gopkrs
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It's all a damn soap opera
State of our former QB, Aaron Rodgers
- Thread starter OldSchool101
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Pokerbrat2000
Opinions are like A-holes, we all have one.
Yes, that was my point. Drama always seems to find Rodgers.
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gopkrs
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But you seem to care
To be fair, I would also propose it is probably not a coincidence that the "talking heads" in the media seem to find more drama with a guy who tends to disparage the media and pretty much only gives exclusive access to McAfee (who himself is not exactly a darling of the "legacy media" either)....
Yeah but does Vinnie find Rodgers?
Pokerbrat2000
Opinions are like A-holes, we all have one.
As do you
Rodgers wanting a red-carpet welcome, with cherubs throwing rose petals in his path as he enters the room, is a joke. The ayahuasca-fried his brain. This isn't a diss of his career (overall) and his future HOF induction. But clearly Rodgers sees himself as something he is not.
Maybe the Jets could have or should have handled his dismissal via phone or Zoom. But Rodgers would then accuse the Jets of not being brave enough to meet him face-to-face. Rodgers always finds someone to take responsibility for something, as long as it's not him. I mean geez the Jets even required that he pay for his flight. Poor baby.
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Pokerbrat2000
Opinions are like A-holes, we all have one.
Sounds a lot like a Political QB that I read about daily, every 30 minutes it seems.
I guess while I agree with you about the media pumping the drama more than they would with say a 3rd string LB, that is the price you pay for being a star in the NFL. If you want to be under the spot light for all the Hall of Fame Moments, don't give them anything to keep that spotlight on off the field. Rodgers pretends to hate the spotlight, but his words/actions tells me that he actually enjoys all the attention.
One question for you; "Besides his family stuff, where was all this drama prior to 2020?"
Sounds a lot like a Political QB that I read about daily, every 30 minutes it seems.
I guess while I agree with you about the media pumping the drama more than they would with say a 3rd string LB, that is the price you pay for being a star in the NFL. If you want to be under the spot light for all the Hall of Fame Moments, don't give them anything to keep that spotlight on off the field. Rodgers pretends to hate the spotlight, but his words/actions tells me that he actually enjoys all the attention.
What I mean isn't that I don't think it really comes just with being a star. There are plenty of star players who you almost never hear talked about (and plenty of them are difficult, hold controversial beliefs, etc). Maybe it's chicken vs egg but I'm pretty confident that (star or not) if Rodgers hadn't seemingly made it a point to disparage the "legacy" sports media, there'd probably be 75% less chatter about him, regardless of everything else. Like I said, I think he does have a tendency to keep things going (in that he feels like a "get the last word in" type of guy) but I also think it's a case where a lot of the "news" about Rodgers is only news...because the people who make the news are telling us it's important news
That's kind of what I mean though. I don't think Rodgers' personality radically changed at this point and I don't think he reinvented his beliefs at this time BUT it is around the time that Rodgers started appearing on McAfee more and started his "campaign" of criticisms directed at much of the rest of sports media.
And I don't want to get too into the weeds about it but I suspect for many much of the "drama" can all stem back to his "immunized" comments (which for the record I found to be immature, boneheaded, and deliberately misleading, although I think a simple "no comment" should have been a perfectly acceptable answer without inviting further prying/questioning) and I have a hunch there are many media types who are never going to forgive or forget him committing that unpardonable sin...but again I think that will probably take the conversation a messy direction for many
Pokerbrat2000
Opinions are like A-holes, we all have one.
I suspect for many much of the "drama" can all stem back to his "immunized" comments (which for the record I found to be immature, boneheaded, and deliberately misleading, although I think a simple "no comment" should have been a perfectly acceptable answer without inviting further prying/questioning) and I have a hunch there are many media types who are never going to forgive or forget him committing that unpardonable sin...but again I think that will probably take the conversation a messy direction for many
I actually thought Rodgers was a different guy after Jordan Love was drafted. It went downhill from there. The whole "I've been immunized" comment just added a lot of outside (non-NFL) fuel to the fire.
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OldSchool101
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Oh I agree. Rodgers best landing spot would’ve been the Vikes.
yeah, but would it be a hard deal to pass for $25 million like a 50,000,00 2year deal
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OP
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OldSchool101
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It’s good clean fun with high grade circus music. Also known as a Soap Opera
Thirteen Below
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Dude, I believe you completely nailed it. Every word of it.
