John Riordan: different ball game for Aaron Rodgers when he touches down in Big Apple

The veteran Green Bay Packers QB looks set to sign on with the much-maligned New York Jets.

EMPIRE STATE: Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers is on the way to New York. Picture: Patrick McDermott/Getty Images

Maybe Aaron Rodgers will finally swap one shade of green for another on St Patrick's Day. Maybe that was the plan all along.

Maybe by the time you're reading this, he has put pen to paper on his big money move from the Green Bay Packers to the New York Jets at the most annoyingly obscure time of his choosing and shortly after I filed this column.

That's who he is now; the King of the American Sports Libertarians, a branch of the Cult of the American Libertarian that destroys banks at a whim.

It's been quite a week over here. On the three-year anniversary of New York City shutting down for the pandemic, a run on a bank on the other side of the country brought us all the way back to words like "contagion" and "government, please do something quick to save us from this mess we've made".

The weirdness and greatness of Aaron Rodgers, one of the best and yet, somehow, most underachieving NFL quarterbacks of all time, was covered more than c omprehensively by Colin Sheridan in these pages a few weeks back. By way of brief reminder, he took part in a retreat which entailed confining himself to a pitch black facility in southern Oregon where he cut off contact with the outside world and spent some time with his messy, pretentious thoughts.

The 39-year-old entered solitary with, by his own account, a 90% chance of retirement from the sport from which he has mined one Super Bowl and multiple MVP awards. He reemerged less likely to retire and more resentful of the higher-ups at the Packers for shopping him around for the best available trade.

And here we are, the rest of us, still in the dark about where he will play next. We seem to be emerging into the light, though, because he used a daily YouTube broadcast called The Pat McAfee Show, his preferred mode of communication to us mortals, to tell us that he'll be a Jet as soon as the Packers agree to a deal.

“I haven’t been holding anything up,” Rodgers said during former NFL kicker McAfee's most viewed broadcast ever. “At this point it’s been compensation that the Packers are trying to get for me, kind of digging their heels in. It is interesting at this point to step back and take a look at the whole picture.” 

That whole picture qualifies as a mini-saga with three and possibly four parties desperate for a final outcome. Rodgers wants to move on to his final major contract. The Packers need to move on from their 15-year veteran and start anew. The Jets need to seize on the makings of a good squad with a proven leader who ideally would help them win now. And of course there's always the agent who needs the commission to deposit as soon as possible.

The 2023 NFL season and free agency began officially after his Pat McAfee show appearance and it'll be a tense period now to ensure Green Bay get as much as they can out of the transaction. By all accounts, they are in no rush and can feed of the desperation of the Jets which far outweighs that of the team that's dealing.

By contrast with the eight- and nine-figure deals that get done for the other types of footballers in Europe, US sports transfers, locally known as trades, rarely if ever involve cash. Players will swap employers as part of these transactions as will draft picks.

General Managers on both sides of the negotiation will often be forced to roll the dice on the outcomes of future drafts which can be fraught with uncertainty. It might be a lower quality class of college footballer coming through to graduate into professionalism that you are potentially acquiring. Or you could give away the opportunity of drafting the next Aaron Rodgers.

This is where it gets even more complicated; Green Bay will probably be demanding a first round pick or even two and that might be unpalatable both for the Jets (is it worth it for a nearly 40-year-old?) and for Rodgers who faces the prospect of not being surrounded by as many good players as possible.

It’s an entertaining mess and the circus will continue long after it has been resolved because adding a controversy magnate such as Aaron Rodgers into the New York Metropolitan Area’s voracious sports media market is going to create fireworks through the back end of this year.

It’s also doomed to fail given the long list of talented quarterbacks who are throwing it around in the AFC, the conference out of which the New York Jets have never emerged as victors in the five decades since the merger that created the modern NFL.

The first hint of weakness or aggravation will be seized upon by local tabloids and talk radio stations who will be eager to point out that this was a deal that should never have taken place.

The knife twists too when you factor in Rodgers’ chequered history on his attitude to the vital vaccinations most of us regular people opted into after our city - his new city? - was torn apart three years ago this and next month.

This is where Rodgers the arch libertarian comes into play. Another sporting faux-intellectual who figures that the rules of society don’t apply to them. Not only did he engineer a con whereby he avoided the shot his fellow professionals were mandated to have administered in order to keep playing and, well you know, lead by example? He saw fit to openly lie about his status in order to continue the ruse.

That might play well in his neck of the woods in Wisconsin but it might not get him landing right in New Jersey and New York.

He was driven by the sort of unconventional opinions about COVID and COVID prevention that are so recognisable from so many conspiracy theorists who spend a little too much of their spare time online, pursuing obscure websites.

During an appearance 18 months ago on that same Pat McAfee show, Rodgers used all the sort of tired terminology that helped him conveniently dance around the reality of his above-it-all belief system.

“I realise I’m in the crosshairs of the woke mob right now so before my final nail gets put in my cancel culture casket, I’d like to set the record straight on so many of the blatant lies out there,” Rodgers said. “I’m not some sort of anti-vax flat-earther. I’m somebody who’s a critical thinker. I march to the beat of my own drum. I believe strongly in bodily autonomy. Not to have to acquiesce to some woke culture or some crazed group of individuals.” 

Rodgers claimed that he was allergic to an ingredient in the Pfizer and Moderna shots, and that he shied away from the Johnson & Johnson shot after clotting issues forced the company to recall their vaccine for the briefest moment. He also said that he consulted multiple medical individuals which you can only assume was twaddle.

Rodgers also appeared at press conferences without a mask at a time when only vaccinated players were allowed to do so.

By his own words, that’s when the “shit storm hit”. He elevated himself to pariah status, describing it as an attempted takedown. All nonsense.

When Silicon Valley Bank suffered an old fashioned bank run because of loose talk by influential Venture Capitalists on Twitter, the same people who cry foul at the government and other perceived enemies, went running to the Fed, demanding they protect the deposits of customers to prevent a knock-on effect. Of course, just like the financial risks which took down Anglo Irish Bank, the fault was internal and cavalier.

The hypocrisy of Aaron Rodgers and his brethren who dominate Silicon Valley can have serious impact on normal people. But it can also be funny. All his suspicion of Big Pharma, whether well-placed or misguided, could end up having an ironic outcome this year.

The owners of the New York Jets, his next bosses, are the billionaire heirs to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune. Money will always trump ill-founded principles.

@JohnWRiordan