Let's Roast Aaron Rodgers

Really give it to him.

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Allow me to introduce someone to you. His name is Aaron Rodgers. Aaron Rodgers is the starting Quarterback (QB) for the Green Bay Packers. He is one of the best active QBs and on the list of greatest QBs of all time. He has one Super Bowl ring, and a bunch of playoff wins. Of the current starting QBs, only Tom Brady has had a better career than him. If you don’t follow football, you might know him as Shailene Woodley’s one-time boyfriend. Or Olivia Munn’s one-time boyfriend. Also, and more importantly, he looks like this:

Give yourself a minute to take in that photo. Like really give it a look. I know it’s a little blurry, but still. Pretend it’s a still from the Zapruder film and you’re trying to figure out how the CIA killed Kennedy. One helpful piece of context here. Not that long ago, Aaron Rodgers looked like this:

A dramatic change. A few days before the NFL regular season starts, he switched up his style to whatever this is. Also, Rodgers at one point lied about being vaccinated for COVID.

Now, I’ve written about awful photos involving NFL personalities before. This one is more horrifying than most. Aaron Rodgers is an old man, thirty-eight, and got a haircut that makes him look like a Proud Boy from 2014. He looks like an Italian trust fund kid who pretends to be a DJ in his spare time. He looks like he thought Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad was a role model.

Let me point out some of the details here that you may have missed. The coat that looks like a combination of a sports jacket and nightgown. The necklace that has a can opener (?) hanging on it. The backpack and roller bag combo, as if he was a freshman checking into his dorm for the first time.  All these details spark the imagination and bring further ever more confusing questions. Like, why is this man, king of Wisconsin, holder of a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars, dressed like a grandma who got a little too involved in the wrong Reddit feeds?

There is one detail not available in the photo. One detail that helps bring the whole picture together. Now, I normally try not to swear in this newsletter. Some people with sensitive eyes read this thing. But in this particular case, I must make an exception. Look at this tattoo. [SWEAR WORD INCOMING. LOOK AWAY IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO READ IT!]. Sorry, look at this FUCKING tattoo. Look at how absolutely stupid it is. I mean c’mon.

Rodgers also got this tattoo recently. Clearly, he’s going through something. Rodgers, in an Instagram post, said that, “There’s a deep and meaningful story and connection to absolutely each element of this art piece, and I’ll share a little more about that one day.” I’m sure man. I should note here that this tattoo was clearly made by a very talented artist. The shading, the fine line work, the details, are all expertly done. Rodgers didn’t just go into some random tattoo parlor to get this inked. So, I’m not making fun of the artist at all. They’re great. It’s the content that is wild.

This tattoo is a mess. It’s a mix of chemical symbols, astrology, the ocean (?), lions, and what appears to be the eye from the dollar bill. No coherency at all. I’m sure all this stuff has meaning to Rodgers, people famously think he got into weird holistic medicine stuff via Woodley, which could explain the astrology marks and chemical symbols, but like pick one or two. You’re rich. You don’t need to fit it all into one tattoo. You can do a couple. You’re not a sophomore at NYU trying to pass their Art Design final.

The thing to know about football players is that you have to be sort of nuts to play professional football. It’s an incredibly dangerous and demanding sport. Every play brings the risk of injury. On, the flip side you have to be pretty smart too. The mental requirements of playing in an NFL game are tremendous. Remembering plays, reading the body language of the opposing team, figuring out points of leverage, and decoding defensive and offensive formations, all of these are hard to do, especially when you’re running as fast as you can while someone else is trying to pummel you into oblivion. So, I don’t want to insinuate that Rodgers is stupid. Far from it. He’s one of the best players in the league at reading opposing defenses and making almost instant changes based on those reads. He’s smart. He’s also crazy to still be playing football after all these years. He’s also really gotten into ayahuasca. He claimed it’s the reason he won two MVP awards back-to-back. These three things combined, especially the ayahuasca, have given him a god-awful taste in tattoos.

So, what to make of both the change in haircut and the introduction of a new tattoo? Is Rodgers going through a mid-life crisis? Is he re-branding, getting ready for a post-NFL career? Does he think that his new hairdo will provide him with just that little bit of extra juice? Who knows. Peering into the mind of Rodgers is next to impossible. NFL QBs, especially ones who have lasted in the league as long as Rodgers has, are a species unto themselves. The absolute laser focus that is needed to succeed at such a high level for so long is unfathomable. That sort of single-mindedness can lead people to some weird places. Tom Brady, for example, believes that drinking a certain type of water can prevent sunburn. Jason Peters just signed on to another NFL season despite being 40 years old. One NFL player regretted getting the COVID vaccination because he believed that he could have learned from the challenge of toughing out the disease. So trying to figure out why Rodgers made these changes is an impossible task. What is possible, is roasting the hell out of him though. Because he looks stupid. Like a bottle of Mountain Pitch Black come to life. Like a League of Legends pro who ran afoul of the wishing machine from Big. Like a dang fool.

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