Aaron Rodgers' decision on future unlikely to come quickly
Aaron Rodgers of the Jets takes his first snap of a game against the Bills at MetLife Stadium on Monday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — It’s only been a few days since Aaron Rodgers’ season and, many suspect, the Jets’ chances to contend for the elusive Super Bowl title, ended. The wave of activities and decisions that have taken place since the Monday Night Misfortune have rushed over the player and the organization with crushing weight.
Everything has to be figured out on the fly, from when and where Rodgers will have his surgery to who and why the team will add a veteran to its quarterback room. Teams and players pride themselves on being prepared.
There was no game plan for any of this.
But from almost the moments shortly after the MRI confirmed the organization’s darkest fears on Tuesday afternoon, there has been a palpable push from the Jets to achieve one objective.
They want Rodgers to stick around. This year and, ideally, beyond.
It began on social media — “Not the way any of us wanted it to go, but we know the commitment you've made to this team will continue to impact us moving forward,” the team posted on Tuesday — and continued with the words of Robert Saleh hoping Rodgers will maintain a role with this squad.
“His presence, his words, he’s as much a football coach as he is a player,” Saleh said. “Anybody would want that.”
He suggested, too, that it would be good for Rodgers to go through his lengthy rehab process surrounded by the routines and familiarity of the upcoming season, a way to combat the isolation and loneliness that injured players normally describe.
Saleh even left the door open for Rodgers to have a role on the sideline during games at some point this season, just as he did during the preseason contests for which he did not suit up.
“If he wants a headset,” he said with a smile, “he can have one.”
The one thing the Jets have not yet addressed with Rodgers, though, is where he sees his so far brief tenure with the Jets going. He’s under contract with them through next year, had voiced a desire to play here beyond that, but had always done so with the caveat of how his soon-to-be 40-year-old body was holding up.
Will he be back in 2024?
Rodgers certainly hinted at it in his Instagram post on Wednesday evening, his first comment of any kind since the injury.
“The night is darkest before the dawn,” he wrote, in part. “And I shall rise again.”
Rodgers certainly hinted at it in his Instagram post on Wednesday evening, his first comment of any kind since the injury.
“The night is darkest before the dawn,” he wrote, in part. “And I shall rise again.”
So far, though, it appears the Jets and Rodgers haven’t had The Talk.
Not even those closest to Rodgers have broached the topic. Or any of topic, for that matter.
Running back Dalvin Cook said he hasn’t texted or talked with Rodgers since the injury. He knew when he tore his own ACL that hearing from teammates was not at the forefront of his mind.
“You give people time, you give them that space,” he said.
Rodgers’ closest confidant on the team has, of course, been in steady contact with him.
“I’ve spent a lot of time talking to him [the last few days],” wide receiver Randall Cobb told Newsday. “He’s devastated. He obviously didn’t want this year to go this way. It’s tough and I’m looking forward to seeing him bounce back.”
Bounce back as in play again?
“I’m not really worried about that right now,” Cobb said. “That’s a decision for him to make whenever he wants to make it. I think he’s worried about handling the situation in the best way he knows how right now.”
There has been plenty of speculation that Rodgers in no way wants his career to end as his season did, with him flipping the ball away in frustration while sitting on the MetLife Stadium turf, staring off in the distance, quickly recognizing what was happening as a serious Achilles injury.
And there have been plenty of glorious tales of other NFL players — Dan Marino, Lawrence Taylor, Vinny Testaverde — who gamely fought through their own Achilles downfalls to return to action at various levels of ability as if Medals of Honor should be pinned upon them.
But if the last 18 seasons of observing Rodgers’ tenure in the NFL, and the last 18 months of it in particular, have taught us anything, it should be that projecting consensus values, agendas and motives that apply to most professional athletes is a futile exercise when it comes to this one in particular.
Saleh acknowledged those complexities in regard to guessing Rodgers’ thinking, having just gone through those futile exercises for a good part of this past offseason.
“I’d be shocked if this is the way he’s going to go out,” he said. “But at the same time, he is working through a whole lot of headspace and things he needs to deal with.”
He’s not Peyton Manning, who played through a final season despite being nearly unable to grip a football. He’s not Johnny Unitas, who overcame his own late-career Achilles injury in 1971 and wanted to keep playing so badly he moved to San Diego to do it.
For those guys, football was life-sustaining oxygen and they would have asphyxiated without it.
Rodgers is an alternative-fuel vehicle compared with what drives others.
He’s the Jeopardy!-hosting, movie cameo-appearing, life-after-football-focused player who emerged from his darkness retreat this past offseason “90% sure” he would retire. That last 10% isn’t a huge chasm to leap. And who’s to say what quirky, convoluted method he’ll come up with to decide what he wants this time around? He may not have an answer for the Jets until the spring when he leaves his igloo or a spaceship or wherever he decides to contemplate his new future.
By then, the Jets could be anywhere on the quarterback-need spectrum from having the proven, established starter of a playoff team already on their roster in Zach Wilson to being in the lowly but fortunate position to draft USC’s Caleb Williams with the first overall pick. Neither of those two extremes seems likely, but nor did getting Rodgers and then having him for four plays before losing him for the year.
The Jets have a few things going for them in their apparent plans to retain Rodgers’ services as a quarterback in 2024 and perhaps beyond. They have created a very safe space for him here to be surrounded by friends and trusted colleagues. And Rodgers did seem genuinely smitten with all New York has to offer. He embraced everything from Broadway shows to Knicks and Rangers games.
Chances are high, though, that he’ll spend more of his time this season back in Malibu than he does in Florham Park or East Rutherford or even the Theater District.
As for 2024?
Sorry Jets. Sorry fans who dropped serious dough on new number 8 jerseys only to have them nearly instantaneously become throwbacks. Sorry all those players and coaches who flocked to New Jersey to join the team, yes, but really did it for the chance to play with Rodgers. “I just wanted to take a carry from 8, man, get one from a great,” Cook said. “The game cheats you sometimes and I didn’t get that one.”
Don’t hold your breath waiting on any official announcement of the comeback.
Even if there is one, as the Instagram post suggested, it will come on Rodgers’ unique timeline. Until he states his intentions openly, decisively and publicly — we’re likely looking at you once again for this, Pat McAfee! — don’t bother trying to decipher the way the wheels spin in his head.
As for now, the Jets aren’t pushing Rodgers for a decision on his future with them. Not yet, anyway.
“That,” Saleh said, “will be the last thing I talk to him about.”
It may very well be.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
