Aaron Rodgers Isn't Mad at Zach Wilson for Refusing to Play. He's Mad About the 'Chicken Shit' Leaks to the Media About Zach Wilson's Refusal to Play.
The New York Jets do everything just a little bit extra. Like the Amish in Kingpin, they do everything half again as hard as everybody else. The Jets bowl 15 frames because 10 is for Quakers, especially when it comes to being dysfunctional.
Any of the other 31 teams would suffer the trauma of having their latest franchise savior lost for the season after four plays, and their previous franchise savior player be such a shambles that they were forced to bench him, with some degree of professionalism. But not the Jets. With them, it's never as simple as playing the cards fate has dealt them with stoic dignity. With them, it always descends into chaos and disorder. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. Every. Single. Damn. Time.
As Karim wrote about, in this latest episode Zach Wilson, who presumably gets paid to play quarterback, decided he's perfectly OK with the "gets paid" part of that arrangement, but would prefer to live without the obligation to "play quarterback.":
For his part, Robert Saleh at first tried to pretend this never happened. But reporters stuck by their story, saying they'd had it confirmed by multiple team sources. And Saleh didn't do himself any favors by responding to a text from some WFAN guy telling him he should start Wilson with, "Are you kidding me?" and pleading his own case to keep his job:
Which this Joe Bongino guy has since backtracked on, claiming what Saleh meant was, "You've been demanding he be benched and now you're arguing he starts?" When the only proper response from an NFL head coach to a sports radio host giving him roster advice should be, "Lose my number." But again, this is the Jets.
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Now you might assume a Pro's Pro like Aaron Rodgers, who has answered the bell 231 times in his NFL career through all manner of injuries, including that time he engineered a game winning drive while high as a lab rat on percocets, would be appalled at a teammate declaring himself to be a healthy scratch. But you'd be mistaken. Rodgers has declared no beef with Wilson. He's saving all his frustration for the insane way the Jets operate:
Fox News - Aaron Rodgers … apparently reached out to Wilson to advise him to take his former role back.
Head coach Robert Saleh squashed that notion later Monday, but Rodgers, on the other hand, never denied speaking with Wilson and seemed annoyed that such a report got out.
The 40-year-old said the fact that the report was leaked is a "problem with the organization" that needs to end.
"We need to get to the bottom of whatever this is coming from and put a stop to it privately. There's no place in a winning culture (for this)," Rodgers said on "The Pat McAfee Show."
"They're not your friends. And even if they are, is that really what you want to be about? You want to be about using someone in the media to leak stuff to in order, for what, to get them to put your name out there for a job, or if you're a player to get you a write-up? I think it's chicken s--- at its core, and I think it has no place in a winning organization…
"Put your name on something and stand behind it."
In this situation, you almost have to feel for Rodgers. I mean granted, when you have to talk a third year player who is making No. 2 Pick in the Draft money into making a start, that's obviously a problem. And if I were running things, I'd call the player out in front of the whole organization with a Shakespearean, "He who hath not stomach for this fight, let him depart. His passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse. We would not die in that man's company who fears his fellowship to die with us." Then have security toss him through the fire doors. But Rodgers seems like more of a "Handle Things Internally" kind of personality. And I can respect that.
Where I genuinely feel sympathy for Rodgers is that he is now getting a true taste of the team he chose to join. The backstabbing. The palace intrigue. The hidden agendas. The way everyone has some media type in their confidence that they can always feed dirt to and know it'll be published just the way they want. It's in the Jets DNA. All part of how business gets done.
Meanwhile here's ARod, coming to the world's biggest media market after spending 18 years in Green Bay, Wisconsin. For all intents and purposes, a college town where the local outlets were about 1% tougher on their football team than your typical campus newspaper. He probably considered New York would be a much trickier landscape to navigate. And maybe even that he could change the culture he referred to. He just didn't realize how deep the pile of "chicken shit" is. The Jets built their whole foundation on it. And even a guy with the moral authority of an Aaron Rodgers can't make things better standing on the sideline in street clothes.
It's profoundly sad, really. No sooner did Rodgers become a Jet than he snapped his Achilles. Three months later, they've broken his soul.