All I know is that I look forward to Aaron Rodgers’ appearance on The Pat McAfee Show every week… but… the New York Jets evidently wanted Aaron Rodgers to “shut up and play football.”
It’s crazy how fast the 41-year-old quarterback went from messiah to scapegoat in New York. Remember how excited Jets fans were when Rodgers signed with the team in 2023? The year prior, “Gang Green” was described as a “quarterback away” from Super Bowl contention. Now, they’re chasing the very quarterback that they got to fix everything… away.
Because that’s just what the Jets do.
It was announced on Super Bowl Sunday that the New York Jets had officially decided to part ways with Aaron Rodgers, only two years after they gave him the keys and trusted him to return the struggling team to glory. The first season was obviously a wash because of Rodgers’ season-ending injury he suffered a mere four snaps into his Jets tenure. But apparently New York didn’t see enough in year two to bring back the aging quarterback.
BREAKING: The #Jets informed Aaron Rodgers in a meeting last week that they will be moving on from him, per @JayGlazer. His time with the Jets is over. pic.twitter.com/yCmpQuQgKH
— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) February 9, 2025
And we’re now learning that there was more to the Jets’ decision than just wanting to move on from their Aaron Rodgers era.
The Athletic’s Dianna Russini reported on her Scoop City podcast that new head coach Aaron Glenn and general manager Darren Mougey basically laid out some rules of the road for Rodgers, and if he didn’t agree with them, it would be clear that they’d move on.
Most of those rules pertained to Aaron Rodgers being fully involved in offseason training (last year he wasn’t) and most importantly, discontinuing his weekly appearance on The Pat McAfee Show:
“I was told that when they had conversations with Aaron Rodgers about what the future would look like, if you’re going to be part of this team you’re going to attend all of training camp. You’re not going to do Pat McAfee interviews anymore. They had a conversation with him of, ‘If you were to stay here, here is how we would want it to be.’ So this to me is Aaron Glenn getting control back.”
The Jets laid out a structured future for Aaron Rodgers in New York built by the new regime. pic.twitter.com/VGmnpukEJO
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) February 11, 2025
Apparently that ultimatum didn’t go over well with Aaron Rodgers.
Though Dianna Russini went on to say that she never saw the relationship of Aaron Rodgers and the new head coach Aaron Glenn working out. As she explained, the New York Jets really would have had to roll out the red carpet to try and get him to stay, and when they started to roll out a rule book instead, Aaron knew it was time to go:
“I think that, no matter what the Jets were going to say, Aaron Rodgers wanted to move on. I think he was smart to talk to the Jets and say, ‘Where do we stand, how does this work?’ And maybe if they were on the side of convincing him more, this could have changed, but this wasn’t the way it was when they traded for him, when it was exciting.”
Rodgers will now either try to find another team that would want him, or he’ll decide that it’s time to hang the pads up. I don’t really see him retiring on these terms, so my bet would be that he’s a starter for at least one more year (if anyone is interested in his services). But if we’ve learned anything in the past couple of seasons, it’s that Aaron Rodgers is rather unpredictable…
Oh, and you can hear more on Aaron Rodgers’ exit from New York in Dianna Russini’s Scoop City podcast below:
The post New York Jets Reportedly Told Aaron Rodgers He Could Only Return To The Team If He Stopped Doing ‘The Pat McAfee Show’ first appeared on Whiskey Riff.