Aaron Rodgers’ divorce from the Green Bay Packers had been years in the making. His tell-all with Pat McAfee confirmed his feelings about the Jordan Love pick, and it seemed like it was a matter of time before he left the team.
Rodgers has drawn a reputation for being a bit of a high-maintenance kind of guy, and the Packers didn’t want to play games anymore. They may have felt like it was time to move on, or maybe they got tired of his mind games.
The latter seems likelier, and he may have confirmed it in his introductory press conference with theNew York Jets. When asked about his thought process and decision to leave Green Bay, he had one of the greatest, most hilarious excuses of all time.
Aaron Rodgers Blames Phone Reception For Leaving The Packers
“I will say, people that know me, I’m fortunate to live in a beautiful house. The only downside is I have very limited cell service,” Rodgers said. “So if you want to get ahold of me, I have to see your face. You have to FaceTime me. So, the only response to the communication thing is, there’s records in your phone about who called you, when, FaceTime, and there wasn’t any specific FaceTimes from any of those numbers that I was looking at. That’s neither here nor there because now we’re in this position.”
“Obviously, that’s the direction they wanted to go as far as the story they couldn’t get ahold of me, which led for this to be the case,“ Rodgers added. “My point was, if there was a change that wanted to be made, why wasn’t that told to me early in the offseason. Now, obviously, my future was undecided at that time. I didn’t know if I wanted to keep playing. I wanted to go into my darkness retreat and sit with it and contemplate. But when I came out, it was evident that it was retire or move on to a new team.”
Well, there you go. That’s Aaron Rodgers, everybody. He’s just not going to own his decision to leave the team and say he didn’t want to be there anymore. Nope, he’s going to blame poor phone reception and the front office for not FaceTiming him instead.
Rodgers had every right to pursue a different challenge in his career; he’s earned it. The Packers did play with fire by drafting Love, knowing they could infuriate Rodgers and could face the consequences.
But this is yet another example of why some are concerned about how he’ll deal with NYC media, as they have one of the most ruthless sports markets on Earth, and they won’t playwith this kind of stuff.