The 10 most interesting things Aaron Rodgers said during wild ‘Pat McAfee Show’ interview
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‘They want to move, and so do I’: Top highlights from Aaron Rodgers-Pat McAfee interview
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Aaron Rodgers opened up in a nearly hour-long appearance Wednesday on “The Pat McAfee Show” in which he announced his intention to play for the New York Jets next season.
Rodgers, however, is still under contract with the Green Bay Packers, and both teams would need to work out the terms of a trade to ship him to New York. That didn’t stop Rodgers from criticizing the Packers for how they have handled their communication with the franchise mainstay at quarterback since the end of the 2022 season.
Rodgers, 39, just completed his 18th season in the NFL, all of which have been with the Packers and 15 of which have been with him as the team’s starter. He is a four-time AP NFL Most Valuable Player, four-time All-Pro selection, 10-time Pro Bowler and a one-time Super Bowl champion. He is the longest-tenured player in Packer franchise history.
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Here are the 10 most interesting things Rodgers said Wednesday during his appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show.”
‘Digging their heels in’
It’s rare — if not unheard of — to hear a player under contract with a team openly discuss the franchise’s internal stance on ongoing personnel matters. But as Rodgers is trying to expedite the trade to the Jets, he sought to clarify information that has been circulating about the matter. And, in the process, he pointed blame at the Packers for the delay.
“I haven’t been holding anything up at this point,” Rodgers said. “It’s been compensation that the Packers are trying to get for me, and kinda digging their heels in. So I think it’s interesting at this point to take a step back and look at the whole picture.
“My side: love and appreciation and gratitude for everything Green Bay has done for me. So much love and heart open for the Packers fans and what it meant to be their quarterback. And also the reality of the situation: it is what it is; the Packers would like to move on. They’ve let me know that in so many words. They’ve let other people know that in direct words.”
‘I love direct communication’
After the 2022 season concluded, Rodgers said, Packers executives told him to take as much time as he needed to mull his future. He added that the team expressed a desire to see him retire as a Packer if he wanted to return to play for another season.
“It was clear to me (after the “darkness retreat”) that although the Packers were going to say the right thing publicly, that they were ready to move on,” Rodgers said. “I don’t know what changed that or what moved that, if they were like, ‘Hey, we need to make a decision here because he hasn’t made a decision yet.’
“Again, there’s no victims here. I’m not sitting as a victim. I love Green Bay … I just think I wish that in the beginning of the offseason that may have been the conversation because I love direct communication.”
G.O.A.T. of Green Bay?
“I would say this is debatable, but I’m debatably the best player in franchise history,” Rodgers said. “I’m in the conversation for sure. What’s not debatable is I’m the longest-tenured Packer in history. You can debate the first part, obviously Bart (Starr), Brett (Favre), a number of names are incredible. But you can’t debate anybody has been there longer than I have. Nobody has bled Green and Gold like me. I love that city. I love those fans. I love that region. …
“But the fact of the matter is you’ve got an aging face of the franchise of the last 15 years it’s time to do right by.”
Cutting ties
Rodgers repeatedly complimented Packers backup Jordan Love, whom Green Bay picked in the first round (No. 26 overall) of the 2020 NFL draft, but said he believes that the Packers cut bait on aging players before they decline.
“As is the case with the Packers, they like to get rid of players like a year early instead of a year late, in their minds,” Rodgers said. “There’s probably some people who believe that I was a descending player and that it was time to make a change, even though we were coming off the NFC championship game (after the 2020 season). …
“They drafted a guy to replace me, though maybe not right away because there was nothing about trading in the immediate. … So when they drafted Jordan, this conversation would’ve happened a lot sooner had I not won back-to-back COVID MVPs.”
More on that …
Rodgers elaborated on the point above later in the interview by listing a number of veterans whom he felt Green Bay let go unceremoniously.
“Just look at their track record,” he said. “The guy sitting over there (former linebacker A.J. Hawk), to what happened with Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb, Julius Peppers, Clay Matthews, Brett Goode, on and on and on. There’s just a way of doing things; you didn’t want to bring them back, that’s fine, that’s business.
