Tuesday can’t get here soon enough.
That’s when Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers will speak to Pat McAfee and A.J. Hawk, barring a change in Rodgers’s regular schedule. With no Rodgers appearance on the bye-week Tuesday, when the Jets fired G.M. Joe Douglas, there will be much to discuss when Rodgers next discusses all things Jets.
Until then, the pot will be stirred by unnamed sources. And with Jets sources leaking nuggets like owner Woody Johnson suggested benching Rodgers and a growing sense that the Jets don’t and won’t want Rodgers back next year, Rodgers (or someone close to him) is pushing back. On Saturday, a report emerged that, while Rodgers wants to play in 2025, he doesn’t want to play for the Jets.
At the bottom of an article from Ian Rapoport of NFL Media resides another piece of news aimed at boosting the perception of Rodgers’s remaining abilities.
The suggested narrative is that he’s not struggling because he’s lost his high-end skills. He’s struggling because he’s more injured than anyone realizes.
“As for Rodgers, he’s been banged up this season, fighting hamstring, knee and ankle injuries while being off and on the injury report,” Rapoport writes. “How injured is he? It’s unclear. . . . One source explained that Rodgers has resisted getting scans done, not wanting to reveal the severity of his injuries out of fear of having to come off the field. He has insisted that he keep playing.”
Rapoport notes that Rodgers suffered a hamstring injury in Week 4 against the Broncos. (Coincidentally or not, that’s the game that sparked the meeting at which Johnson suggested sending Rodgers’s hamstring — and the rest of him — to the sideline.) The current narrative is that he hamstring injury “was believed to be a particularly significant one”; however, Rodgers did not appear on the Week 5 report with a hamstring problem. (The hamstring eventually was disclosed prior to Week 8.)
This leak seems to be aimed at creating the impression that Rodgers still has it, despite all indications to the contrary. Also, the report could be laying the foundation for Rodgers to tap out at some point between now and Week 18, citing his cocktail of chronic injuries.
And now we play the waiting game until Tuesday with McAfee and Hawk and Wednesday with the New York media. Will Rodgers downplay the situation? Or will he unload the way he did in July 2021 with the Packers?
Our guess is the former. Rodgers needs to attract a new team next year. Taking a public dump on his current employer could make prospective employers shy away from eventually being the target of his ire.