The Most Predictable Headline of All Time: Aaron Rodgers Calls Any Suggestion He Had Anything to Do With Robert Saleh Getting Fired 'Patently False'
Jim McIsaac. Getty Images.If being right all the time ever gets boring, I'll let you know. So far in a lifetime spent calling everything with uncanny accuracy, it still feels fresh and new. Yesterday I made a simple prediction/request:
And today it's "Ask and ye shall receive":
Source - Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers spoke today for the first time since yesterday’s firing of head coach Robert Saleh, and Rodgers said that he had no involvement in it.
“As far as any of the ridiculous allegations out there, I’m not going to spend more than one sentence in response to it, and that is I resent any of those accusations because they’re patently false,” Rodgers said on the Pat McAfee Show.
“It’s interesting the amount of power people think I have, which I don’t. But I love Robert.”
Rodgers said he feels for Saleh on a personal level.
“Yesterday was a day that reminds you of the simple fact that all of us who play know too well, and that’s that it’s a tough business,” Rodgers told McAfee. “I love Coach Saleh, we have a very solid relationship, we have since I met him in 2021 and had a nice conversation when they came and visited us for joint practices. He was a big reason why I came to the Jets.”
For starters, three things can be true at once. Aaron Rodgers can love Robert Saleh, can feel bad for Robert Saleh's family, and still want Robert Saleh gone.
As he says, the NFL is a tough racket. A cruel, merciless hierarchy where only the very few, very successful ones survive. Rogers is a super-competitor who not only recognizes this, he's built his whole career on it. He got a lesson in that in his first few seasons in Green Bay when Brett Favre famously and very publicly treated him like trash. Then after he established himself as an MVP and a Super Bowl champion, he butted heads with Mike McCarthy and Matt LaFleur. It not personal; just business. Which is what Tessio said when they caught him trying to whack Michael Corleone. Adding he always liked Michael, too.
But to accept the premise that Rodgers had nothing whatsoever to do with the decision to fire Saleh, you'd have to be brain dead. To get Rodgers to come to New York and keep him happy, the Jets hired Nathaniel Hackett, obtained Randall Cobb, Allen Lazard and a handful of his other Packers teammates, and turned the offense over to him. Now we're supposed to think that Woody Johnson would suddenly go rogue and fire the head coach without Rodgers' input?
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Well what about his consent, then? If Rodgers fought for Saleh to stay, do we think for one hot second the Jets would tell him "No." Fire the coach he loves, over his objection? What possible evidence have we seen over the last year and half since he joined the team would give anyone that impression?
Besides, it seems pretty convenient that they'd take Saleh out back behind the barn right after Rodgers' public displays of frustration:
And minutes after Saleh tried to take his favorite coordinator's power away:
Convenient, or the most uncanny series of coincidences we'll see all year.
I didn't know this was going to Rodgers' reaction because I'm a genius. That's the word you used, not me. I'm just a guy who's good at recognizing patterns and extrapolating them out to their logical conclusion. And when Hackett ends up being named Jets head coach at the end of the year and his quarterback says he had nothing to do with that either, remember that you heard it from your pal Old Balls first.