DISCLOSURE: The author of this post hates Aaron Rodgers and would like to see him fail.
Despite everything Aaron Rodgers has done to America, his trade to the New York Jets last month has resulted in an undeserved PR makeover. This was predictable, of course. Like his predecessor in Green Bay (and New York!) Brett Favre, the NFL ecosystem will do everything in its power to give this pile of shit the benefit of the doubt, all because he’s a brand name.
Hey, Robert Saleh, is Aaron Rodgers like a kid out there?
Coach Robert Saleh said Rodgers is "still a kid in an old man's body. He's having a blast."
Very cool. Does Rodgers make the Jets ELITE?
“In my opinion, I think 32 coaches stand in front of their teams every year and talk about winning a championship,” Saleh said. “Realistically, there’s maybe six or eight teams that have an actual chance to do it and I do think we are one of those teams.
JUST LIKE THE KNICKS THIS SEASON!
AARON RODGERS IN THE HOUSE FOR KNICKS-HEAT 🔥 pic.twitter.com/Tql5XMlhu1
— 98.7FM ESPN New York (@ESPNNY98_7FM) April 30, 2023
Freed from the icy fishbowl that is Green Bay, Rodgers is now living his best life in the tri-state. He is but a kid, and New Jersey his playground. According to ESPN's Rich Cimini, Rodgers is “excited” to go to the Jets facility every day, loves to attend meetings (which would be a first), and is actually teaching his young receivers his arcane shadow-puppet codes instead of demanding they learn his obscure language via ESP.
He’s also discovered that the state of New Jersey is, in fact, a real place.
He said he likes New Jersey. Before the trade, he associated the state with the old TV show "Jersey Shore." He has since been assured the show, "is not a proper representation of this great state."
I can’t believe a scripted reality show that debuted 14 years ago turned out to be an inaccurate, or at least incomplete, portrayal of an entire state. What other truths have the TV mind-virus casketeers been hiding from us? Who will break the news to him that the rest of the state's populace doesn't consist of mob bosses with anxiety disorders and narcissistic mothers?
Like I said, all of this was predictable. “X player is a whole new man in X city!” is as hackneyed an offseason narrative as “Injury-prone flop feels healthier than he ever has!” Rodgers was always going to get a honeymoon phase with the Jets, because that’s what the news cycle demands and what eternally hard-up Jets fans need to hear. But this honeymoon also has a very good chance of being the BEST phase of his Jets tenure, because what is equally predictable in the coming months is another phase, in which Rodgers loses games, points fingers, disregards playcalls, and announces his presidential candidacy on Twitter Spaces.
Oh, and you can bet he’ll find an injury to blame for all of that. Perhaps he already has. You may know Rodgers from such lingering ailments as COVID Toe and the dreaded “avulsion fracture.” These kinds of injuries are what excused Rodgers from offseason activities with the Packers throughout his tenure in Green Bay, and from a shitload of in-season practices as well. But things are different with the Jets, right? Rodgers actually did show up for voluntary team activities, after all… and then he tweaked his calf fucking around with a medicine ball.
“I haven’t done it before,” Rodgers said of the pre-practice routines the Jets use. “I haven’t done it in 18 years. So but obviously there’s some science behind it.”
Fucking science. What has science ever done but hurt us?
Rodgers has only missed one game since 2017—due to contracting COVID—but he has always kept an injury in his pocket throughout that run. When you’re a QB of his stature, you can use that injury to both burnish your toughness cred by playing through it (Cris Collinsworth always falls for this) and to explain away your fuckups. So while it’s only May, and while nothing you hear this month will mean much of anything once September comes around, you WILL hear about that calf again. It’s an injury that will metastasize, eventually blocking out the title hopes, the easy commute, and all the Aw shucks you mean Snooki isn’t the governor of this place? storylines that are primed to spoil this man rotten. This, along with the jersey sales and preseason hype and all-too-brief forgetting of the decades of futility, is what the New York Jets signed up for.