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OldSchool101
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You mean McCarthy getting hit by s Bus?
Thirteen Below
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We are deeply caring people.
I actually deep-dove into this a month or two ago, and found a lot of reporting indicating that whatever bug he had up his *** in 2020 had actually first started crawling in there in 2018. A lot of that reporting was supported by quote from Rodgers himself. I used my AI app to collate all the details, and will paste the whole thing here (it's not copyrighted material)
This is long, so fair warning... Half Empty? You're gonna wanna scroll past it, and maybe a few others will too.
But it is pretty detailed and thorough, for those who are interested in the whole story; evidently Rodgers was a lot grumpier for the last several years than any of us could have guessed....
For those who don't use AI yet, the way it works is that it crawls the entire internet and scrapes every detail it can find on the topic (which in this case was, "what events and developments began happening in green bay in 2018 that first began to alienate aaron rodgers and cause friction and tension between him and the packer organization"), and then organizes and summarizes it. It's usually amazingly accurate and comprehensive, and in this case, it agrees with everything I found myself with google a month or two back.
Except it took 20 seconds instead of 45 minutes, and organized it better than i could have.
And again, most of this is supported by interviews with Rodgers in the intervening years; the AI app provides links to every source - they just don't show up when I copy and paste.
So, that's 2018.
There were more incidents of that nature in 2018 that AI did not find, such as a time when McCarthy sent in a play to the huddle, and Rodgers paused a moment, said "**** that ****", and called a different play - reported by Mercedes Lewis (already a 13-year vet), who said he'd never quite seen a quarterback do that before, and initially assumed it must be a crazy joke. But he and other receivers reported that this was frequent, that some games Rodgers changed more than half the plays that came in from the sideline, and didn't care what anyone thought about it.
There was more history n 2019 and 20, regarding receiver Jake Kumerow, upon whom Rodgers apparently had developed something of a man crush. In an interview, Rodgers described Kumerow as a "fantastic, steady player" and a "roster lock," emphasizing his reliability and value to the team. This was on the evening of Friday, September 4, 2020.
Early the morning of September 5, 2019, Green Bay cut Kumerow.
This was was described by multiple sources as a "significant blow to Rodgers’ relationship with the organization", with NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport calling it "a little bit of a death knell in the relationship" and reporting that it "drove Rodgers nuts".
A few months later, some reporters asked Aaron what he thought about some young player, and he said something like "I'm not going to comment on personnel; last time I did that the guy got cut the next morning." Rodgers apparently viewed it as a personal bop on the beak. Whether or not that was justified, who knows, because.... well... Rodgers.
Additionally, when McCarthy was finally voted off the island in 2019, Rodgers supposedly huffed and puffed because he was not personally consulted as to who they should bring in to replace McCarthy. There was reporting that he felt he should have been a part of that decision, even though he did think Lafleur was a good hire.
Rodgers also expressed a lot of frustration that the team was making major personnel moves without including him in the discussions....
QB Rodgers shares what led to displeasure with the Packers, says he wanted to give more input
On the first day of Packers training camp, Aaron Rodgers has laid it all on the table, describing everything that has happened between he and the Packers since the last
Other reporting suggests that he had a serious grudge against McCarthy ever since Day One, but whether that's true or not, who can say.
This is a point of view I've seen reporters hint at a lot over the years, but never express as directly as this article does. Why that is, I can't say. Maybe it's ********, all speculation, over the top. Maybe it has some validity, but still too much too far. Or maybe it just has some truth to it, but we'll never know how much at this point.
But whatever happened evidently started happening years before any of us saw it starting to happen. Which side is right, which side is wrong, I'm not gonna pick a side. I know Gutekunst has said that he wished he'd handled the whole situation differently, and I think I've seen Aaron say similar. Whatever is done is done, and we're all at where we are at.
But the narrative seems to indicate that it didn't begin to unravel the moment Jordan Love was drafted - for whatever reason or reasons, it had been building toward that flashpoint for several years, and if it hadn't been that then it would have been something else later. Cuz that's just where that train was heading.
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“In my opinion, based on what I have accomplished in this league, the way I care about my teammates, the way I show up in the locker room, the way I lead, the way I conduct myself in the community, it should tie myself to a little bit more input.”We are deeply caring people.
