After doing this job for nearly a quarter of a century, it becomes obvious when a team’s fingerprints are on a report from a beat writer who covers the team. The latest entry regarding the Aaron Rodgers absence from mandatory minicamp looks like the Lombardi Trophy at the presentation the Jets haven’t experienced in 54 years and counting.
A July 1 article from Connor Hughes of SNY can be summarized in three words: “This is fine.”
The Jets want it to be fine. The Jets hope it will be fine. The Jets are trying to persuade Rodgers that it is fine, since his first press conference of training camp is looming.
The item opens with something we already knew. Rodgers was in Egypt for a pre-planned trip.
Then comes the excuse making for Rodgers skipping mandatory minicamp on June 11-12: He attended most of the voluntary workouts from the 2024 offseason program. (He missed one week from Phase 2.)
“Rodgers originally pieced this trip together during his recovery from his Achilles injury,” Hughes writes. “It gave him something to look forward to during one of the lowest points of his career. He’s long admired Egyptian culture and scheduled the visit for what was believed to be after the offseason programs.”
Hang on a second. The guy has played in the NFL since 2005. He knows the offseason calendar. He knows that mandatory minicamps happen in the first two weeks of June.
Last year, Rodgers’s first with the Jets, mandatory minicamp happened from June 13 to 15. In 2022, his last in Green Bay, the Packers held their minicamp from June 7 to 9. In 2021, it was June 15-17. (There was no offseason program in 2020, due to the pandemic.)
In 2019, the Packers held mandatory minicamp from June 11-13. In 2018, it was June 12-14.
Rodgers apparently doesn’t. And given that he’s widely regarded as a Wile E. Coyote-level super genius, Rodgers surely knew when on the calendar mandatory minicamp might land. So we’ll just deposit the notion that he thought a trip that would take him out of the country during the Week of June 10, 2024 in the “yeah, I’ve been immunized” category of overall truthfulness.
In fairness to Rodgers, he hasn’t said that himself. It’s what the Jets are feeding to a friendly messenger in order to clean up the mess made by telling the world the absence was unexcused. And that’s the thing that potentially became Saharan sand in the delicate genius’s skivvies. Instead of deeming the absence excused (which the Jets absolutely could have done), they created an unnecessary problem by telling the world that he was AWOL.
Now they’re scrambling to solve it before Rodgers reports for training camp. (Unless he scheduled a trip to Siberia for what he believed to be before camp opens.)
“While an unexcused absence, the team is not concerned, sources told SNY, that this will impact Rodgers’ season,” Hughes writes. “They wanted him at minicamp but were understanding of how important this trip was for him. . . . As one source put it: Rodgers’ absence during the two-day minicamp will not impact the Jets season whatsoever.”
The absence might not impact the team directly (that said, it would have been nice to have Rodgers present to reinforce the message sent by the coaches to players at the outset of “Phase Me”), but the aftermath of the team’s mishandling of it could. Especially if Rodgers is pissed off about an unforced error by the team that forced his name into headlines that made him look selfish, stupid, and/or dishonest for scheduling a trip one week before the opening of a six-week window to go wherever he wanted.