How Will Aaron Rodgers Cope With Irrelevance? (Mailbag Pt. 2)
Post-football career advice for Rodgers, free agent quarterback rankings, and even La Rosa de Guadalupe cannot stop the Jets from falling down flights of stairs.
Welcome to Part 2 of this edition of Mailbag! Yesterday we discussed the defending Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Today, we tackle Aaron Rodgers and some of the other 2025 free agent quarterbacks. Because you ask such incredible questions, there will probably be a Part 3 of mailbag later in the week!
What career would Rodgers be best suited for post-retirement and what will he actually do instead? – Jason Manley
Aaron Rodgers contains multitudes. He’s part stereotypical grindset dudebro, part overaged freshman-dorm Objectivist philosophizer and part middle-aged housewife seeking “mindfulness” through pricey not-quite-Wiccan New Age gewgaws. He’s positioned to be a pioneering brand activator and spokesman for a diverse line of extravagant self-care products for very manly megageniuses:
Immunotherapy-and-sandalwood scented candles
HGH-stimulating noise-cancelling headphones
Ayahuasca-infused tea cups, spoons, cutting boards and dishwasher detergent (100% non-psychoactive, probably.)
Rock-crystal desktop meditation fountains that also defluoridate your drinking water
Blackout masks that stare back at you
And so forth. It would be like TB12 for insufferable douchebags. Actually, that’s just TB12. It would be like TB12 for a more pseudo-intellectual strain of insufferable douchebags!
Hawking electrolyte-infused placebo gummies has not kept Tom Brady all that busy, however, and Rodgers is unlikely to find much fulfillment for his restless soul by selling 100% non-biodegradable yoga mats. (Recycling is a psyop.) What’s worse, Rodgers’ woo-woo anti-science has become mainstream. How can he keep his contrarian free-thinker cred when he’s just parroting the party line of his pal, the (heaven help us) Secretary of Health and Human Services? You know that old Onion gag about Marilyn Manson going door-to-door trying to shock people? That will be Rodgers once Joe Rogan and Pat McAfee realize that he’s just another dime-a-dozen moonbat when he’s unable to provide scoops like imma force the Jets to hire Jake Kumerow as Director of Scouting.
Rodgers will probably create his own podcast, then abandon it once he realizes he’s merely competing (barely) with Rogan. He’ll talk about entering politics, but he knows his ego would not stomach a loss in the Wisconsin gubenatorial primaries to a former senator’s wife who wants to ban Nancy Drew mysteries. He’ll end up hosting some reality show with toxic leanings: Pole Dancing All Stars; Extreme Wedding Ring Pawn Brokers. He may try to pull a Brady and buy his way into NFL power, but he has already wielded such power. Why would he pay to do something that he recently got paid to do?
Emotionally, the best thing Rodgers can do for himself is live up to his rhetoric by becoming some reclusive transcendental mystic living deep in some mountain cave, starting next Tuesday. Coincidentally, that’s also the best thing Rodgers could do for me, emotionally.
Assume Rodgers magically overnight turns into an A+ teammate who stays out of headlines, similar to an Andrew Luck. Purely front an on-the-field perspective, is there any team where it makes sense to kick the tires on him? I could see Pittsburgh, but that is still uninspiring considering their rotation post Big Ben. – Jack Hartman.
Rodgers’ DVOA last year was -5.4%. He ranked below Aidan O’Connell, Mac Jones and Justin Fields (passing only), though ahead of Joe Flacco and Cooper Rush. He ranked 24th in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, between Flacco and Geno Smith. He ranked 31st in QBR, with O’Connell 30th and Daniel Jones 32nd. He did all of this with an offense custom-tailored to his preferences. He is now 41 years old.
Both Fields and Russell Wilson would be objectively better options for the Steelers, since both are younger, coming off better seasons and work cheaper. Assuming the Model Teammate Tea also transformed Rodgers into someone willing to play for one year at about $10 million, he would be slightly more marketable than Flacco but less marketable than Andy Dalton, who now has a proven history as a mentor and Johnny-on-the-spot long reliever.
What’s your ranking of best available free agent QBs? – Tom Burton
There’s a huge gap between Sam Darnold and everyone else.
Now there’s a sentence I never thought I would type.