Aaron Rodgers’s relationship with the Packers‘ front office was tumultuous, to say the least, before being traded to the Jets in April. Shortly after being dealt to New York, the quarterback opened up about Green Bay general manager Brian Gutekunst’s lack of communication and went as far as to say that Gutekunst not using FaceTime to communicate with Rodgers led to the two not talking.
In a lengthy interview with The Athletic, Rodgers doubled down on his initial comments and directly addressed Gutekunst’s March remarks saying he tried to reach Rodgers “many times,” but he could never get in contact with his signal-caller during the offseason.
“I have zero or one bar at the house, so you call me—sometimes it goes through, most of the time it drops and doesn’t go through,” Rodgers said. “Everybody who knows me, when I’m out west, they know that’s how to get a hold of me. So you can say whatever you want about that, but that’s the f------ truth.
“Before I went in the darkness, I hit ’em up and said, ‘Hey, there’s some stuff swirling around here. We should get together, you, me and Matt [LaFleur].’”
When referring to “darkness,” Rodgers is talking about his infamous four-day-and-night darkness retreat in February where he was off the grid and isolated. The four-time MVP explained that when he emerged from the darkness, his agent told him that Green Bay had been shopping him and then he proceeded to tell Gutekunst he wanted to go to the Jets.
“Did Brian text me more than I texted him? Yeah, but did I ghost him? No,” Rodgers said. “I texted him back. There was back-and-forths that we had and so this is the story you wanna go with? You’re gonna stand on this hill of austerity and say that arguably in the conversation of the best player in your franchise history, you’re gonna say I couldn’t get a hold of him and that’s why we had to move on?
“Like, c’mon man. Just tell the truth, you wanted to move on,” he continued. “You didn’t like the fact that we didn’t communicate all the time. Like, listen, I talk to the people that I like.”