I actually deep-dove into this a month or two ago, and found a lot of reporting indicating that whatever bug he had up his *** in 2020 had actually first started crawling in there in 2018. A lot of that reporting was supported by quote from Rodgers himself. I used my AI app to collate all the details, and will paste the whole thing here (it's not copyrighted material)
This is long, so fair warning... Half Empty? You're gonna wanna scroll past it, and maybe a few others will too.
But it is pretty detailed and thorough, for those who are interested in the whole story; evidently Rodgers was a lot grumpier for the last several years than any of us could have guessed....
For those who don't use AI yet, the way it works is that it crawls the entire internet and scrapes every detail it can find on the topic (which in this case was, "what events and developments began happening in green bay in 2018 that first began to alienate aaron rodgers and cause friction and tension between him and the packer organization"), and then organizes and summarizes it. It's usually amazingly accurate and comprehensive, and in this case, it agrees with everything I found myself with google a month or two back.
Except it took 20 seconds instead of 45 minutes, and organized it better than i could have.
And again, most of this is supported by interviews with Rodgers in the intervening years; the AI app provides links to every source - they just don't show up when I copy and paste.
So, that's 2018.
There were more incidents of that nature in 2018 that AI did not find, such as a time when McCarthy sent in a play to the huddle, and Rodgers paused a moment, said "**** that ****", and called a different play - reported by Mercedes Lewis (already a 13-year vet), who said he'd never quite seen a quarterback do that before, and initially assumed it must be a crazy joke. But he and other receivers reported that this was frequent, that some games Rodgers changed more than half the plays that came in from the sideline, and didn't care what anyone thought about it.
There was more history n 2019 and 20, regarding receiver Jake Kumerow, upon whom Rodgers apparently had developed something of a man crush. In an interview, Rodgers described Kumerow as a "fantastic, steady player" and a "roster lock," emphasizing his reliability and value to the team. This was on the evening of Friday, September 4, 2020.
Early the morning of September 5, 2019, Green Bay cut Kumerow.
This was was described by multiple sources as a "significant blow to Rodgers’ relationship with the organization", with NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport calling it "a little bit of a death knell in the relationship" and reporting that it "drove Rodgers nuts".
A few months later, some reporters asked Aaron what he thought about some young player, and he said something like "I'm not going to comment on personnel; last time I did that the guy got cut the next morning." Rodgers apparently viewed it as a personal bop on the beak. Whether or not that was justified, who knows, because.... well... Rodgers.
Additionally, when McCarthy was finally voted off the island in 2019, Rodgers supposedly huffed and puffed because he was not personally consulted as to who they should bring in to replace McCarthy. There was reporting that he felt he should have been a part of that decision, even though he did think Lafleur was a good hire.
Rodgers also expressed a lot of frustration that the team was making major personnel moves without including him in the discussions....
QB Rodgers shares what led to displeasure with the Packers, says he wanted to give more input
On the first day of Packers training camp, Aaron Rodgers has laid it all on the table, describing everything that has happened between he and the Packers since the lastwww.waow.com
Other reporting suggests that he had a serious grudge against McCarthy ever since Day One, but whether that's true or not, who can say.
This is a point of view I've seen reporters hint at a lot over the years, but never express as directly as this article does. Why that is, I can't say. Maybe it's ********, all speculation, over the top. Maybe it has some validity, but still too much too far. Or maybe it just has some truth to it, but we'll never know how much at this point.
But whatever happened evidently started happening years before any of us saw it starting to happen. Which side is right, which side is wrong, I'm not gonna pick a side. I know Gutekunst has said that he wished he'd handled the whole situation differently, and I think I've seen Aaron say similar. Whatever is done is done, and we're all at where we are at.
But the narrative seems to indicate that it didn't begin to unravel the moment Jordan Love was drafted - for whatever reason or reasons, it had been building toward that flashpoint for several years, and if it hadn't been that then it would have been something else later. Cuz that's just where that train was heading.
Hi 13 and thanks for the research.
I highlighted this quote only to point out - if you're the only person who thinks you deserve a greater role (pick any industry, any job) or a promotion, or whatever, well that's a problem. Rodgers uses "I, my, myself" 8 times, in one sentence.
