Star Power

 Will Aaron Rodgers play another snap for the Green Bay Packers?

I hope not.

I get that it's professional football. It's a job like any other that pays you in millions, and you don't have to love something just because you do it well, but…

Seriously dude; why are you playing football?

Is there another man on the planet who feels less joy in doing his job than the Master of Mope? The internet memes of The Peyton Manning Face were comic (utterly hilarious to those of us living east of the Connecticut River) but Rodger's Betrayed by Fate Face is tragic-comic. You're playing at home, three times your defense intercepts Tom Brady - the man against whom you will always be measured - and still you lose yet another chance to hoist the Lombardi Trophy. You have got to believe that Fate absolutely, unrelentingly hates you. Rodgers on the football field has the look of a doomed man who seems to understand his Sisyphian fate will be repeated in this upcoming season's NFC Championship Game. And the next. He is Bill Murray's Phil, trying to escape a metaphoric death on the frozen tundra of his metaphoric Punxsutawney. 

Perhaps he could find some peace if he took piano lessons.

Maybe, like Phil, he fell in love and it changed everything for him. Well, not his contract. Not yet, anyway.

I fully expect this melodrama to have a boring, shrug emoji-inducing ending. It's not a movie, after all; it's real life and real life is why we have movies. Movies are the place where fictional characters say and do things real people can only imagine saying and doing in real life. In real life, we get upset by something at work - screwed over for a promotion given to someone half your age - and we go home, drown our emotions in vodka, say a lot of things that end with "...you just wait and see!" and then go back to work the next day like everything's fine. I'm fine. Sure, I'll train the new guy to do the job I wanted. It's fine. Everything's fine.

Except it isn't. 

There's no way to know how the alternate reality where the Packers do not trade up for Jordan Love would've played out. Who would Green Bay have drafted instead and could that player have proven to be the difference in the NFC Championship game? We'll never know, of course. What can't be denied is that Green Bay bet on a future without Aaron Rodgers instead of doubling down on Rodgers in the here and now.

Some wounds can't be healed by time or money. Some wounds just fester until the leg comes off. 

Maybe I should look forward to that inevitable sideline fight around Week 12, with offensive linemen holding Rodgers back, his face purple and bug-eyed with rage, as he tries desperately to get his hands around Head Coach Matt LaFleur's throat after LaFleur sent the field goal team onto the field with the Packers down by 6 with under 2 minutes to play.

There's been plenty written and said by pigskin pundits and bobbleheads comparing Rodgers' situation to Tom Brady's exit from New England. Yes, there's plenty to unpack there. The draft chips on their shoulders. Their personal narratives. The shifting power dynamics in professional sports driven by super-celebrity athletes (Brady taking his talents to the Gulf Coast a la LeBron taking his talents to South Beach), the intense, instantaneous history of celebrity itself where every statement is parsed, every action analyzed; where every 15 minutes of fame is simply prologue to the next 15 minutes of fame.

Rather than Brady, though, if Rodgers is really serious about making a change in his life, to escape his Punxsutawney purgatory in Green Bay, Wisconsin, I'd recommend he take a page  instead from the Rob Gronkowski playbook.

Retire.

For a year.