Aaron Rodgers’ recovery status is murky until he plays for the New York Jets in Week 1
For New York Jets fans, all eyes are on Aaron Rodgers. The hopes and dreams of over 50 years hinge on the future Hall of Famer.
Alas, as with Joe Namath all those years ago, the biggest barrier to Rodgers’ success is an injury. His torn Achilles makes it difficult to know how he will perform in 2024. That it happened at 40 years old makes the waters even more murky.
By all accounts, Rodgers hasn’t missed a beat in OTAs and training camp so far. His arm is still as strong as ever, and he looks good moving around in the pocket. He said as much in his press conferences.
What Rodgers adds whenever he talks about his injury, though, is the most critical part of the equation.
“The last 5% of being 100% is just the mental part,” Rodgers said. “Like today, the last play I had, being able to move in the pocket quickly and not think about it, those are stacked reps that help you get to those last 5% of feeling 100%.”
That last 5% is called proprioception. Its definition is “the body’s ability to sense its position, movement, and orientation in space.” FTN Fantasy’s Aaron Schatz (formerly the founder of Football Outsiders and the creator of DVOA) brought this to my attention during his appearance on The Score Boord Podcast.
When a player suffers an injury, especially a major one, as he recovers, he doesn’t quite trust his body to move the way he naturally expects or to orient the exact way he wants. This can cause overcompensation and lead to additional injuries.
For a player like Rodgers whose mechanics were never ideal to begin with, those nuanced changes could make a tremendous difference. If he’s talking about it in press conferences, you know it’s something he feels in his motion. It’s impossible to know how he’ll respond until he’s taking live reps in a game.
It’s also hard to know whether his body will actually do the things he wants it to. That’s where his age comes in. A younger quarterback might bounce back more quickly from a devastating injury, but Rodgers could struggle with that comeback in subtle ways.
This is not to say Jets fans should expect Rodgers to struggle. (I don’t.) It’s simply a warning to take practice reps with a grain of salt. We won’t truly know how Rodgers’ body reacts until we see him in live action. He’ll jump straight into the fire in Week 1 against the 49ers’ defensive line — and Leonard Floyd, the player who injured him last year.
