IMAGINE IF AARON RODGERS CONQUERS NEW YORK AFTER YEARS OF MELODRAMA
His place in elite NFL lore depends on his late-career experiment with the Jets, which might fall short in a conference loaded with great quarterbacks — but for now, Rodgers puts The Man in Manhattan
A legacy dangles. If Aaron Rodgers quit today and vanished into the Peruvian rainforest with his ayahuasca pipe, he’d be a first-ballot Hall of Famer ranked in the embrace-debate vicinity of seventh to ninth among all-time quarterbacks. His foursome of MVP trophies suggests a higher ranking. His lone Super Bowl title and long, disruptive trail of megalomania suggest a lower ranking.
How his career ultimately is remembered will be finalized this season, as his 40th birthday nears, in a city poised to adore him while the rest of America hopes to cancel him. Somehow, after all the melodrama of the last dozen years, Rodgers has an opportunity to tie his frayed loose ends and stroll down Broadway as the King of New York. Dr. Tony Fauci and the pro-vaccine crowd wouldn’t like it. The Cheeseheads he left behind in Green Bay wouldn’t like it. The Packers’ bosses who nudged him away, believing all they need is Love, wouldn’t like it. Nor would the celebrity female companions he romances and leaves like, well, Joe Namath in the day.
And chances are, truth be told, Rodgers will fall short of the championship that his new address always demands of leading men regardless of pedigrees. One reason: Josh Allen is in his division. Four more reasons: Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson and Justin Herbert also are in his conference. They are the central figures of a status quo that discarded him last season, when his turnovers exceeded even the gray hairs in his beard. It’s possible the Jets, who open in the Meadowlands against Allen and the formidable Buffalo Bills on a Monday night, will start no better than 1-3 because the schedule is mean and, after all, they’re the Jets. If that happens and he’s less than perfect, the WFAN hosts will roast him and the New York Post will toast him with an easy headline: “ERRIN’ RODGERS.”
Or, after a particularly ugly loss, he’ll be asked to leave town on a “DARKNESS RETREAT,” one of his favored life escapes.
But for now, even his most merciless critics must admit that he’s making the proper leadership statements necessary for any dreamy run. With training camp opening this week, Rodgers has been the polar opposite of the cantankerous grump who blamed Packers management, coaches and teammates for a string of postseason failures. He has the look, grin and strut of an inmate released from Lambeau State Prison, thrilled to discover and explore a new home that has intimidated athletes of his stature.
“The most fun I’ve had in awhile,” he said.
Clearly, he has won the offseason. Not since Eddie Murphy found his bride in Queens has anyone enjoyed New York this much in a first go-around. What hasn’t he done? He took teammates to Rangers games. He took his rumored next-ex, model Mallory Edens, to an Ed Sheeran concert. He went to the Tony Awards. He was spotted spooling at Carbone and shopping in Soho. He saw Taylor Swift in his new home stadium with buddy Miles Teller. He saw “Wicked” on Broadway. On the side, his news-breaking relationship with Pat McAfee helped the talk host land an $85 million deal with ESPN, not far behind the $107.55 million he’ll make if he plays the next two seasons with the Jets. He is reborn.
“Everything is new,” Rodgers said. “It’s like the first day of school every day.”
They have much in common, Rodgers and New York, both needing a massive celebration that has eluded them for a long time. He thought he’d win multiple Super Bowls after winning one in 2011. The media capital expects to win every year in every sport, but the Jets haven’t won since, well, Namath in the day. And the Knicks haven’t won since 1973. And the Mets haven’t won since 1986. And the Rangers haven’t won since 1994. And the Yankees haven’t won since 2009. Only the Giants have won, in 2012, since Rodgers won. He is made for New York, and vice versa, not necessarily because misery loves company but because they empathize with common pain and are trying to purge it together. As he said after seeing the trophy case at the team facility, “I grew up watching old VHS tapes of the Super Bowls, and so, obviously, I know about ‘the guarantee’ and Broadway Joe. It’s been a while since then. I noticed walking in this morning that the Super Bowl III trophy is looking a little lonely.”
He will teach a downtrodden franchise how to win. His presence will demand maximum effort and preparation. His competitive inferno will burn through the locker room. “He makes it different with his confidence. He makes it different with his communication,” guard Laken Tomlinson said. “He makes it different with his high level of play. Having all that mesh into that position, it’s truly special working with someone of that caliber. He makes everyone be on their A-game every day.” Rodgers has no choice but to get along with head coach Robert Saleh after clashing in his final seasons with Matt LaFleur, who was ready for a quarterbacking change with Jordan Love. He has no choice but to believe in general manager Joe Douglas, who has loaded a defense-dominated roster with offensive weapons including Rodgers favorites Allen Lazard and Randall Cobb. He has no choice but to believe in owner Woody Johnson, who led a front-office brigade to Malibu and recruited Rodgers inside a steakhouse. What he CANNOT do is start ripping his own people if the Jets stumble. That’s what he did in Green Bay, and that’s one reason America turned on him as it turned to Mahomes during a two-title run that could mushroom into a Kansas City dynasty.
