The New York Jets might be 3-10 and eliminated from playoff contention, but that has not stopped Aaron Rodgers from continuing to draw negative attention toward the team for his comments on national television.
Making his weekly appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show,” Rodgers chastised the “asinine” media for prioritizing hot takes from personalities.
“There’s a lot of people talking about the game now,” Rodgers said. “Both non-former players and former players who are trying to stay relevant fame-wise. So the takes and the criticism are a lot different than they were maybe in the mid-2000s.
“I’m talking about these experts on TV who nobody remembers what they did in their career,” Rodgers said. “So in order for them to stay relevant, they have to make comments that keep them in the conversation. That wasn’t going on in 2008, 2009. The SportsCenter of my youth, those guys made highlights so much fun. And that’s what they showed on SportsCenter. Now it’s all talk shows and people whose opinions are so important now and they believe they’re the celebrities now, they’re the stars for just being able to talk about sports or give a take about sports, many of which are unfounded or asinine, as we all know. But that’s the environment we’re in now.”
While Rodgers made fair arguments, it was odd timing for him to take that stance, which was pointed out by ESPN’s Mina Kimes on “First Take” later in the day.
In a viral clip shared on X that has over 234,000 views and 2,700 likes as of this writing, Kimes expertly deconstructed the hypocrisy of Rodgers’ comments.
“I’m not offended by [his comments] at all,” Kimes said. “I do think it’s worth parsing out the things that he said. His point that personality-driven programming has overtaken highlights; he is well within his rights to note that. But others are well within their rights to note that he is espousing that opinion on a personality-driven program that employs him as a personality during the NFL season. That context does matter here.”
Ouch.
Kimes continued, “The other context that matters is, I think there is some subtext that he is saying some of the criticism, perhaps, of his play this year might have been unfounded. Again, he is totally well within his rights to note that. But a lot of the criticism this year is substantiated because of his play. And I guess that’s why I come away from this feeling like, there is a lot of validity to this message, but it does seem like the wrong messenger at this moment.”
It is a brilliantly constructed response by Kimes. Rodgers did, in fact, make some great points about the state of modern media, which she acknowledged. The industry is dominated by people who are more concerned with promoting their brand than providing insightful commentary or creating a general sense of fun, hence the rise of “hot take” culture. While it drives numbers for the personalities and their bosses, it robs the public of the insight and positive energy they deserve from their sports coverage, which was far more prevalent in the pre-internet days.
With that being said, Rodgers feeds those issues by showing up each week on a nationally televised talk show run by the exact type of personalities he is criticizing. Pat McAfee (a punter, mind you; who remembers what he did in his career?) is a bombastic former player with a rapidly growing brand who runs his show alongside multiple other former players who have brands of their own, on top of some non-player personalities who are also prominent on social media. His show has grown popular because of its loud, brash nature, helping it trend on social media with all-caps captions and noisy clips on a daily basis.
Rodgers is in no position to criticize the state of modern sports media while he makes paid weekly appearances to promote the type of coverage he claims to detest, especially on the network he was probably directing his comments toward. If Rodgers truly believed in his comments about the media, he would stop showing his face on ESPN every week. Clearly, though, he just enjoys the attention (and money).
It also sounds like, as Kimes points out, Rodgers is using his criticism of the media as a subtle way to claim that criticisms about his performance in 2024 are unfounded.
In that case, maybe he should try ranking higher than 29th in yards per attempt (6.5) before firing back about his play. Gardner Minshew, Drake Maye, Bo Nix, Will Levis, Jameis Winston, and Anthony Richardson are among the quarterbacks throwing for more yards per attempt than Rodgers this season.
He could also try being more accurate, as he ranks 33rd out of 35 qualifiers in completion percentage over expected (-4.8%), per NFL Next Gen Stats. Only Richardson and Cooper Rush are behind Rodgers.
If nerd stats aren’t your thing, maybe wins and losses are. Rodgers is 3-10. And that heavily falls on his shoulders due to his brutal performance in the clutch. Rodgers has recorded only two game-winning drives out of eight opportunities. He has zero touchdown passes, two interceptions, and a 55.9 passer rating when the Jets are tied or trailing by one score with under five minutes remaining.
There is too much cold-hard evidence (which is what Rodgers presumably wants to hear instead of hot takes) going against Rodgers for him to try and use an anti-media rant as a method for proving why criticism of his play is unwarranted. But it’s just another day in the life of the 2024 Jets: lots of talking from their quarterback with nothing to back it up on the field.
