Aaron Rodgers to Skip All of Jets Minicamp for Odd Reason, per Report

Aaron Rodgers to Skip All of Jets Minicamp for Odd Reason, per Report

On Tuesday, we learned Aaron Rodgers was not in attendance at the New York Jets' mandatory minicamp, which head coach Robert Saleh labled as an unexcused absence.

On Wednesday morning, we have now learned the veteran quarterback will be skipping the team's entire minicamp because he "prefers to be somewhere else away from football."

That reason was reported by The Athletic's Dianna Russini, who added it was the QB's choice to not show up.

NFL media and fans had lots of reacitons to this news:

NFL Comeback Player of the Year Odds: Aaron Rodgers Favored Amongst Group of Talented Quarterbacks

NFL Comeback Player of the Year Odds: Aaron Rodgers Favored Amongst Group of Talented Quarterbacks

2024 NFL Comeback Player of the Year is set to be a star-studded awards race with a large group of high-profile players returning from season-ending injuries. 

Comeback Player of the Year is always an interesting award, but this year will likely be dominated by the signal callers returning from their injuries, including, but not limited to, Aaron Rodgers, Joe Burrow, Kirk Cousins, and Anthony Richardson. 

Those are the top four choices, headlined by Rodgers, who is returning from an Achilles injury suffered on Monday Night Football in Week 1 on his first drive as the Jets quarterback. 

Rodgers is expected back for Week 1, practicing with Gang Green in hopes of ending the team’s Super Bowl drought. If he can play at a high level, will he capture the award, or will he be in the MVP race that will cloud this award? Can he win both? This is an interesting subplot of the 2024 season. 

For now, here are the odds to win the award with Rodgers and Burrow, the 2021 winner of this award, the clear choices to win, with Cousins and Richardson slightly off the pace. 

Odds courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook

10 quarterbacks have odds of +3000 or shorter with only one player listed inside of this number that isn’t a QB: Nick Chubb. The Browns running back is recovering from an early season knee injury but will have stiff competition with quarterbacks holding most of the attention, including his backfield mate, quarterback Deshaun Watson. 

There will be plenty of QBs that dominate this award, which is par for the course. The last six winners of the award have been quarterbacks (there was no Comeback Player of the Year in 2020).

Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.

If you or someone you know has a gambling problem and wants help, call 1-800-GAMBLER.

Testing scheduling - DO NOT PUBLISH

Testing scheduling – DO NOT PUBLISH

© 2024 ABG-SI LLC. - SPORTS ILLUSTRATED IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ABG-SI LLC. - All Rights Reserved. The content on this site is for entertainment and educational purposes only. All betting content is intended for an audience ages 21+. All advice, including picks and predictions, is based on individual commentators' opinions and not that of Minute Media or its related brands. All picks and predictions are suggestions only. No one should expect to make money from the picks and predictions discussed on this website. For more information, please read our Legal Disclaimer. Gambling content intended for 21+. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, crisis counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling 1-800-GAMBLER.

The Jets’ 2024 Schedule Will Say a Lot About the NFL’s Goals

The Jets’ 2024 Schedule Will Say a Lot About the NFL’s Goals

Imagine sitting in the NFL schedule makers’ suite with full decision-making power and seeing an opportunity to pit the New York Jets against the Denver Broncos on Monday Night Football for the season-opener. 

Here you have Sean Payton in a rematch with Jets offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, whom Payton ridiculously hurled under the bus for a perceived inability to coach Russell Wilson, just months before Payton then shoved Wilson out the door and endured the biggest dead-cap hit in NFL history for his troubles. You have a healthy Aaron Rodgers, who would undoubtedly back Hackett amid the week-long rehashing of words, not to mention be enduring his own unpredictable personal publicity cycle that tends to follow him wherever he goes (a much-anticipated book on Rodgers’s life is set to be released a few weeks before, and Rodgers could very well be on the campaign trail for Robert Kennedy Jr., who reportedly considered Rodgers as a possible vice presidential candidate earlier this spring). You have Broncos rookie Bo Nix potentially starting his first NFL game. This is about as layered a programming event as one could possibly fathom, but is good only as long as Rodgers is healthy. 

