A Very Uncomfortable Theory About Aaron Rodgers

You’re gonna be hearing and reading a lot about New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers in the coming days. You probably already know that his appearance on The Pat McAfee Show last week erupted in a Jeffrey Epstein-flavored feud with late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.

This week’s follow-up appearance where, among lots of other things, Rodgers called Dr. Anthony Fauci “the biggest spreader of covid misinformation” pretty much guarantees his name will be in our respective news feeds for way longer than anyone other than Aaron Rodgers himself wants.

Here’s the thing. I very strongly dislike Aaron Rodgers, and despite his recently expressed concerns to the contrary, my feelings pre-date his hot takes about covid vaccines.

Sure, some of it has to do with me being a Bears fan and him being the most dominant quarterback in my team’s division (the NFC North) for the last decade and a half. I won’t deny that at all. But also, hey, sports fans…name the second most dominant quarterback in the NFC North from the last 15 years.

Don’t say it.

The correct answer is that there isn’t one. Aaron Rodgers played a lot of years against some of the weakest competition in the league and achieved a lot of personal success as a result. No one can take those four MVP awards he’s won away from him. That puts him at second all-time for the most MVP awards in NFL history, behind Payton Manning (5) and ahead of Tom Brady (3).

You know what Tom Brady has a whole lot more of, though? Super Bowl wins. There are actually a lot of comparisons you can make between Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady, and most of them point to A-Rodg being a guy who thrived in the regular season and fell apart in the playoffs.

For example, another stat where Rodgers and Brady are a little more even is conference championship losses.

That’s the game before the game you watch to see Shakira

They’ve both lost the second most important game of the season four times. The difference is that Tom Brady played in FOURTEEN of them and Rodgers has only played in five so far. Tom Brady has won twice as many conference championship games as Rodgers has appeared in.

But hey, I’m not here to talk about Aaron Rodgers being overrated. Granted, that was the initial plan. This was meant to be a column about how Aaron Rodgers is overrated in every possible way, including and especially as an NFL quarterback.

Well, as it turns out, lots of people who write about sports full time are of that exact same opinion. I guess “Aaron Rodgers is an overrated quarterback” is not as hot of a take as I thought. That’s probably because he really is an overrated quarterback.

He was also, hands down, the worst of that bunch of celebrities who got to co-host Jeopardy when the show was looking to replace Alex Trebek.

When Rodgers and the Packers were fighting in the months leading up to his trade to the Jets (where he played my personal favorite of all his seasons so far), it was suggested on the sports debate show circuit that he could just quit football and host Jeopardy full time.

No he fucking couldn’t.

There is absolutely no way Aaron Rodgers was ever seriously in the running to be the next host of Jeopardy. Alex Trebek could descend from the sky and assure me it was so and I would tell Alex Trebek to fuck right off. Aaron Rodgers has all the presence and charisma of a goddamn doorknob. I would bet money on him winning another Super Bowl well before I’d bet on him having a future in hosting anything other than Qanon podcasts.

Again, though, I’m not here to talk about Aaron Rodgers being overrated. I was going to, and I just did, but that’s not the point of this column.

If you watched all of his most recent Pat McAfee appearance, you might have made note of the fact that Aaron Rodgers made it very clear that he has no problem with being labeled a conspiracy theorist. He said as much himself during the interview.

Same!

It’s also clear from the interview that he has no qualms with discussing medical and science issues that no amount of YouTube videos can ever truly make a person qualified to talk about without years of schooling.

Double same!

So, with that in mind, please allow me to engage in some wild speculation about what might be behind Aaron Rodgers’ ascent to his current status as “official quarterback of the Joe Rogan Podcast.”

First, let’s talk about another NFL player whose public persona famously took a bizarre and unexpected pivot near the end of his playing days. I’m talking about Super Bowl champion and Dancing With the Stars semi-finalist Antonio Brown.

For years, he was just a great player who people really liked. He excelled at his position and that was the most interesting thing about him.

Well, that and Dancing With the Stars, obviously.

Things started to change in 2018. That year, Antonio Brown was tied up in all sorts of bizarre incidents and scandals, including one where he tossed furniture from the balcony of his condo and almost hit a baby.

The following year things got much worse, with multiple sexual assault allegations and a lawsuit over “farting in a doctor’s face” among the headlines he made in 2019.

I bring Antonio Brown up because there is a theory out there as to why he seemingly turned into a different person around 2018. The short version is that the culprit is the concussion he suffered as a result of this hit that happened during a 2016 playoff game. I would love to just embed the video for you but the NFL won’t let me.

Anyway, the idea that Antonio Brown maybe suffered some sort of head trauma that fundamentally changed his personality as a result of that play is a very common theory these days. This video does a pretty good job explaining it if you’re interested.

I suspect you all see where I’m going with this. What are the chances that something similar is going on with Aaron Rodgers? One of the ugliest aspects of CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), the brain disorder that has been ravaging the NFL for years now, is that you can’t actually diagnose it until the victim is dead. Until then, all you can do is speculate.

If we’re doing that, I can tell you it’s not impossible. I think we can all agree that Aaron Rodgers changed in recent years. Outside of post game or on-field interviews that were obviously about football, I barely remember hearing Aaron Rodgers talk about anything prior to the last few years. The first sentence from this write-up about a 2015 Sports Illustrated cover story seems to confirm that my memories of a borderline reclusive Aaron Rodgers are not the result of Mandela Effect misremembering.

Does that sound like Aaron Rodgers 2K24? I’d argue it sure as shit does not.

So, back to that really uncomfortable question. Is it possible Aaron Rodgers took a hit during the course of a game that resulted in head trauma that has changed his personality? You bet it is!

Here’s how the 2018 season ended for Aaron Rodgers.

You can see the hit that ended his season here (again, NFL content, they won’t let me embed it). It might not look as bad as the Antonio Brown hit, but NFL helmets don’t just fall off, you know? Also, here’s another headline about the hit.

Seems pretty bad, right? Well, that hit happened at the end of the season in December 2018. Would you care to guess what year Aaron Rodgers transformed from media hermit to The Pat McAfee Show’s official misinformation correspondent?

You’re goddamn right it was 2019!

It was so close to being ESPN’s 9/11!

That is obviously not definitive proof that a concussion changed Aaron Rodgers from “guy who avoids the media” to “guy who can’t wait to tell the media that he consulted Joe Rogan for medical advice.” I’m just saying the timeline does work if it’s a rabbit hole you want to go down.

Before you ask, no, that wasn’t the first concussion of Rodgers’ career. It was the fourth.

One thing that immediately springs to mind when it comes to the possibility that repeated head trauma might be influencing the version of Aaron Rodgers we know today is ayahuasca.

Aaron Rodgers very publicly embraced the use of ayahuasca and credited it with helping him win another MVP award. And sure, maybe it helped with that. But do you know what else ayahuasca is reportedly really great at? Treating depression.

Now check out this rundown of the symptoms of CTE from a Boston University article.

Of course depression is on the list. Is it possible that Aaron Rodgers started dabbling in psychedelics for reasons unrelated to just wanting to win a fourth MVP award? Again, yes, it is possible. The timeline works. I’d also argue that if you watch this week’s Pat McAfee interview you might even see impaired judgment and impulse control problems as well. There are several points where Pat McAfee is desperately trying to get Aaron Rodgers to just talk about sports, and that is just not possible for Aaron Rodgers in that moment.

Again, none of what I’ve said here is proof of anything. I’m not definitively saying a concussion is to blame for Aaron Rodgers 2.0 and the various controversies that have flared up around him in recent years. I’m just saying it IS possible.

Do your own research and decide for yourself.