AARON RODGERS WANTS TO PLAY AGAIN — AND HE’S THE ONLY ONE WHO THINKS SO

The wrong team has left him in tatters, in a town where the Winnipeg Jets were bigger than the New York Jets, and without a guaranteed 2025 contract, he should try network TV options or anything else

     Given the volumes of his verbosity, the only word remaining for Aaron Rodgers has two syllables: retire. Or one: scram. Instead, when asked Wednesday if he’ll play next season, he indicated a desire to return.

     “I think so, yeah,” he said.

     Seems a 3-7 record, which followed the firing of head coach Robert Saleh, has led him to another burst of public lying or profound denial. “Not really, not for the negative,” he said of his forgettable season. “Not really, no.”

     What we need from Rodgers is a psychedelic view into a future that could include, oh, a peek at a media network that might want him. Such as Fox Sports, which can’t continue to thrust Tom Brady onto our brainwaves when he owns the Las Vegas Raiders and isn’t allowed to comment forcefully on games or visit teams. What we don’t need is Rodgers returning to the NFL when his 42nd birthday arrives. He has remained healthy after his Achilles tendon tear, but age has reduced him to a below-average quarterback who rates 24th among passers and has a career-low of 6.4 yards per attempt.

     The Jets are losers again, falling far behind the Winnipeg Jets, who became the first team in NHL history to start a season 15-1. They did so in New York, at Madison Square Garden, a few miles from Rodgers’ eternal smirk. “You play at MSG, you've got to put on a show,” center Mark Scheifele said. “It feels amazing.”

     One last time, Rodgers tried to be more amazing. He aimed for a second career Super Bowl victory, for the first time since 2011, but he chose the wrong franchise and won’t be contacted by another. The Jets are owned by Woody Johnson, who served under Donald Trump as the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom and likely will be contacted again. The general manager, Joe Douglas, also could be let go, which means the trio joining Rodgers at Lucky’s steakhouse in Malibu likely won’t be around after signing him. There is no need to call this a sports disaster. He knew Jordan Love would be his replacement in Green Bay and looked for a lifeboat that sunk.

     Why speak of another season when the Jets need to move on, again, and find a new star in the draft? It won’t be quarterback Shedeur Sanders, according to his father, who will employ anti-Caleb Williams rules — another historic moment for the Chicago Bears — and make sure the wrong teams don’t select his son or Travis Hunter. “Yeah, but I’m not going to do it publicly. I’ll do it privately,” Deion Sanders told Fox. “I’m gonna be Dad until the cows come home, and with Travis as well.”

     Forget the Jets, who will have to find someone. Rodgers’ 2025 salary isn’t guaranteed, and no matter who runs the team, why give him a $35 million option? Wake up. He should listen to his own words. “I’m not playing as well as I would have liked to play, for sure,” Rodgers said. “The frustrating part is that if you're a great competitor, you hold yourself to a standard that's not unrealistic, and I haven't reached that standard this year.”

     The day before, on Pat McAfee’s show, he said, “The coaches get blamed, but in the end, it's the players who are out there trying to execute it. We've actually, unfortunately, had some really good weeks of practice — the last three weeks have been the best three weeks of practice we've had. If we don't screw it up, we can be a dynamic offense. But unfortunately, too many times, we've been the ones screwing it up.”

     Everything has backfired on Rodgers. His criticism led to the trade of receiver Mike Williams, who caught the game-winning touchdown Sunday for Pittsburgh. After an earlier loss to Buffalo, Rodgers said, “There’s two verticals, Allen (Lazard)’s down the seam, and Mike’s down the red line. So, I’m throwing a no-look to the red line. When I peak my eyes back there, Mike’s running an ‘in-breaker.’ It’s gotta be down the red line.”

     Preparing for the playoffs with the 7-2 Steelers, Williams posted his own reddened shot: “Thankful. #WholeLotta #WeBack #RedLine.” Currently without receiver Davante Adams, who is injured and has waned since leaving the Packers, Rodgers should realize no one is paying attention anymore. That includes Wisconsin, where the focus is on the one-sided rivalry with the preposterous Bears.

     As if Halas Hall isn’t already burned by hellfire, top-notch safety Xavier McKinney is ready to smear Bears receiver DJ Moore. During a May podcast, Moore didn’t care about McKinney’s arrival and two cornerbacks signed by Detroit. “Eh, I don’t feel no way about it,” he said. “They just there.” Moore mouths off too much for someone not producing in the clogged offense. Here comes another masher.

     “Obviously, you’ve got the rivalry itself, but there’s a clip somewhere out there where DJ Moore said something about — they were asking him about the Packers getting me and he was like, ‘Who?' ” McKinney said. “All that stuff, that’s in my memory bank and I work accordingly to that. You know how people get before the season. They don’t really know what’s going to happen during the season and you just start talking too much and you don’t really know what you’re talking about. You’re just talking.”

     Watching replays of games at his house, McKinney saw Moore walk off the field as Williams was struggling and explained that his ankle was injured. Ha ha. “(Moore) is another one of those guys, same guy, play’s still going on and you walk off the field on your offense. You know, you take note of that,” he said. “Everybody takes note of that and we see it and we’re going to work it accordingly.

     “This dude walked out on … I’ve been playing (NFL) football for five years now and I’ve been watching football for longer than that and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a … You’re supposed to be the guy and you’re just walking off the field. You’re walking off the field on a rookie quarterback that you’ve been praising, so it’s like, that’s a whole other story.”

     Amid the Midwest craze, Aaron Rodgers was an afterthought long ago. He should look around East Rutherford and realize what’s forthcoming in early January. The end is at home, with a flex game.

     It means we don’t have to watch. We should anyway, to remember one of the greats, but he’s also one who drove us bonkers when we just wanted another championship.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.