Jets QB Aaron Rodgers has taken some heat for missing the two-day mandatory minicamp practices in early June.
However, he did attend all OTA practices.
And minicamp practices these days, essentially look the same as OTA practices, so all told he attended 10 of 12 spring practices, and some would argue (including him), that is pretty good attendance for a veteran.
“They can arbitrarily put a tag on whatever week of OTAs they want and say, ‘This is the minicamp week,’ which makes it somehow more mandatory than the other weeks,” Rodgers told Barstool Sports. “But it was an OTA schedule. That’s how words can be a little deceiving from time to time. They can make a story out of the fact that I missed minicamp, but it was really two OTA days, but [I] came to the first 10.”
Rodgers got a lot of quality work in with his teammates during the OTA practices. Missing two OTA practices, or missing two minicamp practices, basically have the same impact. All these practices look the same in the spring – no tackling and little contact.
So Rodgers’ argument is essentially, had he missed two OTA practices, not many people would have said much, but since he missed two minicamp practices, from a semantics standpoint, because the word “minicamp” seems to have more gravitas than “OTA,” he took more heat.
It seems like a decent argument.
*******
The new issue of Jets Confidential Magazine is out, and you flat-out don’t want to miss it! If you would like to order an inflation-busting one-year digital subscription to JC for just $24.95 a year, go to simplecirc.com/subscribe/jets. For more options, click below. Great beach reading!
