Aaron Rodgers politely claps back at criticism over ‘darkness retreat’

Aaron Rodgers revealed his plans to mull his retirement decision on a four-day ‘darkness retreat’ and had a polite but defensive response to one critic. 

Things are never point-A-to-point-B when it comes to Aaron Rodgers, so it figures that his second retirement decision in as many years is going down that route. On Tuesday, the longtime Green Bay Packers quarterback revealed that he was planning on a four-day “darkness retreat” to contemplate what’s next with his football future.

Naturally, there were plenty of people — this writer included — who were quick to note how strange the entire situation was. And some more than others were quite critical of the Packers star.

One such critic was former NFL offensive tackle Mitchell Schwartz, who not so cryptically tweeted, “Weird the Packers aren’t consulting more with the guy who needs to go on a 4 day darkness retreat to figure out whether he wants to play football…” in response to Rodgers’ revelation.

Rodgers caught wind of that criticism, though, and took to Twitter to clap back at Schwartz, doing so politely, but also clearly not pleased with that response — and somehow channeling Ted Lasso in the process.

Aaron Rodgers to critic of retreat: ‘Be curious. Not judgmental’

This has kind of become the norm for Rodgers over the past few years. It’s a pretty simple script. Do something far from the norm in a given situation and then act almost flabbergasted when people push back on it. Sprinkle a little bit of self-perceived wisdom on top to finish it off. Rinse, repeat.

All reports in recent weeks, though, have indicated that, if Rodgers indeed decides to play in the 2023 season, that it won’t be for the Packers. As such, it does seem like a fair critique from Schwartz in discussing why Green Bay wouldn’t want to, in essence, deal with this mess in an unnecessary capacity.

Alas, it’s all just words into the void on the bird app at this point. More pressingly, we’ll have to wait until Rodgers gets back from his retreat, if not longer, to figure out what the next move is for the reigning back-to-back MVP.