Aaron Rodgers‘ highly-anticipated debut with the New York Jets ended pretty quickly, as the soon-to-be Hall of Fame quarterback ruptured his achilles four snaps into his tenure with the team. Not long after that happened, Rodgers made clear he was going to do everything in his power to return to the team before the season came to an end, as he’s undergone surgery and rehabbed it to a point that he was cleared for limited practice this week.
Now, Rodgers is pretty clearly not an especially big fan of the scientific consensus on things, so the chance to get back onto the field way ahead of schedule is presumably the sort of thing he’d love to do.
“Yeah, a lot of people said that,” Rodgers said about the perception that this is a bad idea, according to Andy Vasquez of NJ.com. “My thing is, what’s the worst that could happen? Something unfortunate again. And then you just slow the rehab down.”
The answer to that question is “you rupture your achilles again and your ability to play football next season is thrown into question.” Anyway, Rodgers also gave himself a potential way out of this, as he mentioned that it might not be the best idea to come back if the team has no hope of making the postseason.
Aaron Rodgers on the idea that he’d still return if the #Jets are out of playoff contention: “I don’t think that would make a ton of sense.”
Said that if he comes back in general he would be less than 100% and it wouldn’t make sense to do it if they’re out of it.
— Zack Rosenblatt (@ZackBlatt) November 30, 2023
New York is 4-7 and sit in 15th out of the 16 teams in the AFC.