MCVAY IS MUCH TOO YOUNG TO QUIT, BUT FOR RODGERS, THE TIME HAS ARRIVED
Sounding like a millennial with too much success too soon, the Rams coach should remain on the sideline and wait years for a TV job, but an exasperated quarterback, nearing 40, should move on
If Aaron Rodgers wants to disappear into a hallucinogenic blur and run through girlfriends of various ages, shapes and hair hues — his latest is 25, meaning she was in the fourth grade when he started his NFL career — he will not be missed. What could have been a top-three-ever quarterbacking legacy has devolved into something unsettling and unsightly.
He became a holier-than-thou malcontent. He became better known for his anti-vaccine propaganda takes with Joe Rogan and shoot-the-bull chats on Pat McAfee’s program. His only championship in his lone Super Bowl was a dozen years ago, and the Green Bay Packers are doomed to a bigger free-fall. His football presence has gone colder than the frozen tundra, and he claims he’ll gladly reject almost $60 million in pay next season.
“It’s a feeling,” he said Sunday after the Detroit Lions, the team he always mocked, laughed him out of the playoffs at Lambeau Field. “At some point, the carousel comes to a stop and it's time to get off, and I think you kind of know when that is. And that's what needs to be contemplated. Is it time? Also, what's the organization doing? That's part of it. But the competitive fire is always going to be there. I don't think that ever goes away. Sometimes it gets transferred, I think, to other things that might not ever fill that large void. But I feel good about what I've accomplished in this league and wouldn't have any regrets walking away.”
He turns 40 this year. He long has scoffed at the idea of playing into mid-life like Tom Brady. Besides, no other NFL team wants his monster contract, deteriorating skills and me-first cantankerousness. There are only two places Rodgers can go now: back to continued mediocrity and ugly interceptions in small-town Wisconsin, or to more Ayahuasca journeys in Peru and beyond. As a keen observer of societal perception, he won’t want to go out abysmally like Brett Favre. I’m thinking he’ll walk away from the money and the misery, as he should. There are more women to date, the world over, after all.
Sean McVay, conversely, is in the youthful prime of what still might be an all-time coaching career. Eleven months ago, he won a Super Bowl at age 36 for Hollywood’s team inside Hollywood’s $6 billion stadium. Like every other NFL champion since the Patriots in 2004-05, the Rams did not repeat. They didn’t even qualify for the postseason, swallowed by devastating injuries, a makeshift offensive line that left Matthew Stafford stumbling to concussion protocols, front-office mistakes, complacency and a general sense that one Lombardi Trophy was enough. These things happen in the NFL. Bill Belichick, the greatest of all coaches, has missed the playoffs in two of his three seasons without Brady. He’ll be back, in hoodie, for his 24th season in New England at 71. The coach linked with Belichick in this generation, Nick Saban, missed out on the College Football Playoff and spent Monday night analyzing the championship game in a blue suit on ESPN’s studio set inside, yes, SoFi Stadium. He’ll return, at 71, for his 17th season at Alabama, trying his damndest to knock off Georgia and one of his apostles, Kirby Smart.
So why is McVay, roughly half their age, seriously thinking about leaving the sideline for the broadcast booth? He teased us last winter, too, but this time, after describing a 5-12 season as “a professional failure,” he appears to mean it. There have been exterior factors, such as helping his Ukraine-born wife and her family cope with the Russian invasion. Damar Hamlin’s return from death, twice, surely hasn’t helped his mood in recent days. Mostly, McVay is not dealing well with a condition foreign to him in what had been a meteoric ascent in an unforgiving profession.
He can’t handle losing. He is tortured by it, in fact, traumatized to his core. “A beautiful torment,” he calls it, though nothing is beautiful about it right now. His loved ones are concerned about his psyche. Always a burnout candidate, given his obsessive dedication to his profession, McVay says he needs time to ponder his future.
“I’m not thinking about that right now. I’m right here, right now, and we’ll deal with that stuff at a later time,” he said tersely Sunday after a season-ending loss in Seattle.
Monday, he said nothing to quell the goodbye narrative. “Don’t want to rush into any sort of decision,” he said. “There’s a lot of emotion right after the season, there’s a lot of layers to this. There’s a lot of people that it does affect that I don’t take lightly and want to be mindful of. And so, I’m going to take the next couple days to really be able to kind of reflect. Obviously, a lot of conversations with various people that will dictate and determine the decision that’s best for me, my family, the Rams and a lot of people, and that’s kind of where we’re at.”