Have to feel bad for the guy when he seems to be delusional. He is gonna have no career opportunities once he finishes with football. He's too alienating to make for a good color broadcaster (he flunked his Jeopardy MC opportunity because he just isn't a likable guy).
All that money, all that fame, and a total inability to look inside, even just once in a while. He is easy to anger and unable to be self critical. I would not want a life like that.
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Voyageur
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Who is Aaron Rodgers? He's not the same guy who played over a decade with the Packers. The guy everyone is talking about is an old Packer who is no longer there, who's trying to hang on to a life he's enjoyed for so long. His whole life has been around football, and he's clinging to it just like Tom Brady did, and so many players have in the past. It becomes embedded in their DNA. I understand that feeling deep inside. I remember play fast-pitch softball until I was 56 years old and had a stroke. After making substantial recovery, I tried for three years to return to the field to play.
Even after I got my legs back, and the majority of my coordination, I was 59 years old and working towards playing. I wanted it. I wanted it DESPERATELY!!!! I'd substituted slow and fast pitch softball into my life the day after I quit playing baseball. The day I realized that I could no longer hang in there with the new kids on the block. They were beginning to be better than me.
So, here I was. 59 years old. I went to a batting cage every day for over two months. I'd take at least 100 swings every day. Sometimes as many as 200. I built my arm strength up and worked hard. But my legs kept failing me. I'd moved from the outfield to 1st base when I was about 50. That was a blow. I'd already moved from centerfield to left field which hurt. I loved playing centerfield. It was my "kingdom" and nobody could outplay me. I could make those catches that make highlight reels. Then a guy 25 years younger, and faster, outplayed me and I ended up in left field. I also ended up moving from clean-up hitter to 5th or 6th in the lineup. I was still one of the top 3 hitters on the team as far as average, but I wasn't drilling as many over the fence or getting too many extra bases like I did when I was younger. I could see it in the stats, and I knew it, but I didn't want to accept it. At 59, hitting one to the wall but not over was a real chore. They ended up fly outs, not dingers, like they were in the past. The power was gone. In the end, I found myself as a "utility first baseman" for several games and realized that I was only there because of what I did in the past. They were being kind to let me stick around. It was gone. So, I retired from the game completely.
Even today, at 84, I can't bear to watch a softball game because it hurts knowing I can't do it like I did in the past. I avoid them.
Rodgers is nearing his "59." It happens to all athletes. If you've been there, you understand. You try to hang on because it's what you love and feel you do best.
If you feel anything for him, feel that he's like a horse trying to run one more race. Hanging on to be a winner. My favorite horse was a gelding named John Henry. He didn't arrive on the scene as a winner until he was long-in-the-tooth. He ran his heart out, and was an amazing horse. I kind of like to think of myself as having been a little bit like him when playing sports, but at a lesser level. I think guys like Favre, Brady, and Rodgers, all fit into that same mold. They all wanted to go out a winner just like John Henry.
But that's just my opinion, for what it's worth. After you read a little about John Henry, I think you'll see what I mean.
www.horseillustrated.com
Even after I got my legs back, and the majority of my coordination, I was 59 years old and working towards playing. I wanted it. I wanted it DESPERATELY!!!! I'd substituted slow and fast pitch softball into my life the day after I quit playing baseball. The day I realized that I could no longer hang in there with the new kids on the block. They were beginning to be better than me.
So, here I was. 59 years old. I went to a batting cage every day for over two months. I'd take at least 100 swings every day. Sometimes as many as 200. I built my arm strength up and worked hard. But my legs kept failing me. I'd moved from the outfield to 1st base when I was about 50. That was a blow. I'd already moved from centerfield to left field which hurt. I loved playing centerfield. It was my "kingdom" and nobody could outplay me. I could make those catches that make highlight reels. Then a guy 25 years younger, and faster, outplayed me and I ended up in left field. I also ended up moving from clean-up hitter to 5th or 6th in the lineup. I was still one of the top 3 hitters on the team as far as average, but I wasn't drilling as many over the fence or getting too many extra bases like I did when I was younger. I could see it in the stats, and I knew it, but I didn't want to accept it. At 59, hitting one to the wall but not over was a real chore. They ended up fly outs, not dingers, like they were in the past. The power was gone. In the end, I found myself as a "utility first baseman" for several games and realized that I was only there because of what I did in the past. They were being kind to let me stick around. It was gone. So, I retired from the game completely.
