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While it’s a day Jets fans will never forget . . .
it was also a day that might have hindered the trade talks to a degree.
What I’m talking about is Aaron Rodgers’ appearance on the Pat McAfee Show on March 15 when he said, “My intention is to play for the New York Jets.”
Jets fans formed conga lines all over after he made this announcement.
However, while that was great news for the Jets and their fans (though the Jets’ brass probably knew his intentions before this show appearance), the stuff he said about the Packers on this show probably made the trade talks more challenging.
I thought Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer put it very well:
“I think with some time, cooler heads will prevail. But there were people in Green Bay a little worn out by the Rodgers drama the past couple of years, and those people certainly couldn’t have been wild about the quarterback subtly taking a blowtorch (as subtle as you can be with a blowtorch, anyway) to the Packers’ brass as publicly as he did,” Breer wrote early this week.
“Because of that, the Packers were never going to turn right around and say, Sure, Aaron, whatever you want. And, yet, soon enough, I’d think the mutual benefit to the Packers, Jets and Rodgers himself of getting the page turned will win the day.”
There is an old saying, “Less is more.”
While Rodgers 1 hour appearance with McAfee was great television. Maybe I’m dating myself. Maybe you don’t call a Youtube Show a television show, but whatever you call it, whatever you think of McAfee’s act, it was compelling programming.
However, as Breer pointed out, he kind of took a “blowtorch” to the Packers brass.
Like this:
“Everything I was told in the week (after the season) I was in Green Bay, (was), ‘Take as long as you want. We want you to retire a Packer. You want to come back to play, the door is wide open.’ So that was the information I was going on. When I came out of the darkness, something changed.”
The darkness Rodgers is referring to is the time he spent in late February at Sky Cave Retreats in Southern Oregon. He spent four days in a dark cabin to “have a better sense of where I’m at in my life.”
So when he left the cabin, his phone, which he didn’t have access to during the retreat, was rife with text messages.
“I heard from multiple people I trust around the league [that] there was some shopping going on – they were intent on actually moving me,” Rodgers said.
With all due respect to Rodgers, many would argue that he probably entered the darkness with a sneaking suspicion that he might get traded this off-season.
Just trying to be objective here. Not taking sides.
For goodness sake, we have been talking about Rodgers possibly being traded to the Jets since mid-January when the Jets hired Nathaniel Hackett.
The point here isn’t to attack Rodgers for his comments on McAfee. He was great on there. I’m just saying that after some of the things he said about the Packers during that interview, it probably made the trade a little harder.
Because from a PR standpoint, there had to be a lot of Packer fans angry with the team’s brass for how this was handled, especially after some of the things Rodgers said.
So it became even more important for them to nail this trade, and get perhaps even more, than perhaps before they were looking to get, before the McAfee Show.
From a Packers’ PR standpoint, it can’t look like they gave him away.
March 22, 2022
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