Jets owner Woody Johnson broached the idea of benching quarterback Aaron Rodgers during a Sept. 30 meeting with the team's football staff.
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After falling to 2-2 with a one-point loss to the Denver Broncos, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson called an internal meeting on Sept. 30 with his top football people. In that meeting, Johnson -- concerned about the direction of the team -- broached the idea of benching quarterback Aaron Rodgers, multiple sources confirmed to ESPN.
Johnson's suggestion, first reported by The Athletic, triggered different reactions. One source, who attended the meeting, indicated that it was "said in jest in a provocative nature." Others in the meeting interpreted it differently.
One source said Johnson appeared to be serious, while another said, "If Woody really wanted Rodgers benched, he would've been benched."
Will Rodgers put Woody on the island?
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Jets owner Woody Johnson
suggested the benching of quarterback Aaron Rodgers after a Week 4 loss to the Broncos. What will Rodgers do about it?
He presumably could do nothing. Take it. Dismiss the story as fake (it’s not). Accept Johnson’s likely position that it was a joke (if it was, it wasn’t funny).
Or he could put Johnson on the proverbial island, with others who have dared to say or do things Rodgers didn’t like. Friends, family, former employers. Now, his current employer.
Beyond that, Rodgers could decide that his ****tail of chronic injuries will keep him from playing after the bye week. The deeper message to Woody would be, “Go ahead. Play Tyrod Taylor.”
There’s also a chance Rodgers will decide he wants out. To be released. To leave the team, and perhaps to land with a contender that needs a quarterback. (Whether any contender would want him is a different issue.)
The leak could be the first domino to fall in a falling out between Rodgers and the Jets.
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It looks like Sean Payton got the last laugh.
More than a year after Payton
criticized the hype surrounding the Jets and body-slammed offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett in comments to Jarrett Bell of
USA Today, a loss by the Jets to Payton’s Broncos sparked a report, emerging on the same day G.M. Joe Douglas was fired, that Johnson was ready to pull the plug on the Aaron Rodgers experiment.
As first reported by TheAthletic.com and confirmed by PFT, Johnson suggested benching Rodgers after the Week 4 loss to Denver.
Although Johnson was talked out of it, the disclosure becomes the first shot in the previously cold war regarding Rodgers’s future with the team. Recently, we’ve surmised that, even though Rodgers has said he wants to play next year, there’s no guarantee the Jets will want him back. It seemed that, even before this development, they wouldn’t.
It’s now fair to ask, based on how he responds to the leak regarding Johnson’s idea to bench him, whether Rodgers will want to keep playing for the team at all in 2024.
