Aaron Rodgers’s pursuit of a favorable environment in Green Bay was one he took to its theatrical edge, not unlike Leonardo DiCaprio’s desire for an Oscar win that led him to be pummeled by a black bear in The Revenant.
He freed himself from the buttoned-up quarterback norm. He said everything—literally, everything—that came across his mind during a consequential and maddening time in U.S. history. He posted cryptic Instagram photos (before denying their cryptic nature). He called out the Packers’ organization in press conferences with their sponsor logos sitting idly in the background. He became both the disease and the cure, which forced his team to decide between a full-scale surgical removal or ultimate, unbridled acceptance. In vacillating between hero of all jaded employees and suspect Reddit Thanksgiving uncle, Rodgers was essentially forcing the Packers to make a plaster mold of his personalities, desires, preferences and talents for him to comfortably fall back into.
And he did. Even before news of his record-breaking contract leaked Tuesday—the one that will rightfully place him above Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Dak Prescott, the one that will almost surely get Jordan Love traded—Rodgers began to see the changes he desired enacted out of that reticent acceptance. The organization brought back his favorite position coach with no assurance that Rodgers would even sign. Behind the scenes at the combine, Packers execs were prepared to pay him whatever he wanted but also seemed wholly prepared for the entire thing to blow up on a whim if Rodgers decided to walk away. That is a special kind of Stockholm syndrome.
