Packers Worst Training Camp Disasters Since 2005

3. Brett Favre Comes Back, The Packers Trade Him Anyway, 2008

Brett Favre retired in March 2008 after 17 seasons as the Packers’ starter, a Hall of Fame career, and — from the franchise’s perspective — a clearly declining last few years in terms of playoff success. The Packers had Aaron Rodgers waiting, drafted three years earlier specifically for this transition. General manager Ted Thompson was ready to move forward.

Favre changed his mind. He began making calls in April, asked for his unconditional release by July, and when the Packers refused — they had no interest in him going to a division rival — he actually reported to training camp.

The situation of a legend showing up to compete for a job the franchise had already decided was no longer his created a level of dysfunction that Lambeau Field had not seen in the modern era. Favre’s presence in camp was impossible to manage: the media circus was enormous, Rodgers couldn’t function normally in a situation where the team’s greatest player was technically still competing for his starting position, and the fans were divided in a way that split the fanbase openly.

The Packers traded Favre to the Jets within days of his camp arrival. Favre threw 22 interceptions in New York, led the NFL in picks, and the Jets missed the playoffs. Green Bay went 6-10. Both moves were disasters. Only one happened at camp.

2. The Vaccine and the Vanishing, 2021

This one requires both acts to understand the full scope of the disaster.

Act one happened in the spring. Aaron Rodgers skipped all of Green Bay’s voluntary workouts, then the mandatory minicamp in June, making his holdout official. The reigning MVP was furious with general manager Brian Gutekunst — not over money, but over his exclusion from conversations about roster construction and his future with the franchise.

He had considered retirement as a means of forcing a trade rather than pay the $50,000-per-day fines for missing camp. He showed up on July 27 with a deal restructured around concessions from the front office, telling reporters that some issues remained “unresolved.” Camp proceeded with a grudging peace.

Act two came in November. Rodgers tested positive for COVID-19 and was forced to miss a game against the Chiefs. It immediately emerged that when he had told a reporter at training camp “Yeah, I’ve been immunized” — an answer widely interpreted as confirmation that he was vaccinated — he had not received any of the NFL-approved vaccines. He had pursued an alternative homeopathic treatment and appealed to the league to have it count. It did not.

His treatment plan after testing positive reportedly included consultations with podcaster Joe Rogan and a course of ivermectin. Rodgers later said he regretted the “immunized” comment, calling it a reference to his ongoing appeal rather than an intentional deception. The public did not make that distinction. In one summer, Rodgers had managed to become the face of both the NFL’s labor standoff and its vaccine controversy simultaneously.

1. Green Bay’s First Camp Without Rodgers, 2023

The 2021 holdout resolved. The 2022 season collapsed. By March 2023, Rodgers had publicly announced his intention to join the Jets, and the trade was officially completed in April — three months before training camp opened.

The departure drama played out in the offseason. What training camp revealed was what that departure actually looked like in practice: Green Bay in July 2023, opening its first camp since 2005 without Aaron Rodgers as the starting quarterback — and arguably the first since Favre’s departure without a proven franchise QB on the roster.

Jordan Love was now the starter by necessity rather than design, elevated after three years of holding a clipboard. The Packers’ offense had been stripped of Adams in 2022 and now of Rodgers entirely. Attendance at camp was notable but subdued.

The summer had a transitional feeling that bordered on the uncomfortable — a franchise navigating what it meant to exist without the quarterback identity it had held for three decades. That Love turned out to be genuinely good is a footnote to the camp itself. The 2023 training camp in Green Bay was the end of the Rodgers era, felt in real time, with no certainty about what came next.

What came next — Rodgers joining the Jets, tearing his Achilles on the fourth play of Monday Night Football, and missing the entire 2023 season — belonged to a different disaster list entirely.

All incidents verified through contemporaneous reporting. Stats accurate per Pro Football Reference and NFL historical records.