When he finally broke his silence on Thursday, Aaron Rodgers said plenty. And there’s still plenty to say about what he said.
Let’s focus on his decision to fly to New Jersey for a meeting with new Jets coach Aaron Glenn. When he left California for his cross-country on-my-own-dime trek, what did he really expect?
He’d been needling owner Woody Johnson, for weeks. Rodgers had said plenty of things about the organization’s culture, especially as it relates to “chickenshit” leaks and Johnson’s failure to give public support to the coach and G.M.
Rodgers is also smart enough (or at least he should be) to know that, with Johnson hiring a Bill Parcells disciple to be the head coach, things were going to be very different. No more tiptoeing around a delicate genius. It’s football and it’s team and the coach always outranks the quarterback, and every other player.
So either Rodgers went there to provoke an inevitable showdown (about which he could complain later) or to persuade them to give him a chance. And they sort of did. When Glenn asked if he wants to play football, he didn’t say, “Hell yes!” He said, “Yeah, I’m interested.” (Which sounds eerily similar to, “Yeah, I’ve been immunized.”)
Wrong answer, Aaron. They already had concerns. They already had reservations. They already were ambivalent at best about keeping the player whose acquisition became the first domino in the chain of events that got coach Robert Saleh and G.M. Joe Douglas fired.
Rodgers bristled at the idea that the Jets didn’t want him to exert his influence in a way that made the new regime look bad. And, by mounting his McAfee bully pulpit to vent about the Jets, it’s exactly what he did. He called the Jets “already a debacle, in some cases.” So why in the hell was he “interested” in playing there?
He knew, or should have known, what they were going to say. He could have asked them before he got on the plane whether he was wasting his time.
If he’s as smart as he claims to be, he knew what was happening. And it’s fair to wonder whether he went there specifically to let it happen, so that he could then paint himself as a victim after the fact.
On Thursday, Rodgers proved the Jets right in their decision to tell him they were moving on. And he gave any other interested team a clear warning: He’s gonna get you next.
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