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On Sunday, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers spontaneously gave all the sports media a multi-day conversation by spontaneously asking the vague question of whether he played his last game in a Packers uniform. Rodgers tried to take it away Tuesday.
It’s too late for that.
“A lot of guys’ futures are, you know, uncertain, myself included,” Rodgers said in response to a question that had nothing to do with his future. Rodgers later said that ‘[t]many strangers go here in this off-season, ”without identifying any of the strangers.
His comments have prompted several experienced reporters covering the team to sense something ominous in Rodgers’ words. Jason Wilde of ESPN Wisconsin, who knows Rodgers very well, for example, said that Rodgers’must have sounded like a greeting guy. ”
In his regular Tuesday appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, Rodgers tried to say goodbye to any talk that he said goodbye.
“After the season I had, and possibly won MVP, and of course we made a good run again, I do not think there is any reason why I will not be back,” Rodgers said. ‘But there are not many absolute things as you know. To make an absolute statement about something that is not absolute, I did not do it. ‘
But during his last press conference of the 2019 season, Rodgers implied an absolute verdict on his status for 2020 when he said it after a loss to the 49ers in the NFC Championship: ‘The window is open for us, and it is the exciting thing. I think we’ll be on the right side of one of these soon. ”
The difference, of course, is that the Packers drafted quarterback Jordan Love in April. They picked a first round and a fourth round to get him. After the off-season of 2021 to a stellar 2020, Rodgers has every right to have clarity about his future with the team, given the deliberate decision to give an opportunity to add weapons when he adds a quarter.
Does the Packers anticipate another year? Two more years? Three? Will Love eventually become the starter, or will he, as Jimmy Garoppolo was in New England, be traded in the fourth season after arriving as Tom Brady’s potential replacement?
Rodgers wants a new contract. With the goal of never arousing the wrath of Packers fans, he will act like he does not. But he does it. Because a new contract will give him the clarity he is looking for. Alternatively, refusing to give him that contract will provide a different kind of clarity – and it will likely prompt Rodgers to start drawing up a future plan with a new team, possibly in 2021, but probably in 2022.
Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports, who confirmed that Rodgers wants a new contract during a Tuesday appearance on Peacock’s Brother of another, made an excellent point about the dilemma that reporters and analysts created when Rodgers used press conferences or other public institutions to send messages. Any reporter who happens to spot the message and dares to articulate it is eventually run into by Rodgers in a bucket of clickbaiters and troublemakers who suddenly do not know what they are talking about.
I’ve been there before. During the 2016 season, Rodgers on several occasions expressed concern that was directly attributed to coach Mike McCarthy. Rodgers calls a “lack of juice” due to a home loss to the Colts, explaining that the sideline has “the same kind of enthusiasm and encouragement”. After losing 47 points to a loss to the Titans, Rodgers said, “There must be a healthy fear as a player that if you do not do your job, he will get rid of you.”
Although Rodgers never linked these concerns to McCarthy’s coaching the team, I did. History has shown that the interpretation was accurate. My reward, of course, was to get Rodgers to complain at his box office about reporters interpreting his words as complaints about McCarthy.
“Especially guys like Mike Florio,” Rodgers said. “Do not waste your time reading like that.”
Despite the fact that no good deed goes unpunished as far as Aaron Rodgers is concerned, I will say it again: he wants and deserves clarity about his future. He wants and deserves to know that he is more than a year-to-year option. And when he realizes that he’s a year-to-year option (by refusing to give him a new contract that brings the relationship to 2022 or 2023), this is when he wants and deserves to take his next step to plan.
When he then sends unmistakable messages and reporters and analysts spot them and respond to them, he can dust off Steve Urkel’s catch strip and tell people not to waste their time by reading like that or talking like that.