Rodgers Heals Up
It was performance art.
This whole thing was a masterpiece. Rodgers would feud with Green Bay for multiple offseasons until they finally got sick of him. His public heel turn after the media found out about his vax status when it backfired on him and exposed his lie. He made a giant final stink in Green Bay, forced the issue on McAfee’s show by announcing his intention to play for the Jets before any deal was done. The hype. The whole darkness retreat thing, which felt performative on his part. The trade, the Jets being on Hard Knocks, him actually going to training camp and actually playing in a preseason game, his small pay cut, and then it all culminated in the most hyped Monday Night Football game I’ve seen in ages. There he goes, running the goddamn flag out onto the field on fucking 9/11, a tragedy that, let me remind you, he has interesting thoughts about, and 4 snaps into his majestic season his ass gets sacked and we all watch his Achilles tendon rupture in slow motion. We are then treated to Zach Wilson for 60 minutes and Josh Allen shitting himself.
Performance art. One of the most incredible story arcs I’ve ever seen. Scrappy QB underdog to anointed savior, to a genius level player, to snakebitten playoff failure, to weirdo celebrity kook, to culture war subject, to crazy old man, to savior of the Jets in his swan song, to finding a way to make us all feel bad for him as he threw down the curtains on his career in 4 snaps, 5 snaps if you count the tendon. I have to applaud. It’s a masterpiece. Aaron Rodgers is a storyteller. One of the greats. If this is the end, I’ll miss him.
His story now could go in a number of directions but there is a very distinct possibility that him running onto the field with the flag before the game is the last real image we ever get of Rodgers on a football field as a player. It’s almost sad to watch the footage now, as he runs the field, hands the flag off, and does a cool handshake with Sauce. We know this is moments before disaster now, but Rodgers in that footage does not. Sauce does not. His teammates and coaches do not. America does not. Instead of hype the footage becomes almost haunting, like the final clips at the end of a biopic movie where they show a character doing something happy before they run the title card that explains they died of cancer two weeks later.
An Achilles tear is no joke. It has a high probability of sidelining even promising young careers and derail stars for a time. Modern sports science has made great advancements but these things still cause careers to end. Rodgers is a couple of months from 40. Even if his contract with the Jets is for two seasons this might just be the end of it. I was genuinely interested to watch the Jets this season. I wanted to see how this idea worked out. I actually thought it would work. The Jets built a respectable roster these past two years except for QB, Getting a guy in there who is one of the greatest to ever play the position seemed like a better plan than, I dunno, trying out Jimmy Garoppolo. Worked for the Bucs two years ago. I guess the Jets forgot to build any of that respectable roster along the offensive line. Whelp.
Was I rooting for Rodgers to fail this year? Yeah, mostly because that would have been really funny after all the hype. What I definitely didn’t want was this. This sucks. We couldn’t even get one game from him before it was all over. I wanted to see what he could do. I wanted to see how he handled the NY media when shit got bad. I wanted to see how it would implode if it did. We were robbed of all of that. Now the Jets are in limbo, the same place they were last year, and I have to resort to hoping they sign Carson Wentz so I can start laughing again.
I’ve been thinking about Rodgers a lot these past few months and I don’t think I hate him. Sure I think he’s fucking kooky, but I don’t think he’s necessarily a bad person. Just a fool and stupid in some respects. He’s not Deshaun Watson, a man deserving of scorn and hate, he’s mostly just a weirdo you don’t agree with on many things but you don’t hate and don’t really want to talk to about anything beyond certain subjects. Like your co-worker who has crystals on their desk and says they can’t date anyone who is a Libra but is also generally fine and you can have a good conversation with them about food or music taste. The weird shit will creep into the conversation at times, but you just brush past it and swiftly keep the subject on track and everything’s fine or find a good bailout.
It’s his weirdness that makes him the perfect kind of character for the league that we will miss when he’s gone. Good at football, quirky and egotistical enough to mock, but not vile enough to truly loathe. An ideal heel that makes for a great boo. If I had a chance to hang out with any NFL QB for a night, I would seriously consider Aaron Rodgers as my pick. I think doing weird drugs with Rodgers and listening to him spout wild conspiracy shit would be an incredible roller coaster of an experience and I’d come out of that night with some impeccable stories. At the very least, he makes for great comic fodder and the new batch of QBs isn’t very interesting so I hope he can stick around for a bit for the sake of good material.
I resent the implication that Joe Burrow isn’t interesting. (He’s actually got some surprisingly good politics)
I think as these guys age we’ll learn more about them and they will get richer and weirder. Sure, Mahomes may seem pretty boring now, but *Millionaire* Mahomes could end up really weird and fun. Think about how much weirder Millionaire Rivers was than rookie Rivers.
Joe Burrow comes off like a prototype-type 21st Century Republican. Open to new ideas and changing thing up, but still enough of a country boy at heart to resist throwing everything against a wall and seeing what sticks.
