Rapoport: Rodgers has 'a perception problem' on his hands after minicamp absence 'The Insiders'

We said it yesterday when this began with the surprise. Now it's been Aaron Rodgers not there in Florham Park for the start of the only mandatory session of the offseason. It's two practices in June. It's probably going to have absolutely no bearing on how The Jets, the offense, Aaron Rodgers look when we get into September. But this is the story, the fact that for the second straight day, you've got Jets players and coaches having to go up and try to explain for Aaron Rodgers why he had a very important event that apparently was more important than showing up for the last session of the offseason. Ian, you weren't here yesterday. You didn't get a chance to weigh in on this. Tell me what you make of what is taking place right now in New York. Well, first of all, that Robert solid interview basically seemed to me like a post game interview from like November. It was firing squad. It was solid, clearly perturbed. Same questions over and over. Yes, we went over this yesterday. It seemed like a post game press conference and nobody on a losing 1 by the way, nobody seems to want to be part of that. So let me go through first of all, what this is not it's not nothing. It's nothing that's going to make the team actually distracted. Like, it's not like players were going to study their playbook and now because they're worried about Aaron Rodgers, they're not. It's nothing that really effects football. But what it is is a perception issue. It is a lightning rod. Look, we're all talking about it because it's June and there's not a ton else to talk about. Real football news doesn't really come in June. So the fact that we were able to talk about this, it's great for us, but it's not going to be great for Aaron Rodgers. And especially if things don't get off to the kind of swimming start that everyone hopes. It's going to be just another thing for fans and critics to latch onto and say, how dedicated is he to football? How badly does he want to really get distractions out? What about mini camp? It's just another thing. And the fact that the Post could very truthfully put on the Backpage, here's what Rodger said and here's what he did and have all of it be accurate and fair. That, at the least, is a perception problem for Aaron Rodgers. I don't know, I mean, does it become a distraction? Does it become a story because we ask about it, right? Or does it become a distraction and and a story or an issue inside the building? Because it's an issue inside the building, which I don't sense that it is really. The players are talking about it. Players are being asked about it. I don't know, the players are talking about it like as if like where's our quarterback? This is a problem. I don't get, I don't get that sense. I don't. And so we sit here and say like, oh, it, it's a it's an issue. It's like a distraction, it's an inconsistency. It's all these things. The only thing that really matters is if an issue were there. And as I said yesterday, it's only an issue right now in my mind, if it's an issue for Rogers, that he was basically put on blast and that Salah used the word unexcused. But you heard that he was asked about. Yeah, I I don't, I don't know. And I saw the notion that maybe, you know, The Jets should have let us know that this was coming. Here's the only problem with that. The day that they do that, it's a story. And then the first day of mini camp, there's more cameras, there's more report because everybody knows he's not going to be there, so they're there to do the story of him not be. Then it's a 2 day story. Well, one day plus the start at camp, mini camp instead of the start of mini camp, which I guess it's technically now a 2 day story because we're still talking about. Well, the other piece of this is the fact that Aaron Rodgers set this up to become an issue back in January. We're listening. The guy played four snaps. As we all know, The Jets stumbled. They made multiple quarterback changes. They actually won some games early on, but then end up finishing seven and 10. Rogers comes out, he lays down the law right after the regular season ends and he says this. If you want to be a winning organization, you had to put yourself in position to win championships and be competitive. Everything that you do matters and the that has nothing to do with winning needs to get out of the building, so that'll be the focus moving forward.