A nutty week in the NFL became a tad bit nuttier with the news that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. might name Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers to be Kennedy’s running mate on an independent ticket for the United States presidency. As it stands, Rodgers and former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura are the top choices, with Kennedy planning to announce his selection on March 26.
The Jets currently don’t believe Rodgers will do it, per a source with knowledge of the situation.
That said, he hasn’t told them whether he will or won’t. He’s been off the grid this week. As of Friday morning, they hadn’t heard from him.
If he steps away from football to run, he’ll give up $37.5 million in salary. If he tries to run while playing football, he’ll be creating the very kind of distraction that he said in his end-of-season press conference the team can’t have.
“Anything that doesn’t have anything to do with winning needs to be assessed,” Rodgers said at the time. “So anything in this building that we’re doing individually or collectively that has nothing to do with real winning needs to be assessed. . . . It’s not a half the time thing, it’s not a sometimes thing, it’s not a most of the time thing, it’s an every time thing. If you want to be a winning organization, and to put yourself in position to win championships and be competitive, everything that you do matters, and the bullshit that has nothing to do with winning needs to get out of the building. So, that’ll be the focus moving forward.”
The V.P. candidate hits the campaign trail, going from state to state in the weeks and days preceding the election. Rodgers would have one day per week, at most, to focus on active campaigning. Even then, it would still be a massive distraction for the Jets.
Currently, it seems to be nothing more than a short-term publicity boost for Kennedy’s long-shot campaign. Look for Rodgers (who has not yet addressed the issue on social media, even though he took time to post a partial denial of the CNN report that he’s a Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist) to eventually say he’s flattered by the opportunity but that now isn’t the right time for him to enter the political arena. Beyond helping out his preferred candidate, the mere fact that he was linked to the spot will make his eventual foray into the political world less jarring — if that’s what he eventually does.
Then again, for all anyone knows Rodgers has spent time this week in a dark room and/or took hallucinogens in search of an epiphany as to whether he should or shouldn’t take the plunge. The fact that he’d be running against common sense and a guy in a wheelchair (or, frankly, two guys who perhaps should be) could be enough to get him to make the most stunning move by a Jets quarterback since Joe Namath announced his retirement five months after winning the Super Bowl, due to a fight with the league office over his ownership of a Manhattan bar/restaurant at which (GASP) gamblers hung out.
