Green Bay Packers quarterback and Lebron-grade prima donna Aaron Rodgers has announced he will be retreating into the folds of darkness and alternative consciousness in an effort to divine his future in Wisconsin. While Rodgers is conjoined to the team contractually for the next few years, the 39-year-old QB retains two choices: keep playing (whether for Green Bay or as a traded asset) or retire; any continued play would net him something like $60 million next year — $59.465 million to be precise.
Myles Simmons reports for NBC Sports:
Rodgers added he’s not even sure whether or not he’d like to play in 2023.
“That’s why I think it’s going to be important to get through this week and take my isolation retreat and contemplate all things [related to] my future,” Rodgers said, via Rob Demovsky of ESPN.
Rodgers said he’s going to spend four days and nights in total darkness and isolation on his retreat, which can lead to hallucinations. That will give him, “an opportunity to do a little self-reflection in some isolation and after that, I feel like I’ll be a lot closer to that final, final decision.”
“Weird guy doing a weird thing? Why do I care? My, how reporting at NR has fallen! [Insert additional incoherent rage about journalistic standards]”
Silence, grouch of the comment section. For we here have in the near past dispatched Jack Butler to a vat (similar to the one he was formed in, if the legends are true) that approximates the same reduction of sensory inputs. In fact, it’s one of the coolest pieces I’ve ever read.
We’ll join Butler in the pod:
Now fully engaged in the tank experience, I turned to its other aspects. I realized that my loud breathing might have blocked other noises or sensations. So I quieted it.
That’s when the hallucinations started. As my open eyes stared straight up into the dark, some very faint, fuzzy, gray shapes began to coalesce. They did not take any definite forms, ending up only as wavelike configurations moving back and forth. As I saw them, I got excited. I thought they were only the beginning, that soon I would enter the Stargate from 2001: A Space Odyssey, or something comparably kaleidoscopic.
Alas, that was it. The waves dissipated. Suddenly, I became very conscious of my vulnerability. I grew frightened, perhaps by the now-vanished hallucinations, that something might happen to me while I was incomparably defenseless. A few quick prayers relieved this, however, and I returned to my prior relaxed state, wondering what was next.
You can read the article in its entirety here.
The truth of the Rodgers situation is that he has to burn time until the Packers make their decision. For once in his career, he’s not in charge — his league-average play the last year has turned a back-to-back MVP into just another guy; an old guy. Whether Brian Gutekunst and the rest of the front office consider him worth the financial pain of another season remains to be seen.
So Rodgers is and shall be in the dark until further notice, whether a chamber is involved or not.