And while this is not a prediction—colleague Albert Breer actually brought the possibility to my attention while taping this week’s MMQB Podcast—it’s a window into how the NFL seems to operate when putting together the order of its yearly slate. Last year, it was almost egregiously tailored toward creating an attractive schedule of games with a strong narrative backbone, seemingly at the detriment of some less-interesting teams that had to slog through the season on shorter rest more frequently (and the Texans, who played no prime-time games but wound up making the playoffs and fostering Offensive and Defensive Rookie of the Year award winners). 

This year, we’re left wondering whether the lineup will be as merciless, and the Jets are front and center as a kind of test case as to how little the league cares about the side effects of its own appetite for games that get people talking. In 2023, the Jets had a ridiculous six prime-time or standalone games as a result of signing Rodgers and pairing him with a promising young team that featured both the reigning Offensive and Defensive Rookies of the Year. This was the finale of an offseason-long tailwind that the team tried its best to manage despite myriad outside forces trying to take their piece (including, but not limited to, Hard Knocks also setting up its encampment in Florham Park last summer).  

But I think it merits saying that the NFL cannot do this to the Jets again. The same can be said for any team that has not come off significant success the previous season but is wedged into a large part of the league’s programming calendar for the sole purpose of being a curiosity; an entity that would be just as valuable a television property in chaos as it would in prosperity. 

I’ll back up and admit that, in 2023, no one could blame the schedule makers for the Jets in particular, and I would guess that the team’s owner, Woody Johnson, was thrilled with the attention after years of—at best—a sort of painful indifference. I also understand those who would offer little other than the world’s smallest violin playing the world’s saddest song for a team that hunted its mercurial quarterback out of a darkness retreat. 

To me, though, lopping basically 10% of your prime-time programming onto the plate of a team that was still trying to figure out its own identity and recover from the offseason and preseason hangover is daring them to fail, and then purchasing a short on the inevitability that it will so you cash in anyway. That’s not acting in the best interest of an optimal NFL, that’s taking a baseball bat to a bee’s nest. Sure, obtaining honey is one of the many outcomes. Is it the most likely? Hell no. That’s facilitating a reality show to prop up every convoluted, content-starved tentacle attached to the core of the product (I suppose I would count Sports Illustrated and myself among those people, for the record). It’s a gauntlet that is impossible to win through and creates a disproportionate number of road games with short rest. Though the Jets had a sizable positive rest differential, it’s so incredibly difficult to struggle publicly with a full prime-time treatment once every three weeks. 

So, we’ll see how the NFL decides to treat the Jets in 2024, whether they double down on the reality show or return the favor with a more generously anonymous slate.

Jets' Robert Saleh Reveals Aaron Rodgers Will Have 'No Restrictions' for OTAs

Jets’ Robert Saleh Reveals Aaron Rodgers Will Have ‘No Restrictions’ for OTAs

Aaron Rodgers is nearing the end of his recovery from his torn Achilles he suffered last September as New York Jets coach Robert Saleh told media at Friday's rookie minicamp that the quarterback will have "no restrictions" when OTA practices begin this month.

"Once phase three hits, we're not anticipating any restrictions from what we can and can't do with him," Saleh said, via ESPN. "The guy can still sling it. Obviously, he's still working through his rehab, but there are no issues on the trajectory on which he's going."

The "phase three" Saleh mentions is when the player can do non-contact work for 10 practices over the course four weeks. Once training camp begins in July, Rodgers is expected to be past this phase.

Rodgers had surgery to repair his torn Achilles eight months ago. At first, it was a possibility that Rodgers could've returned in the playoffs last season, but the Jets didn't make the postseason.

Rodgers, who won Super Bowl XLV with the Green Bay Packers in 2010, will enter year 20 of his NFL career in 2024. He is currently fifth all-time in passing touchdowns, ninth in passing yards, and first in passer rating among quarterbacks that meet minimum leaderboard requirements.