But yeah, right now, he can easily be a Representative from OH-12 (East Central Ohio including his hometown) or even a Senator from Ohio or Louisiana if he wishes.
The prototype 21st-century Republican is a coal-rolling, book-banning, January 6th-supporting Trump voter.
Yeah, granted I don’t know the guy and he seems pretty private, but Burrow seems pretty far off from 21st century Republican.
He looks just like Favre with that beard
Can’t wait until he gets caught defrauding the California welfare program.
“4 snaps, 5 snaps if you count the tendon.”
Dave woke up and chose violence this morning.
I nearly spit out my coffee on that line. Ace writing Dave
To be fair, and this is nothing against Dave’s writing, but I’ve heard that joke twice in the last 24 hours from different sources, this comic is the third. I can’t say if Dave came up with it independently or not, but it’s been making the rounds. Still great for a chortle, though.
I was thinking along those lines by the end of the 1st paragraph, so seeing that written in the 2nd one felt like “I’m glad I’m not the only one”
I agree with your views of Rodgers. He’s in between Brady, a confident-good player, and Watson, a complete monster. He’s just an idiot, and unfortunately in today’s world, the idiots have the microphone.
Not saying I didn’t enjoy watching him get hurt though, because that would be wrong.
“he threw down the curtains on his career in 4 snaps, 5 snaps if you count the tendon” – epic writing!
The fact that Rodgers tore his achilles on 9/11 and his backup is the nephew of the CEO of JetBlue is something the writers of Arrested Development would come up with.
What does Zach Wilson’s investment portfolio look like? Did he order any put options on Rodgers’ heel in the days prior?
It’s okay I did my own research and it turns out the human body doesn’t actually need an Achilles Tendon.
We all saw it coming, we all heard the music from Raging Bull in the distance, getting louder on each down, but the freude is still utterly schaden. You could get Matt Mercer, Aabria Iyengar, Matt Colville, Mark Hulmes, Chris Perkins and Brennan Lee Mulligan to collaborate on an RPG campaign, and they couldn’t come up with anything close to this.
Rodgers is done. He’s got to be at nigh-on 40. Marino managed to make it back at just shy of 33, but he couldn’t run much anyway.
And Dave?
You need a Webby for “…5 snaps if you count the tendon” on its own.
I totally agree with this take on Rodgers. He’s kind of an anti-hero QB for the league. He’s fueled entirely by spite, which is what makes it so entertaining that he’s come up short repeatedly since 2010. He has a strong personality which makes him interesting, both for better and for worse. I go back and forth between wanting him to succeed and wanting him to fail.
Also I’m a 49ers fan, so I have core memories set aside for each of the four times we knocked him out of the playoffs.
Wake up, Sheeple!
We all know the Jets’ field can’t melt tendons! This was an inside job!
You should read up on that…
The only thing more remarkable would be if Fitzpatrick was his backup.
I enjoyed watching Rodgers troll people until his anti-science views were getting in the way of rational discussion, but even that doesn’t put him in the same category as Watson.
It’s mostly disappointing that none of the veteran options out there have the ability to keep the Jets Chaometer chugging along on either the chaos or fun to watch axes. It’ll never happen, but my Chaometer selection would be Kaep, who is almost 5 years younger than Rodgers.
I can’t imagine this is the last we’ve heard of Rodgers. Even if he retires as QB, I think he loves people listening to him too much to stop talking.
And not just getting in the way of rational discussion, but for those of us more vulnerable to the impact of Covid, it literally made life more dangerous. Especially if you happen to live in Wisconsin, where it had a direct influence on the people around you and whether or not they were willing to take precautions as a result of what was said by a local celebrity who postures himself as a deep thinker.
It’s been a sucky last 3+ years for a lot of reasons. Not trying to overdramatic, but Aaron Rodgers literally helped actively make it worse for me – both in terms of anxiety over what Covid could do to me, and what it meant my lifestyle looked like during this time as a result of all the preventative actions people *didn’t* take. Others had it worse than me in this regards, so I’m angry on their behalf too.
I moved here in late 2019, but had rooted for him and the Packers from afar before. I loved watching him play, and he seemed interesting off the field. If you didn’t have these risks yourself, I totally agree that he still seems like he’d be an interesting hang, and even amusing to listen to on some of his kooky beliefs.
I don’t begrudge anyone who had the average person’s experience with Covid for thinking differently than me on him. Just providing a different perspective on it.
>If I had a chance to hang out with any NFL QB for a night, I would seriously consider Aaron Rodgers as my pick.
We already know you’d choose Eli, and you’d buy a box of rocket pops for the occasion.
Chaos and “full-circle”ism would be him redefining the time table of an Achilles injury like AP did with ACLs, then joining the Vikings after a forgettable run with the Jets