Woody Paige: Broncos need to make offer for Aaron Rodgers the Packers can’t refuse

So, you and the Broncos want Aaron Rodgers.

Then, George Paton should go all Don Vito Corleone on the Packers and make an offer they can’t refuse.

It doesn’t involve a severed horse head.

And it can’t happen before June 1.

First, the Pack will try to move heaven and earth and every bit of cheese produced annually in Wisconsin (2 billion pounds) in order not to move the league’s Most Valuable Player.

Rodgers desires to get away from the Packers and out of Green Bay after 16 regular seasons, 197 games, 51,245 passing yards and one Super Bowl victory. He feels aggrieved, angry and affronted — primarily because the Packers drafted a quarterback, and not a wide receiver, in the first round in 2020 to replace him soon.

The Rodgers matter has a rather familiar feel in Colorado.

In 1992 Broncos’ coach Dan Reeves used the 25th pick overall to select UCLA quarterback Tommy Maddox.

The Broncos already had a quarterback — John Elway, who was about to play his ninth season, had led the Broncos to three Super Bowls and was only 32. Elway was furious that Reeves had tried to trade him the year before, and the man he despised did not draft wide receiver Carl Pickens, who would play in the league for nine seasons and catch 63 touchdown passes.

Maddox spent two seasons in Denver and was 0-4 in starts when Elway couldn’t play because of injury.

Elway desperately sought to go somewhere else, but owner Pat Bowlen placated the QB by firing Reeves after the ’92 season and getting rid of Maddox.

In 2012 the Colts dumped Peyton Manning, who had undergone four neck surgeries and missed all of the previous season, because they would draft his successor — Andrew Luck. Manning came to the Broncos.

Following the Elway and Manning messes and miscalculations, the two veteran quarterbacks would play in four more Super Bowls and win three. They are Hall of Famers; Maddox and Luck will not be.

The Broncos have reached eight Super Bowls with Elway, Manning and Craig Morton, a veteran obtained for a bag of rocks. They have not advanced to the Super Bowl with 50 other quarterbacks.

The Broncos most likely would get back to the Super Bowl with Rodgers. They probably won’t with Drew Lock and/or Teddy Bridgewater.

Rodgers picked San Francisco, Las Vegas and Denver as his three most preferred destinations.

There was an oddity about his intentions, though. He said he wanted to return to the West Coast where he was born, raised and played college football. Aaron is geographically challenged. Neither Vegas nor Denver is located on the West Coast.

But, to Rodgers, both are close enough to the coast and his fiancée, and sufficiently far away from Green Bay and its general manager.

The Packers don’t want Rodgers to leave under any conditions, but they certainly won’t deal him in the next month, considering they would be plagued with a $38 million dead-cap hit. If he is dealt after June 1, the dead cap is split over two seasons.

Rodgers can play or pay $30 million of bonus money back to the Packers if he retires or sits out. The Packers can beg him to return, or they can trade him.

Which is why the Broncos enter the fray. The 49ers are done here with the drafting of Trey Lance. The Packers undoubtedly wouldn’t trade Rodgers within the division or, highly improbable, to another NFC team.

The options realistically are reduced to the Washington Football Team in the NFC, the Dolphins, the Titans, the Texans, the Raiders and, voila, the Broncos.

Paton could propose that the Broncos receive Rodgers in return for 2021 first-round draft choice Patrick Surtain II, their 2022 and 2023 first-round draft choices, Bridgewater or Lock, edge rusher Bradley Chubb, who has a guarantee for his fifth season and a wide receiver not named Sutton, Jeudy or Hamler.

The Broncos acquired John Elway in 1983 from the Baltimore Colts for ’83 first-round pick Chris Hinton, quarterback Mark Hermann, a first-round pick in 1984 and revenues from two future exhibitions in Denver.

Elway was a heist for the Broncos. Rodgers would be a steal.

And the Packers couldn’t refuse the offer, could they, Marlon Brando?