Just Shut Up, Aaron Rodgers

Just Shut Up, Aaron Rodgers

GuyWhoLikesSport

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On Sunday Night Football this week, Aaron Rodgers told the broadcast that his “goal” is to return from the torn Achilles that he suffered in week 1 of this season by mid-December.

If he actually tore his Achilles on September 12, that’s impossible.

Especially for a 40-year-old quarterback who would be playing behind one of the worst offensive lines in the NFL, at a time when offensive line play is at an all-time nadir.

But this is more Aaron Rodgers making it about Aaron Rodgers. The language of it being his “goal” is perfectly non-committal, giving himself enough room to wriggle out of it, if and when he doesn’t make it back.

Where have I heard that before? Oh, that’s right, when he told us he was “immunized”.

Aaron Rodgers, with his obfuscation and vagueness, would make a tremendous politician.

As you can probably tell, this is not going to be a super generous column toward Rodgers, so I’ll get to some compliments.

As a player, he’s maybe the most talented quarterback we have ever seen.

It’s between him, Mahomes, and John Elway. He has a freaky release, incredible arm strength, mobility that has waned but has remained good enough, and an exceptional football IQ.

His throw to Jared Cook against Dallas in the 2017 Divisional Round is probably the best throw I have ever seen.

 

In fact, he has a catalogue of the best throws I’ve ever seen: the Hail Marys against Arizona and Detroit, the one that was called back against the Bears in 2014 and the skinny post to Greg Jennings in the Super Bowl that helped set up the game-sealing Super Bowl to name but a few.

He is one of the most dominant regular season quarterbacks ever, with 4 MVP awards that include 2 of the greatest seasons a quarterback has ever played (2011 and 2014).

He has, however, just one Super Bowl victory and just one victory in five Championship Games.

He is a spotty playoff performer.

But that’s not even what I’m talking about here.

He is so annoying.

He’s not the worst person in the NFL – it’s hard to wrestle that title away from Tyreek Hill and Deshaun Watson – but he might be the most annoying.

He’s like Janice Soprano in the way that he can make anything that is happening about himself, from COVID-19 to the Packers’ drafting defensive players or Jordan Love in the first round.

Over the last decade, he has consistently made himself the story, blamed everyone but himself, and has become the worst exponent of the Joe Rogan-style faux-enlightened conspiratorial moron who thinks of himself as the only one who can see the wood from the trees.

He talks like a Byron Bay transplant who stands to inherit his family’s big tobacco fortune about his ayahuasca use and the “healing” that came from it, his time in a darkness retreat, or his challenging Travis Kelce and Fauci to a debate about vaccines.

He’s a bullshit artist.

The best examples are his various retirements from Green Bay.

Rodgers talked about retiring after crashing out the playoffs, usually unceremoniously, every year after 2020, the year that Green Bay drafted Jordan Love as the heir apparent.

Rodgers told us he didn’t want to be like Brett Favre then, with his cavalcade of fake retirements, he became a carbon copy.

My personal favourite was in 2021 when he talked about retiring to host Jeopardy!

Did anyone from Jeopardy ask? Irrelevant. Rodgers decided that everyone should be talking about Rodgers.

He usually fake retired to get more money out of Green Bay, or as a vessel to talk around his trite, non-specific grievances with the way Green Bay did business. Never mind the fact that they were a perennially good roster who always did well in regular seasons and had a quarterback who saved his worst football for the biggest moments.

We’re not talking Kevin Garnett is Minnesota here.

His complaints boiled down to wanting to be consulted on personnel decisions, which doesn’t happen anywhere in the NFL but especially not for quarterbacks who have only delivered one Super Bowl.

Really, what Rodgers wanted was control.

When he joined the Jets, they hired the offensive coordinator he wanted off the worst season of head coaching in NFL history (Nathaniel Hackett), signed moderately talented friends of Rodgers (Randall Cobb and Allen Lazard), and they lay at his feet after signing him.

To thank the Jets for bending to his every whim, Rodgers just handed them back $35m. The message was clear, “if you do exactly as I say, I’ll look after you.” Good organizations don’t do that. The Jets did.

But it’s not just the fake retirements or his enlightenment. It’s his smugness. He doesn’t smile, he smirks. His air is constant as if he knows something that you can’t comprehend.

He’s not some mysterious genius. He’s just a guy with a subscription to YouTube Premium. He’s like the guy that Will Hunting dresses down in the bar. Just regurgitates nonsense he saw online once. At least the ponytail guy was reading books.

No idea if Rodgers likes apples though. He’s probably worried about the pesticides.

Rodgers’ latest one about coming back in 4 months from a torn Achilles continues his fascination with making the story about himself. He makes sure the cameras can see him throwing the ball against the air pre-game, especially in prime time, so people start talking about whether he can really do it.

He can’t. If he does come back in December, he won’t tear his Achilles. Simple.

More likely, he doesn’t come back and then blames Jets doctors for not letting him back on the field. And it’ll be another offseason of Rodgers wondering aloud if he should retire to do some miscellaneous activity. Maybe The Chaser?

Who knows. But I’m dreading seeing what’s next.

 

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