had.”

Rodgers made clear later in the interview that if the Packers do go into rebuild mode, he won’t be a part of it. If that’s the route they go, and decide to turn the team over to Jordan Love, that would force the team to find a trade partner for the 39-year-old and one where he wants to actually go. The impact of the dead money on the salary cap would be significant but manageable based on the way the contract was written. But all of that is down the road. For now, everyone waits for Rodgers to make a decision, something he’s not ready to do.

“I still need to mentally get to a point where I feel 100% locked in and ready to play a 19th season,” Rodgers said. “And if I do, then we’ll rock-and-roll and we’ll figure that out. If I don’t, we’ll going into the jungles for a while.”