Who Will Win the Aaron Rodgers Sweepstakes???
If you ask me, here are the five likeliest winners of the Aaron Rodgers sweepstakes.
Of the NFL’s remaining free agents, Aaron Rodgers is the crown jewel. The soon-to-be 42 year-old quarterback is a Super Bowl winner, four-time MVP, and is arguably the most efficient the most passer to play the game, evidenced by his holding the record for highest career touchdown-to-interception ratio (4.3:1) and passer rating, which is a number determined by a ludicrously complicated mathematical formula. He also holds the dubious distinction of being my father’s least favorite Jeopardy! host.
Rodgers is also a deeply, deeply annoying person with extremely strange personal beliefs, even relative to other professional athletes, a class of people who are often extraordinarily religious, poorly educated, and deeply egotistical.
He is a proponent of alternative medicine including ivermectin and psychedelic drugs, famously lied about his COVID vaccination status, and some rumors suggest he believes, or at one point believed, that Sandy Hook and 9/11 were inside jobs.
He also once suggested that Jimmy Kimmel was a pedophile. Kimmel threatened to sue for slander and Rodgers retracted the statement. I’m of the opinion Kimmel should have gone scorched earth and invited all of Rodgers’s many famous ex-girlfriends on his show to ask them probing questions about the relationship (“So who broke up with who?”) until Aaron Rodgers himself agreed to come on the show and get a COVID shot on national television.
By Vegas odds, here is a list of 4 teams ordered by how likely Aaron Rodgers is to sign with them for the 2025 season.
The Pittsburgh Steelers
The New York Giants
The Minnesota Vikings
The New Orleans Saints
The way I see it, the Giants and the Saints are out of the running for Aaron Rodgers. At his age and stature, he wouldn’t be uninterested in signing with performance art programs themed around executive incompetence.
So, if you ask me, here are the five likeliest winners of the Aaron Rodgers sweepstakes.
1. The Pittsburgh Steelers
The Steelers are genuinely one good quarterback away from being a Super Bowl favorite. They are stacked at every other position. For the last five years it has been as if the front office and coaching staff have been running an experiment to see if they can make it to the Super Bowl with the weirdest quarterback situations.
In 2021, they were rolling out the near Ben Rothlisberger in a wheelchair. In 2022 and 2023, they tinkered around with rookie Kenny Pickett, looking to see what would happen if you surround a so-so draft prospect with an offensive coaching staff led by Matt Canada, a supposed offensive genius who was so smart he’d barely ever kept the same job for more than a year. Last year, they brought in two veterans, Justin Fields and an injured Russell Wilson. Fields started and was quite good, so it should come as no surprise they swapped in Wilson once he was available.
Pittsburgh has really outdone itself this year, though. Right now the only quarterbacks on the roster are Skylar Thompson, a quarterback whose career can be charitably described as extant; Will Howard, an Ohio State quarterback who could not beat the worst Michigan football team in living memory; and Mason Rudolph, a career backup best known for getting hit in the head with his own helmet.
If Rodgers plays professional football in 2025, it will be in Pittsburgh.
2. The Minnesota Vikings
Like the Steelers, the Vikings are a complete team. The only question mark is at quarterback. The team let Sam Darnold, last year’s starter, walk during the offseason, putting in the driver’s seat JJ McCarthy, who spent his rookie season nursing a knee injury sustained during his National Championship campaign in 2023 for Michigan.
Some reporting suggested that once Darnold was out, the Vikings were Rodgers preferred destination. I’m of the opinion that the interest was only ever one way because the Minnesota Vikings as an organization just straight up does not want to deal with Rodgers’s bullshit, but I do think it would be fitting if he ended up competing with McCarthy for the starting job.
I’ve been a longtime observer of McCarthy’s career. The thing that makes him a special quarterback prospect has not as much to do with his ability—of which he has plenty—as much as it has to do with having a ludicrous level of emotional intelligence that no man in his early 20s has any business having. It’s an attitude. A unique mix of warrior monk, surfer dude, and social worker.
Imagining these two on the same team would be like Amadeus. I imagine an old Aaron Rodgers in a retirement home talking to a priest who loves football but has no memory of Rodgers’s career, only McCarthy’s. “Every completed pass was God mocking me.”
3. The Papacy
Speaking of God, with the recent death of Pope Frank caused by a fatal case of JD Vanceitis, the Catholic Church is in the market for a new leader.
Now, it’s true that Aaron Rodgers’s was raised a dirty protestant, and he has never been a Cardinal, only a Jet and a Packer, the church could consider abandoning its longstanding traditions and put Rodgers in charge of The Papacy.
Some might say that Rodgers would be qualified to lead the Catholic Church, what with having leadership experience as a veteran quarterback and team captain. I’m skeptical. Quarterback is not as much a leadership position as much as it is the most important middle management job in sports. That might make you qualified to run a GEICO Insurance regional office in your retirement, but not the leader of one of the largest religions in the world.
4. The National Security Council
Mike Waltz, a man who looks like an evil version of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, is out as National Security Advisor after accidently adding a journalist to a group chat about doing war crimes in Yemen. Marco Rubio is currently the interim, giving him something like 8 jobs in the administration, with the others being Secretary of State, USAID Administrator, Lead Archivist, Office Supply Request Manager, Director of Snack & Beverage, and Deputy Chief Toilet Inspector.
Hiring someone who entertains 9/11 conspiracy theories would be one of the most on brand thing the Trump administration could do at this point. With Trump’s longstanding fascination with football and football players, plus reality’s propensity for making the most absurd possible outcome the most likely outcome, hiring Rodgers for some kind of role in the administration sort feels like an inevitability.
5. Everyone (He Retires)
One option on the table is that Aaron Rodgers retires from football and disappears from public life, sparing the league his weird antics and profound ignorance.
I, for one, hope this is the option he takes. It isn’t because I find him a deeply offensive person who we would all be better off forgetting ever existed, but because I want him to go enjoy his life. He’s earned $381.6 million over the course of his football career, and that’s just his salary and doesn’t include any endorsement deals he’s made.
Go enjoy that money, man! Go enjoy your beachside Malibu mansion. Go take psychedelics and meditate in Peru. Go drink all the ivermectin smoothes your stomach can handle. Just do me a solid and stay off my goddamn TV!