Why not swallow hard, acknowledge a dream job and carry on? Doesn’t he know his problems are First World problems? That it’s hard for people with their own life issues to feel sorry for him? “This has been years,” McVay said. “This is not a new thing. … I have endless amounts of energy still. It’s just a matter of, how do you make sure that as you move forward, you’re able to do it in the way that’s best for yourself, your wife, your family members, and then when you are in a role of this magnitude, doing it the way that you’re capable. And that’s what I want to be able to answer yes to, and if you can do those things, I think a lot of clarity will come with that.”
Once again, McVay is being courted by television networks. Last year, he rejected a reported $100 million from Amazon to broadcast Thursday night games for five years. His snub restored our faith in football’s institutional pecking order — coaches are the centerpieces of the experience, and the men who talk about games are on the periphery. But rather than endure a Rams rebuild of sorts, McVay just might remove his sideline headset and put on another apparatus upstairs, with makeup and more hair gel.
It’s his life. But such a decision would be disappointing. He’d be running away from a crisis, as millennials tend to do, and it would impact the way he is remembered in the sport. Oh, he’d return to the sideline in due time, as will another very accomplished coach named Sean (Payton). But cutting the cord because you don’t like your job is such a 2023 thing to do, here in the age of quiet quitting. If McVay is a proud competitor, why would he flee as his first storms roll in? Has success come too easily? He was an NFL head coach at 30, needed only two years to reach a Super Bowl, then won it all in his fifth season. It was comical watching his own coaching tree grow, with his disciples in great demand. One of them, Matt LaFleur, isn’t quitting upon encountering his first burst of adversity in Green Bay. Sure, coaching can be a mean gig. LaFleur likely will invite Nathaniel Hackett back to his staff after his disastrous season in Denver. McVay’s good pal, Kliff Kingsbury, was an abysmal failure in Arizona. But come on, Sean. Come on, bro-dude. No one wins all the time. Ask Kyle Shanahan, who weathered big-moment career crashes and is positioned to win an NFC title with Mr. Irrelevant, Brock Purdy, as the latest quarterback he had to groom quickly.
McVay says he wants to start having kids and be a family guy. Hey, so do tens of thousands of men across America. He can coach an NFL team and be a dad if he just dials down his competitive inferno a few notches. It’s called growing up, gaining life perspective. You confront and adjust. You don’t run to a broadcast booth that will be there in 20 years, with a bigger fortune waiting if he wins more championships.
Amazon’s opening season wasn’t a rousing ratings success, with college football voice Kirk Herbstreit an awkward fit with vaguely interested play-by-play legend Al Michaels. If Jeff Bezos can’t buy the Washington Commanders just yet, he can steal McVay to help kickstart his broadcast investment. As for the other networks and their lead booths, Fox is waiting on Brady to retire from football and take its $375 million, while CBS is locked in with Tony Romo and ESPN with Troy Aikman. Would NBC remove a stale Cris Collinsworth and hire McVay? Well, the peacockers did replace Michaels with Mike Tirico. If McVay chooses to wear a blazer, this might happen next: Payton, who lives in Manhattan Beach, ditches his studio blazer and takes the Rams opening.
“He’ll take some time to figure out what is best for him and what’s best for this program, and we’ll support him whatever he wants to do,” said Stafford, who confirmed he’ll be back in uniform next season, despite his wife’s pleas that he retire.
I have an idea. Maybe McVay and Rodgers can trade places for a month. The psychologically fried coach can go on an Ayahuasca binge somewhere. And the reputationally crushed quarterback can check out broadcasting jobs. All Rodgers does is talk, to Rogan and McAfee. Why not do it for a living?
“Do I feel like I have anything left to prove to myself?" Rodgers said. “Do I want to go back and gear up for another grind? Or is it time? Is time to step away? Is it time for another voice to be leading this team? I think I need to get away and contemplate those things. Those are real to me.
“I have a lot of pride in what I've accomplished in this league, but I'm also a realist, and I understand where we're at as a team. We're a young team; there could be some changes with some of the older guys, and it could be time to step away. But I could take some time and say hell no, man, I need to get back out there and go on another run. But I'll have to see what it feels like once I'm away from it.”
When McVay is away from coaching, he’ll be ready to take the press-box elevator back to the locker room in about an hour. When Rodgers is away from quarterbacking, I expect his raging ego to embrace the TV life. Just think of the dating possibilities, the women who tune into football and watch as commentators take the easy way out.
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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.