By this point, you’ve probably heard the news that Aaron Rodgers is unlikely to return to the New York Jets next season.
What you might not have heard is that new head coach Aaron Glenn told Rodgers that if he wanted to play for Gang Green, he would need to ditch his popular, weekly appearance on ESPN’s Pat McAfee Show.
According to the Athletic’s Dianna Russini on her “Scoop City” podcast, the Jets previously told Rodgers that, if he returns, he has to ditch the weekly appearance with McAfee. They also informed him that he was required to attend all offseason activities—no more ayahuasca retreats.
So the Jets really went ahead and drew a line in the sand with Rodgers. Outside of a few instances surrounding pressing issues, his appearances on McAfee were mostly innocent interviews about other sports or pop culture topics.
As the Jets, why would you do this? They hold the chips—and it was already public knowledge that Rodgers was not going to be back next season. There is no sense in mandating a ban on McAfee’s show for a player that will be testing free agency within the next few months.
According to Mike Florio, under the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, teams have no right to restrict a player’s off-the-field media activities. As you probably know, they also cannot force him to participate in the voluntary portion of organized team activities.
Rodgers has been silent about this entire situation. He attended most of last season’s voluntary offseason activities but caused a bit of a storm when he missed a mandatory part of camp to attend a trip to Egypt.
While Rodgers has turned into a bit of a heel in the court of public opinion, let’s not pretend as if he’s not a very good quarterback. At age 40, Rodgers threw for 3,897 yards, 28 touchdowns and just 11 interceptions while completing 63 percent of his passes.
The Jets are a dumpster fire. He was infamously injured during the first season after just four snaps. But let’s not pretend as if he didn’t bounce back extremely well.
And as a free agent, he will have interest. This quarterback draft class isn’t thought very highly of. Some pundits have said that neither Shedeur Sanders nor Cam Ward would’ve been first round picks last year.
Three quarterback-needy teams headline the top of this year’s draft. At minimum, Rodgers would be an upgrade for the Las Vegas Raiders, New Orleans Saints, New York Giants, Cleveland Browns and Tennessee Titans in this year’s top 10. Not to mention, the Jets are going to need another quarterback, too.
It’s unclear which of those teams will actually have interest in Rodgers. For some organizations, it might be smarter to embrace the rebuild and take a flier on a rookie quarterback instead of the future first-ballot Hall of Famer in Rodgers.
He’ll be able to find a team to stomach his weekly appearances on McAfee and weird preseason vacations.
