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The story seemed way out of character.
On February 15, the New York Post reported that Aaron Rodgers “pleaded” and “aggressively urged” the Jets to keep him. When they told him they were moving on, the Post reported he accepted the decision “like a man going to the gallows.”
Does that really sound like Rodgers?
Nobody on the beat acknowledged the report one way or another. The only person who had the gumption to shoot it down was The Athletic’s Dianna Russini.
“Nobody had shared with me that Rodgers was begging to stay a New York Jet,” Russini said this week during an appearance on the NFL Network. “In fact, this entire time, I knew that Aaron Rodgers wanted his time in New York to come to an end as well. He knew this chapter was over a while ago.”
Why would he beg to stay when his relationship with the owner is bad?
You get the sense that if Woody Johnson had gotten an ambassadorship and Christopher Johnson, whom Aaron loves, had taken over as owner, it might have been a different story.
Also, if they had hired a coach, with prior head coaching experience, like Steve Spagnuolo, Ron Rivera, Matt Nagy or Mike McCarthy, it might have been a different story.
Do you think Rodgers, at 41, wants to go through perhaps his last year with a head coach learning on the job? This isn’t a shot at Aaron Glenn, just the reality of the steep learning curve of first-year NFL coaches.
And also, the stuff Keyshawn Johnson said right after Glenn was hired had to catch Rodgers’ attention, and Rodgers isn’t stupid, he knows Glenn and Johnson are friends.
“He will not start off his career — now I said this first, nobody else is saying this — he will not start off his career with Aaron Rodgers as his quarterback in September,” Johnson said on January 24.
Johnson added: “I’m just letting you know, he ain’t going to start his career with that mess. It’s not going to happen.”
So this idea that Rodgers was begging a man, who clearly didn’t want him back, to take him back, and man who was going into his rookie year as a head coach, makes little sense.
So what would lead to a report like this from the New York Post?
Probably desperation to get clicks and get subscribers to go behind their paywall.
These days, with newspapers, the business model is all about getting people to buy premium content behind the paywall, and the Post, which used to be totally free online, now has a lot of stuff behind a wall, and it’s aggressively trying to get people to sign up.
One of the authors of this story was named Steve Helling. This is the first time I saw a New York Post sports story with his name attached.
I looked him up, and found out he came from “People” magazine, so he is from the gossip world. He worked for “People” from 2000-2023, so has a lot of sources in the world of show business.
In these challenging times for newspapers, the Post is aggressively trying to dig up sports scoops, and Helling, not usually a sports reporter, uncovered something from one of his sources, and delivered it to the sports department.
The story went viral. But it’s hard for some people, who were around the Jets scene during Rodgers’ time there, to buy that he would beg to return after his experiences the last two years.
Especially since nothing changed with the ownership, and you don’t need to be a Jets insider to realize that the Woody Johnson-Aaron Rodgers relationship isn’t peachy keen, especially after the QB’s flippant comment about Woody’s son.
“I’ve never been released before,” Rodgers said on December 23. “Being released would be a first. Being released by a teenager, that would also be a first.”
February 20, 2025
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