The question becomes: What happens the first time he encounters a crisis point? That day will come, maybe as soon as the first televised installment of “Hard Knocks.” No NFL team is more compelling than the Jets, and no personal narrative is bigger than Rodgers, so, naturally, HBO selected Gang Green as subject fodder for the series next month. The weekly story lines will be followed in the media like never before, providing a test for how a traditionally forgotten franchise will deal with Aaronmania. Never mind the futile history of teams that appear: Since 2012, only four have made the playoffs — three lost in the wild-card round, the other lost in the divisional round. In addition to giving opponents an advantage — an up-close peek at how the Jets do business — they’ll have to survive the inevitable controversies that pop up each week in camp. If Rodgers had a say, he’d have said no.
“They forced it down out throats and we gotta deal with it,” he said.
Yet rather than brood, he saw the bright side and established a tone for the organizational approach. “One of the only things I like about ‘Hard Knocks’ is the voice of God who narrates it, Liev. I hope to get to meet him,” Rodgers said of Liev Schreiber. “Look, I understand the appeal with us. Obviously, there’s a lot of eyes on me, a lot of eyes on our team, a lot of expectations for our squad.”
At points of the season when the Jets don’t meet expectations, all eyes will be on Rodgers. It’s a mistake to think all 32 NFL markets harbor the same level of scrutiny and pressure in America’s thriving national sport. Yes, Rodgers became a megastar in Green Bay just as Peyton Manning did in Indianapolis, but he still has no idea what’s about to hit him. In Wisconsin, the local media didn’t care much about his dating life. In New York, look out — especially if he’s out on the town with Edens, who is 12 years younger than Rodgers as the nepo daughter of the Milwaukee Bucks’ co-owner. The Post publishes a map of Aaron sightings, such as when he shopped at Rag & Bone, and if he ever hits a nightclub, yikes.
Wisconsin smothered him. New York will swallow him. He’s the laser focus of a metropolis with 20 million people, many of whom devour sports. There is no competition for Aaron Rodgers — not on Broadway, not at Citi Field when the Mets are blowing a $500 million payroll, not at Yankee Stadium when Aaron Judge’s injury might preclude a playoff appearance. It’s his town, the domain of the new A-Rod, and on the East Coast, that means his every breath and twitch will be magnified by ESPN and what’s left of the writing media. For now, he embraces it.
“There’s something special about playing in the city, for a team like this with a storied franchise,” Rodgers said. “Going way, way back to Super Bowl III, to be a part of something special would definitely help you go down in the history of our organization. Already have 18 years in an incredibly iconic organization, and it would be fun to be a part of the history of this one, as well.”
He’ll live somewhere in New Jersey, near the facility in previously obscure Florham Park, but metropolitan New York is metropolitan New York. When his relationship with the Packers was breaking up, he mentioned his house was in the wilds outside of Green Bay and blamed the Packers for not using FaceTime to reach him. A wi-fi misconnection was his way of faulting management for the divorce. “I have zero or one bar at the house, so you call me — sometimes it goes through, most of the time it drops and doesn’t go through,” he said. “Everybody who knows me, when I’m out West, they know that’s how to get hold of me. So you can say whatever you want about that, but that’s the f—ing truth.”
Best of luck finding such isolation for the entirety of his final football phase. Unlike Brett Favre, his partner in Packers-to-Jets mobility, Rodgers won’t be heading to another team if this experiment goes bust. New York is where he is. New York is where the final chapter will be written. “The reality is, yeah, we all want to win a world championship,” Saleh said. “We have long-term goals, but what are you doing today to prepare you or to get you moving towards your long-term goals? Aaron is one of those guys that has that discipline, he understands that, ‘Yes, this is what I want, but this is what I need to do today.’ ’’
With a much larger platform, it won’t be long before Aaron does Aaron things. A good guess: He’ll go off on one of his psychedelics crusades. Recently, he said plant-based ayahuasca and other such mind-expanders should be decriminalized in the U.S. “Is it not ironic that the things that actually expand your mind are illegal and the things that keep you in the lower chakras and dumb you down have been legal for centuries?” Rodgers said. “I guarantee you all these bums who want to come after me online about my experience and stuff, they've never tried it. They are the perfect people for it. We need to get these people taking it. We have the opportunity to change the conversation by dispelling these archaic myths about the dangers of (psychedelics) or the negative side effects or whatever it might be and start to share the actual wisdom and truth about it.
“I found a deeper self-love.”
Who knew that was possible in his case?
Then he credited the freaky-deaky drugs for improving his performances for his MVP seasons in 2020 and 2021. “The previous year — 26 touchdowns, four interceptions, we had a good season," Rodgers said. "Ayahuasca — 48 touchdowns, five, interceptions, MVP. What are you going to say?”
At this point, all of New York will merrily smoke the pipe with him. His journey might not end well, but if it does, in Super Bowl LVIII, he’ll be encouraged to get higher than the Empire State, One World Trade Center and every other Gotham skyscraper. Officially, Aaron Rodgers would put The Man in Manhattan.
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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.