Even today, at 84, I can't bear to watch a softball game because it hurts knowing I can't do it like I did in the past. I avoid them.
Rodgers is nearing his "59." It happens to all athletes. If you've been there, you understand. You try to hang on because it's what you love and feel you do best.
If you feel anything for him, feel that he's like a horse trying to run one more race. Hanging on to be a winner. My favorite horse was a gelding named John Henry. He didn't arrive on the scene as a winner until he was long-in-the-tooth. He ran his heart out, and was an amazing horse. I kind of like to think of myself as having been a little bit like him when playing sports, but at a lesser level. I think guys like Favre, Brady, and Rodgers, all fit into that same mold. They all wanted to go out a winner just like John Henry.
But that's just my opinion, for what it's worth. After you read a little about John Henry, I think you'll see what I mean.
Age Was Only a Number for John Henry
A Hall of Fame member… a legend in his own time… an amazingly talented athlete that set records that are still standing more than thirty years later. All of these descriptions apply to John Henry, one of the greatest racehorses to ever set foot on a racetrack. John Henry was the classic “horse...
www.horseillustrated.com
Pokerbrat2000
Opinions are like A-holes, we all have one.
Great post, thanks.We are deeply caring people.
I actually deep-dove into this a month or two ago, and found a lot of reporting indicating that whatever bug he had up his *** in 2020 had actually first started crawling in there in 2018. A lot of that reporting was supported by quote from Rodgers himself. I used my AI app to collate all the details, and will paste the whole thing here (it's not copyrighted material)
This is long, so fair warning... Half Empty? You're gonna wanna scroll past it, and maybe a few others will too.
But it is pretty detailed and thorough, for those who are interested in the whole story; evidently Rodgers was a lot grumpier for the last several years than any of us could have guessed....
For those who don't use AI yet, the way it works is that it crawls the entire internet and scrapes every detail it can find on the topic (which in this case was, "what events and developments began happening in green bay in 2018 that first began to alienate aaron rodgers and cause friction and tension between him and the packer organization"), and then organizes and summarizes it. It's usually amazingly accurate and comprehensive, and in this case, it agrees with everything I found myself with google a month or two back.
Except it took 20 seconds instead of 45 minutes, and organized it better than i could have.
And again, most of this is supported by interviews with Rodgers in the intervening years; the AI app provides links to every source - they just don't show up when I copy and paste.
So, that's 2018.
There were more incidents of that nature in 2018 that AI did not find, such as a time when McCarthy sent in a play to the huddle, and Rodgers paused a moment, said "**** that ****", and called a different play - reported by Mercedes Lewis (already a 13-year vet), who said he'd never quite seen a quarterback do that before, and initially assumed it must be a crazy joke. But he and other receivers reported that this was frequent, that some games Rodgers changed more than half the plays that came in from the sideline, and didn't care what anyone thought about it.
There was more history n 2019 and 20, regarding receiver Jake Kumerow, upon whom Rodgers apparently had developed something of a man crush. In an interview, Rodgers described Kumerow as a "fantastic, steady player" and a "roster lock," emphasizing his reliability and value to the team. This was on the evening of Friday, September 4, 2020.
Early the morning of September 5, 2019, Green Bay cut Kumerow.
This was was described by multiple sources as a "significant blow to Rodgers’ relationship with the organization", with NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport calling it "a little bit of a death knell in the relationship" and reporting that it "drove Rodgers nuts".
A few months later, some reporters asked Aaron what he thought about some young player, and he said something like "I'm not going to comment on personnel; last time I did that the guy got cut the next morning." Rodgers apparently viewed it as a personal bop on the beak. Whether or not that was justified, who knows, because.... well... Rodgers.
Additionally, when McCarthy was finally voted off the island in 2019, Rodgers supposedly huffed and puffed because he was not personally consulted as to who they should bring in to replace McCarthy. There was reporting that he felt he should have been a part of that decision, even though he did think Lafleur was a good hire.
Rodgers also expressed a lot of frustration that the team was making major personnel moves without including him in the discussions....