“But there’s a way to do it that allows the man to keep the dignity. That’s some of the stuff I was fighting for a couple of years ago. How could we do this a little bit better? If we want to be about family and we want to be about love and taking care of our people, let’s put our actions where are words are at. It’s really important to me.”
In the dark
Rodgers detailed his experience during his “darkness retreat” that he said lasted parts of five days.
“It was a great reset for me, for my body and for my mind,” Rodgers said. “Maybe a little bit longer than I needed. I felt like by the time I got to the fourth day, I was like, ‘All right, I’m ready to come out of here.’ “
Rodgers said food was provided for him every day at 6, which was the best way to gauge the passage of time.
“You’re kind of counting down the nights once you get to the third night, ‘OK, I have one more night of this’ so that’s how you kind of gauge the whole process,” he said.
“It’s so quiet that you’re just listening for that door handle to come up, and you’re like ‘Oh, finally, it’s six o’clock, I can eat.’ But there’s not a lot of sounds in there. The meditations are incredible. There’s zero distractions. There’s zero light. Your eyes don’t adjust so you can’t even see parts of the room. You have some hallucinations at some point where the room actually looks different than it does. But I’m glad I did it.”
Rodgers then seemed to make a joke about going through the process without any mind-altering substances, saying: “There were no vitamins. It was completely natural.”
‘Lose my number’
With Rodgers keeping his intentions private, media and NFL insiders sought to break the news of his next move. He has said repeatedly that he does not divulge information to reporters through back channels and revealed his response to ESPN reporter Adam Schefter’s text message.
“Look, ask Schefter what I texted him when he somehow got my number and texted me,” Rodgers said. “I didn’t respond to Diana Russini, I think her name is, but somehow she got my number as well — but I would say the same thing that I told Schefty: ‘Lose my number. Nice try.’ I’ll speak for myself.”
Schefter, in a tweet that came minutes after Rodgers’ comments, confirmed Rodgers’ response with a screenshot.
‘So ridiculous’
Rodgers shot down an ESPN report indicating that he had presented Jets executives a list of players he wanted the team to sign. It’s important to note that the language used in the ESPN report said Rodgers “provided” the Jets “with a wish-list” of free agents.
“I’m sure there will be people that have their sources, but from what I’ve seen, (it was) that I had a sheet of paper when I met with the Jets and I said: ‘Sign these people,’ and that’s not the reality,” Rodgers said. “So ridiculous. It’s so stupid to think that I would do that, number one.
“Now, did they ask me about certain guys that I played with over the years? Of course. Did I talk glowingly about teammates that I love? Yeah. … People want these things to be so true, that I’m in this meeting, dressed in ceremony regalia, giving them some sort of hand-written-on-parchment demand list of people they need to sign. … My only demand is for transparency, and if you say some (expletive), sometimes it’s not even worth it.”
The Jets on Tuesday did come to an agreement with former Packer receiver Allen Lazard, a Rodgers favorite.
90/10
“I gotta admit I went into the darkness 90% retiring, 10% playing,” Rodgers said. “That’s where my mind was, my mind was: ‘I’m tired of this.’ I hadn’t gotten back in my workouts yet, and I thought that’s what was best for me. So I went into the darkness, and I contemplated a lot of different things. But one day I spent entirely on the reality I was retired, and one I spent on the reality that I was coming back and playing.
“And I just sat with that for hours and hours, what that looked like, what the reality is, how that all felt, and when I came out I was really interested in what the landscape was, where Green Bay was at, and if I wanted to play what the options were.”
Street parking
Rodgers said that several members of the Jets front office met with him March 7 in his home in Southern California for four hours.
“We had a nice visit,” Rodgers said. “They decided to leave their cars in the street, which attracted paparazzi attention, which got a few of them photographed, which I thought was pretty funny. But we had a nice conversation.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The 10 most interesting things Aaron Rodgers said during wild ‘Pat McAfee Show’ interview