Is Aaron Rodgers Applying Pressure to New York Jets With ‘Ask Woody’ Comment?

The future of New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers looms as a major question and perhaps he’s trying to send a message.

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) limps off the field during a play where it appeared he had gotten injured, Sunday, December 22, 2024, in East Rutherford. Rodgers was back on the field during Gang GreenÕs next possession. / Kevin R. Wexler-NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers hasn’t moved off his timeline to determine whether he’ll play next season.

The 41-year-old wants a month to figure it out. If he does return, he wants to return to New York. If he can’t come back to New York, he says he understands. He’s offered to take a pay cut and to mentor a young quarterback.

These are normally the types of offers that catch an owner’s ear as the season winds down. But Rodgers said that he had team owner Woody Johnson haven’t spoken in weeks.

So, do the Jets want him back? Rodgers, for weeks, has struck a polite tone. This time, not so much.

“You should ask Woody,” Rodgers said when asked and then revealed he hadn’t spoken to Johnson.

Johnson is a bit busy, of course. The Jets are interviewing for the open general manager job. Those began last week. Theoretically, that hire will have an outsized role in determining whether Rodgers returns.

Twice in the past two weeks Rodgers has joked that he could get released right after the season. At least that’s what some think. It’s a joke. The same goes — we believe — for the joke he cracked on the Pat McAfee Show recently, when he said he had “never been released by teenagers before,” referring to Johnson’s sons, who, in another report, were apparently influencing dad’s decision-making with Madden ratings.

But would Johnson actually do that? Would he release Rodgers before a GM is hired?

In the current hierarchy it would be his decision. Interim GM Phil Savage is a placeholder. If Rodgers is released it will be because Johnson wants it done.

Earlier this season per The Athletic, Johnson asked his football decision-makers, including coach Robert Saleh, if the team should bench Rodgers after its Week 4 loss. The question was met with a resounding no, but Saleh was fired the next week. General manager Joe Douglas followed in November.

There were many non-Rodgers reasons to fire both. But with Rodgers on the roster, the dynamic of the team and its future is, well, not exactly drama-free.

Theoretically, releasing Rodgers right after the season would give the new GM a clean slate to start over at quarterback, salary cap ramifications be damned. It would also give Rodgers a clean slate to start looking for a new team, unfettered by the “will-they-or-won’t-they” with a new GM — assuming he wants to play again.

So, it begs the question — is Rodgers just being untypically curt or is he sending Jets leadership a message? And is that message simply, “Release me?”

Rodgers’ suggestion to “ask Woody” is apt, but he isn’t talking — and hasn’t since just after firing Saleh. To the media, to Rodgers, to anyone.

Perhaps Rodgers was simply telling Johnson something he couldn’t face-to-face.