QB Rodgers shares what led to displeasure with the Packers, says he wanted to give more input
On the first day of Packers training camp, Aaron Rodgers has laid it all on the table, describing everything that has happened between he and the Packers since the last
Other reporting suggests that he had a serious grudge against McCarthy ever since Day One, but whether that's true or not, who can say.
This is a point of view I've seen reporters hint at a lot over the years, but never express as directly as this article does. Why that is, I can't say. Maybe it's ********, all speculation, over the top. Maybe it has some validity, but still too much too far. Or maybe it just has some truth to it, but we'll never know how much at this point.
But whatever happened evidently started happening years before any of us saw it starting to happen. Which side is right, which side is wrong, I'm not gonna pick a side. I know Gutekunst has said that he wished he'd handled the whole situation differently, and I think I've seen Aaron say similar. Whatever is done is done, and we're all at where we are at.
But the narrative seems to indicate that it didn't begin to unravel the moment Jordan Love was drafted - for whatever reason or reasons, it had been building toward that flashpoint for several years, and if it hadn't been that then it would have been something else later. Cuz that's just where that train was heading.
I think for many fans, myself included, we put up with or looked the other way, at the early negative Rodgers stuff. He had been a Packer since 2005 and we saw him as our FHOF QB, the best QB in the NFL and a guy that was loved by his teammates. "Who cares what his family says, Who cares what his Ex's say. Of course he is going to audible out of the head coaches play calls."
I do agree though, the head butting with McCarthy, as well as Rodgers unhappiness with some personnel decisions, were the bigger cracks in the perfect that most of us had painted of Rodgers. That started to change how some viewed Rodgers. Had Rodgers just been a rookie or average player, maybe nobody gives him a free pass at that time of all those things.
For me, the drafting of Love and how Rodgers reacted to it, was when the dark light started to really shine on Rodgers. Rodgers pretended to not be too upset about the pick, but his actions after that day said otherwise.
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gopkrs
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I only checked this out because I was quoted. Iv'e take PokerBrat to heart and no longer look at this thread. I think it is all total BS and soap opera crap. And I don't have any hard feelings about ARod nor the way he goes about things. I was glad he was traded because he wasn't looking at the whole field and seemed to always be making faces at the receivers instead of just dealing with what he had and throwing to an open receiver imho. And also seemingly changing too many play calls at the line of scrimmage and taking too long to hike the ball. But all that is now over and I don't care about his situation. For the record though; I think he will play with the steelers. And I hope he has a good year.
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As I said before, it would seem that the Steelers are certainly aware of any and all of the "drama" (and I would have to venture to guess that they are in fact considerably MORE aware than any of us here are)...and they saw his play last season just like we did, too (again: with a greater degree of analysis/scrutiny than we are also privy to, either) and yet there is seemingly still at least some contingent who currently view Rodgers as their best option for the immediate future. And lest we forget, the Steelers are pretty consistently regarded as one of the best-ran franchises in the league...
Now like I said, maybe they are waiting it out and will draft someone tonight. But even setting aside the draft, it is clear that at bare minimum they view Rodgers as a better option than any other free agent QB, trading for another QB, AND a better option than the two QBs they had in-house already and would have presumably had first opportunity to extend with (Wilson - 1 yr 10.5m, Fields - 2 yrs 40m)
So once again I'll say, it would seem that there are only two possibilities here:
1.) The Steelers are indeed a well-run franchise and they are pursuing Rodgers because they believe a.) the drama is overblown, b.) his decline in play is exaggerated and/or will improve in their context, or c.) both
or 2.) The Steelers are in fact not as well-run as we have been led to believe and they are choosing to ignore all of the "red flags" around Rodgers and continue pursuing a deal with him.
Now like I said, maybe they are waiting it out and will draft someone tonight. But even setting aside the draft, it is clear that at bare minimum they view Rodgers as a better option than any other free agent QB, trading for another QB, AND a better option than the two QBs they had in-house already and would have presumably had first opportunity to extend with (Wilson - 1 yr 10.5m, Fields - 2 yrs 40m)
So once again I'll say, it would seem that there are only two possibilities here:
1.) The Steelers are indeed a well-run franchise and they are pursuing Rodgers because they believe a.) the drama is overblown, b.) his decline in play is exaggerated and/or will improve in their context, or c.) both
or 2.) The Steelers are in fact not as well-run as we have been led to believe and they are choosing to ignore all of the "red flags" around Rodgers and continue pursuing a deal with him.
