There are three constants in life: Death, taxes, and a complete meltdown related to Aaron Rodgers once a semester.
See, Aaron Rodgers should have been a wide receiver growing up. He had all the qualifications for it: he’s certifiable, he’s not right in the head, he consistently makes stupid demands and gets on stage to make a fool of himself, and even though he’s good-to-great, he just can’t win the big one on his lonesome.
Rodgers would feel right at home with the diva personalities that fill up the wideout corps. Unfortunately, God decided to grant him a throwing arm and a penchant for ayahuasca, inspiring Aaron Rodgers to wake up one day and chuck the pigskin a good quarter mile. It was then, with the airs of King Arthur knighting Galahad, that the NFL decided to make him a quarterback.
I stole all of this from the Gospel according to John Madden, but it’s mostly true, at least the way I heard it.
The point is, good ol’ A-a-rodge is back in the news again because, after his diva ass managed to drag an entire lineup of aging stars who couldn’t do much for the game any more to New York, the team crashed and burned, and he’s back out of a job.
It’s insane to me to see.
I still remember how hopeful people felt about the entire state of New York a couple years ago. Rodgers had gone to the Jets to replace a QB room whose stars were Bailey “Zap ‘em” Zappe and Zach “I love your mother” Wilson. Daniel Jones, the Prince who was Promised a pretty decent season was back as the Giants QB after winning a playoff game against a 13-win Vikings team. Buffalo was going to make waves in the postseason since Josh Allen only seemed to be getting better.
It was the best of times.
It very quickly became the worst of times.
Rodgers was injured almost immediately into his Jets career, before any blooming relationship with his incredible defense and his top-notch wideout could flourish. He went down on the fourth snap of the first game of the season (played on 9/11), an event that felt just cursed enough to make the Jets remember who they really were. Daniel Jones managed to prove that being a quarterback who was only good once in a while meant that you weren’t good the rest of the while, and put together a miserable season until he got injured, benched, and cut in that order somewhere in the two years since then. The Giants were leaning into the meme at that point and started a string of strange and wacky QBs, culminating in Little Italy’s favorite son, Tommy DeVito. He got his 15 minutes of fame, was mediocre, and is now gone — wait, no, I’m being informed Tommy DeVito is now the only QB on the Giants roster.
I hate this team. I hate this team. I hate this team.
(Did I mention I hate this team?)
That’s just the Giants, by the way. Because as bad as the Giants were, the Jets were so, so much worse.
After Rodgers went down, the season was a wash, but the Jets won just enough games to not get a good draft pick (because this team is cursed enough to not be bad when they should be bad and not be good when they should be good). So the Jets took a decent OL, and geared up to put Rodgers back on the field for the next season in the revenge tour for the ages. It was going to be the best season the Jets had since their head coach bragged about being into feet. It was going to be… spectacular.
The Jets went seven games under .500 and proceeded to become the laughingstock of the league. Aaron Rodgers was nowhere near the form he promised to be, every single miserable old teammate that the man had dragged into the team underperformed, and the Jets released Aaron Rodgers.
And now, nobody knows where he’s going to go because I don’t know who’s willing to deal with him.
Someone is going to overpay for the guy, and I’m sure it’s going to be the beautiful disaster we all expect, and as of right now, the fingers are pointing at the Minnesota Vikings.
You see, the Vikes once took a Jets QB named Brett Favre — Brett Favre who had been an incredible, Super Bowl-winning QB for the Green Bay Packers before going to New York. They’ve done this all before, so why wouldn’t they do this all again.
People have been very excited to see that happen, and it makes sense if you try to avoid thinking about it in real terms and focus way more on the theory that perhaps it is possible that someone could do that. The Vikings don’t have a good QB option right now after Darnold left, but they have a team that could easily facilitate a decent QB to the later rounds. The only QB in their room is J.J. McCarthy, who spent most of his time at Michigan running very, very fast. They also have a once-in-a-lifetime WR in Justin Jefferson, (the second time in my lifetime they’ve had that), so they want a throwing QB.
It makes them a decent landing spot for a pocket passing quarterback with something to prove. The question is if Rodger’s headache is worth all that. I guess time will tell — or, at least, the football will eventually.
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