Rodgers’ Season Takes Ludicrous Turn

With the Green Bay Packers having lost three in a row, we’ve gone from questioning Aaron Rodgers’ play to criticizing him for having the audacity to publicly challenge “guys.”

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Hopefully, one of the dumber stories of the NFL season is over.

On Tuesday, during his weekly appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers suggested that players who make too many mental errors should be shown a seat on a bench.

“I think guys who are making too many mistakes shouldn’t be playing, you know?” Rodgers said. “We’ve got to start cutting some reps. And maybe guys who aren’t playing, give them a chance.”

Oh, the horrors.

Rodgers didn’t call anybody out by name. He didn’t say, “Joe Rookie Receiver, he’s running too many wrong routes. Bench him and trade for Jake Kumerow.”

Somehow, at least in the land of make-believe that tends to be Twitter, that “shouldn’t be playing” line was a sign of being a bad leader. In a world in which “sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me” has been replaced by “words are violence,” maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise.

“There’s accountability for all of us,” Rodgers said at his locker on Wednesday. “So, you’re making the right plays, you’re in the right spot at the right time, you’re going to get opportunities. If you’re not, there’s consequences. I think we can all agree on that.”

Of course, we can’t agree on that. That’s today’s world. It’s black or it’s white. It’s not that there are no shades of gray. It’s that the very possibility of there being a shade of gray isn’t up for discussion. I suppose it’s nothing more than a spinoff of today’s toxic political climate.

Rodgers didn’t take the COVID vaccine and misled the public about it. He’s lost four NFC Championship Games. He threw a deep ball to a double-covered Davante Adams with the game on the line in last year’s playoff game. Whenever he retires, his immediate legacy won’t be his four MVPs and 150-and-some wins. It will be tens of millions of dollars on the salary cap.

Couple all that with the team’s poor start on offense and his own rather mediocre performances, it seems many of you would like to buy him a ticket on a Greyhound to Parts Unknown. Tuesday’s comments to McAfee were just confirmation that not only is he a past-his-prime quarterback now fully incapable of reading a defense, he’s just an all-around bad teammate.

Should Rodgers have kept his message behind the closed doors of 1265 Lombardi Ave.? Perhaps. Was the closed-doors approach not working so it was onto a new motivational tactic? Or was it a way of deflecting from his own play?

Either way, if you’re a player and you’re offended, perhaps that’s a sign that, A, you need some thicker skin and, B, your self-awareness is telling you that you do need to do a better job of preparing.

“I do do it privately. I’m not saying on Pat that I’m not saying to those guys,” he said. “So maybe that’s talking about a conversation that’s behind closed doors in public, but the level of accountability is the standard here. I don’t think it should be a problem to any of those guys to hear criticism. We all hear criticism in our own ways, and we’ve all got to be OK with it and take it in, process it and, if it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit. But if it fits, we’ve got to wear it and improve on those certain things.

“I said it. I’m not going to be robot up here. I don’t understand why people have a problem with things that are truthful. I’m calling things the way I see it. People don’t think I need air that stuff out, that’s their opinion. But I’m doing what I think is in the best interest of our guys.”

Maybe Rodgers’ approach is the right one for a team that’s lost three in a row and is quickly fading into oblivion in the playoff race. Or maybe it’s not, and a bunch of players are going to see the old guy who can’t be bothered to show up for offseason practices and give him the one-finger salute while flipping on their Xbox to play Madden with Jordan Love at quarterback.

“If one of those guys has a problem with it, I’m right here, and I’d love to have a conversation,” Rodgers said. “I enjoy those conversations. I enjoy any type of conflict like that because I know the resolution on the other side is going to make us a better unit, a better friendship, a better cohesion on the field. But nobody’s come to me and said, ‘I’ve got a problem with what you said.’ I think everybody knows, Matt included, that everything’s got to take a little uptick, get a little better.”

Is Rodgers the problem? Or is Rodgers part of the solution? Whatever you think the answer is, we’re going to find out together over the next few weeks.

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