FINISHED IN THE NFL, RODGERS SHOULD REPLACE BRADY IN THE FOX SPORTS BOOTH
A political career would make us physically ill, but why not push him to provoke viewers in place of Brady, whose conflict-of-interest flaws will be dreadful as he helps operate the Las Vegas Raiders?
His inner senses might not be intact, examining his hallucinogenic retreats and how he snubs his chain of celebrity actresses. “I didn’t do myself any favors with some of the girls I dated,” said Aaron Rodgers, blowing off too many years of intimate bogusness. But if he rehabilitates from darkness and football, he should realize he’ll have prime job availability next season.
Sit back and study, Aaron, if the ayahuasca allows.
The possibilities shouldn’t involve NFL quarterbackdom, when he no longer deserves to be a starter after looking much older than age 41. The worst offenses cannot succumb to Rodgers as a regular — despite his past status as a Hall of Famer with four MVP awards. His career seemed ready to end Sunday when he shouted again at teammates and threw two interceptions, only awakening after a 40-14 loss in Buffalo when somebody said he broke Tom Brady’s all-time NFL sack record.
“Yeah, I got Tom in that,” he said, pretending to smile.
Nor should he involve himself in caapi vine stems and shrub leaves. Anyone watching his Netflix documentary, “Enigma,” wonders how Rodgers didn’t collapse and die in Costa Rica. The nasty markings on his face looked like the blood of Woody Johnson, the owner who mistakenly brought him to the New York Jets, or Dan Graziano, the ESPN analyst who called him “a con artist” and “a narcissist” and “self-absorbed to the absolute maximum.” No one is quarreling with any of those assumptions. We just wonder how a drug abuser can run a football team, which he couldn’t do after the Green Bay Packers wisely dumped him. He’s into joining people who can find “deep peace and centeredness and presence.”
“This is a ‘top of the mountain’ experience,” Rodgers said. “We’re pushing ourselves to the edge with various medicines. Why? Because my life matters. Because I got a host of ancestors backing me up.”
Robert Saleh and Joe Douglas, his head coach and general manager, didn’t approach his expectation level. A probable 4-13 finish means Rodgers goes down as a phony loser in the country’s biggest market, an Aaron who couldn’t escape last place when Aaron Judge and Aaron Boone at least reached the World Series.
What he should do is retire at once and say he won one Super Bowl, a long time ago. He can laugh when Johnson, who uses his sons and their video-game knowledge to determine if players can perform, decides Madden NFL thinks he’s a goner. “I’ve never been released before, so being released would be a first. Being released by a teenager, that would also be a first,” Rodgers said last week. “I’m open to everything, and you know, I find the comedy in all of it. If that happens, hey, it’s a great story.”
It would be a better story if Rodgers scrapped his Pat McAfee duties and moved upward in the media game. It would be better if Fox Sports acknowledges Brady was a $375 million blunder who should be replaced this offseason. As it is, his part-ownership role allows him to take over the Las Vegas Raiders, who will need a quarterback and possibly a new head coach. As it is, the league doesn’t allow him to visit with other franchises on game week because of his woeful conflict of interest. Next year, how will he broadcast games when his mind is in the desert? He doesn’t care enough this season, when he backtracked into another era when he should have described a run by Pittsburgh’s Najee Harris.
“Yeah, he got Davenport,” said Brady, meaning Najeh, who played from 2002 to 2008.
Fox does wacky stuff. Why not Rodgers to replace Brady, who is more boring than we originally thought? Refer to Rodgers as you’d like, but he’s never, ever boring. God knows what he’d say in the booth. So far he has rejected media discussions, telling McAfee: “You already know the answer to that. The answer is no. After this thing is done, you’re not going to see me.” Right. What will feed his monster ego?
Pete Rose, Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz hosted a baseball pre-game show on the network. Rodgers lied about his own vaccination when he claimed he was “immunized,” but unlike the others, he has avoided gambling and steroids. There will be certain rules, such as not asking people about vaccination status in 2025. That’s how Rodgers replied when ESPN’s Ryan Clark referred to him as a “fraud” who happens to be “tone-deaf and blatantly hypocritical.” Clark said he had no gallbladder or spleen and was vaccinated against COVID. Stephen A. Smith hammered Rodgers, a cross-promotion that wouldn’t be allowed on either network.
“Because the reality is — as great as you are — you haven’t won a Super Bowl since 2010. You haven’t been to the Super Bowl since 2010,” Smith said. “And now your career is going in the wrong direction based on wins and losses. Going after Ryan Clark, that ain’t gonna do much for you. You don’t want to go at Ryan Clark. That is not a winnable situation for you, Aaron Rodgers.”
Yet ramping his profile with a top-level analyst gig only can help Rodgers, who has no other career in a league he has defaced. He has spoken about a potential political life, which included his refusal when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. invited him as a running mate. I speak for America in saying we’ll vomit en masse if Rodgers appears in the Fox News mix.
Fox Sports, please.
And if he says no, pay him $375 million.
Or $376 million. He’ll take it.
The docuseries appeared to reveal an end to quarterbacking. He produced a 1.2 Total QBR rating Sunday, the lowest of his career. The Jets were losing 40-0 when he left for Tyrod Taylor, a better future idea for the Jets. “Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like the season — it just got away from us,” Rodgers said. “Too many games got away from us. This game got away from us. We just hit a wall. And that's been kind of the season, too.”
The team’s defensive players weren’t shy about blaming Rodgers. “Obviously, we're not going to the playoffs, some people might be checked out,” cornerback Sauce Gardner said.
“It comes down to complementary football, bro,” cornerback D.J. Reed said. "We're playing a high-powered offense. (Buffalo’s) Josh Allen is the MVP runner-up, whatever — a great player. We have to get s--- going.”
At one point, referee Clete Blakeman laughed when Rodgers received an unnecessary roughness penalty on cornerback Christian Benford. Anyone who knows this man’s life and travails thought it was appropriate.
“I don’t think I pushed him very hard,” Rodgers said.
This was the bigger world, pushing back. So quit.
Mic up.
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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.