Aaron Rodgers sure sounds like someone at peace with retirement

Aaron Rodgers recently appeared on a podcast and spoke about his darkness retreat. His decision isn’t made yet, but he sounds at peace with the idea of retirement.

If you expected any sort of clear news on Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ future in the NFL from his appearance on the Aubrey Marcus podcast on Wednesday, sorry, you won’t get that. Rodgers said that his decision should come soon enough but didn’t announce anything formal.

Rodgers did drop several hints and quotes that we can sort of read through the lines on. But truthfully, having listened to the episode, my take is that you could come away making the case that Rodgers is leaning to either option at this point. It really sounds like Rodgers toyed around with multiple ideas and rationalized all of them while he was in the dark.

It makes you wonder how useful that whole darkness retreat thing really is… When every idea seems like the right one, have you actually gotten clarity?

At one point, though, when Rodgers spoke on his time when he wrestled with the thoughts of retirement, he sounded pretty content with the idea of hanging it up.

Aaron Rodgers sounds mighty content with the idea of retiring on Aubrey Marcus podcast

“There were some deep insecurities and fears that came up in the darkness around what retirement is,” Rodgers told Marcus. “I really had to sit with those and then go to the root of what those are and trace those back to childhood or chase those back to college, or chase those back to early days in the NFL and work through those moments that came up.”

Rodgers also went on to say that he walked himself through what his life would look like without football. He described a “sweetness” and “comfort” in those possible realities, which could lead one to believe he’s on the side of that decision now.

"“The beautiful thing was by the, probably by the what seemed like now, looking back was probably early afternoon, you know so for five or six hours of kinda going through that, I found a really nice sweetness and comfort in the reality that I was sitting in that day which was retirement and what that would look like. And what would nourish my soul best. Where would I want to live? Who would I want to spend time with? What would I want to do with my free time? Where would I want to travel? How would I fill the competitive hole in my heart that, because I’ve played sports since I was, you know, six years old. So a really beautiful ending to that, but a lot of really difficult contemplations around all this insecurity and fear that came up of like, what happens when they turn those, when they turn the lights off to your career. What happens when you’re, or when somebody says, ‘You used to be Aaron Rodgers, right?'”"

You could read this in two ways. One: Maybe Rodgers wrestled all the way through his hesitation on retirement and is ready to move forward with his life as a non-athlete.

Or, maybe you read this and it looks like he’s at peace with the idea of retirement, and ready to call it quits before he goes one season too long like his colleague Tom Brady this past season. It would track with Brandon Marshall congratulating him on his retirement yesterday out of nowhere…

Ultimately, we don’t know just yet. Rodgers should make his decision soon, but for now, we’ve just got some word pasta to untangle and figure out how we feel about it.

Maybe we should enter the darkness to sort through all of this…