Aaron Rodgers was introduced as the new quarterback of the Jets on Wednesday afternoon and faced a litany of questions from reporters about the offseason drama surrounding himself and the Packers organization.
One of the many stories involved general manager Brian Gutekunst and his inability to get in touch with the quarterback on several occasions as trade talks occurred.
When asked about the situation between Rodgers and his former team’s general manager, the quarterback responded with a strange reason.
“I don’t know if I need to really get into the specifics,” Rodgers began. “I will say people that know me, I’m fortunate to live in a very beautiful house. The only downside is I have very limited cell service. So if you want to get ahold of me, I have to see your face. You’ve got to FaceTime me. So the only response to the communication thing is there’s records in your phone about who called you, when, FaceTime, and there wasn’t any specific numbers that I was looking at.
“That’s neither here nor there because now we’re in this position. Obviously, that’s somehow the direction that they wanted to go as far as the story they couldn’t get ahold of me, which led for this to be the case. My point was if there was a change that wanted to be made, why wasn’t that told to me earlier in the offseason? Now obviously, my future was undecided at that time. I didn’t know if I wanted to keep playing. I wanted to go into my darkness retreat and sit with it and contemplate. But when I came out, it was evident that it was retire or move on to a new team.”
The last part of the quote is notable, as Rodgers believes that he only truly had two options when he came out of his darkness retreat, and neither involved playing for the Packers. Regardless of whether or not fans find the cell phone story to be believable, it’s clear that Rodgers was ready to move on to the Jets and leave his time in Green Bay in the past.