Thirteen Below
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I actually like Rodgers; still do. Obviously he rubs me the wrong way sometimes, but he's like that old high school or college buddy who just annoys the hell out of you sometimes but nevertheless, you just can't help liking the guy. And I think a big part of that is because of the sheer joy I found watching him do his magic week in and week out, for 15 years of my life. IMO, the best pure passer I've seen since Marino.
I even went out of my way to watch Jets' games last season whenever I had the opportunity, just for the chance to see one or two more of those beautiful, absolutely perfect passes.
I'm just humbled by how fortunate we Packer fans are, to have 30 straight years of watching two of the most exciting quarterbacks ever to play the game. Even if they both do act like ****s every now and then, I'm still grateful to both of them for being such a big part of almost half my life.
But the snit ft he threw about Love... that's something I don't really respect. Just a couple of weeks before the draft, he was asked on the radio how he'd feel about Green Bay drafting a quarterback, and he said, "I'm a realist. I know where we're at as an organization, and I know where I'm at in my career. Anybody they bring in isn't going to beat me out anytime soon anyway".
And then when they do draft a developmental QB, his feelings are hurt.
I guess that just bothers me a bit.
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Cheesehead
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Me too, on both counts.
I already feel badly for the guy, that Green Bay is going to be the team that beats him in the last Super Bowl of his career.
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Cheesehead
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I can relate to that; but with me it was/is hockey. I was still playing well into my 50s when I lived in the Twin Cities, and (to my surprise) pretty competitively. My conditioning was good, because I'd been a bicycle racer and 300-400 mile a week recreational rider well into my 40s until I developed a type of arthritis in my kneecap that was badly exacerbated by bicycling, and often hiked 40 miles or more per week on hilly terrain when i had to give up bicycles.
I'd obviously lost some speed, and some quickness (not always the same thing), but made up for a lot of that with experience and mental quickness. I played pickup games at Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis and Lake Phalen in St. Paul several nights a week, with guys sometimes half my age, and I don't think any of them saw me as a liability if we happened to be on the same team.
There was another fellow about 10 years older than I that played pretty regularly at both lakes, and they usually split us up, one "old guy" per team. But on the nights that we wound up playing together, we got a lot of surprised "whoas!!" from the kids when we connected on a play. That felt pretty good, although it was a big dropoff from back in the late 70s and early 80s when I sometimes played with some of the members of the "Miracle on Ice" team at Bloomington Ice Gardens.
Of course they were orders of magnitude better than I was, and had to throttle back quite a ways for some of us, but hell.... I was still playing with them, you know? I can remember like it was last night the time Neal Broten couldn't help himself, and positively undressed me with a move that I literally could not even see in real time. Up until a few years ago, I still exchanged Christmas cards every year with Phil Verchota.
Anyway, point is I could still play reasonably competitively in my 50s - just a different style of game. That's easier to do in hockey than baseball or softball. And I really believe I would still be playing if I hadn't moved to Kentucky to marry Amy.
But I can not deny I miss the feeling of playing at a really high level.
Bicycle racing, too.... damn, I remember the feeling of being in the groove; like I was just one with the bicycle.... I remember times that every single thing was perfectly synchronized, and my legs were like pistons, pumping down and pulling up, over and over again, my breathing in perfect harmony with the pedal strokes, my trunk twisting with each stroke, pulling upward on the bars to deliver maximum force on the alternating downstrokes, like I was more of a machine than a human... rocketing down hills at well over 45 MPH, hitting and holding 35 MPH on level roads, and seeing out of the corner of my eye the faces of the people going past me in cars.... just feeling like a machine that breathed in and out and pumped up and down.....
I'm not going to say I don't miss it, but my life is about different things now. I regret that I can no longer do that, but more than anything I'm grateful that I have the clear memories of having done it when I was able. At 67, I fear more than anything the loss of those memories; I hope that as I age, I can still enjoy savoring those longago experiences.
Oh - and Amy and I have been to Kentucky Horse Park several times, and I do recall seeing John henry in about 05 or 06. And just ambling through the pasture, grazing on the grass, I was struck by how he projected a casual air of "I'm John Henry... and you're not." Just majestic.
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