George Teague and the Aaron Rodgers Fiasco

What happens when a superstar player with no character goes to play for an organization with no self-respect? The answer is the debacle that is the New York Jets 2024 season.

Let’s start by travelling all the way to the opposite end of the Sports Metaverse.

This weekend was Rivalry Week in college football, featuring a slate of games between teams that genuinely despise each other. The early Saturday game ended with Michigan defeating Ohio State 13-10 in a shocking upset. Unranked Michigan was a 20-point underdog heading into that game, playing on the road in Columbus against the #2 ranked Buckeyes. If this was the NFL, this would have been regarded as a “meaningless game” for Michigan, with the team having “nothing to play for,” their hopes of returning to the playoffs dashed weeks ago. In college football, however, the measures of success are not the same, as there is always meaning to be mined during this last weekend in November. This scheduling tradition always leaves the door ajar for redemption, and Michigan, sensing the opportunity, smashed right through it. They won “The Game” for the fourth straight year and their season was instantly and magically transformed from being a massive disappointment into a resounding success. Voila! Michigan fans will now forever remember 2024 as the year Michigan beat Ohio state as a 20-point underdog in Columbus.

To add a cherry on top, after the game, there was a chaotic scrum in the middle of the field because it seems as if several Michigan players tried to plant their team flag on the Ohio State 50-yard line. A melee ensued. I would have expected nothing less from Ohio State, and I mean that as a sincere compliment.

The game and its aftermath exemplify a certain irrationality underlying college sports. The players are essentially kids, kids who will play for a few years for a collegiate sports program before moving on to the rest of their lives. Some will go on to play professional football. Most will not. Yet, during the time they are on the team, they will pour everything they have into the team, they will play their hearts out while putting themselves at great personal risk, and then they will feel compelled to riot in the middle of the field after the game to protect the honor of their team colors.

As for NFL players, for better or worse the honor code inherent in college sports is in conspicuous short supply. This is not to suggest that NFL players don’t care whether they win or lose. This is a team sport, and NFL players can only operate at the highest level if they function as a team. But to suggest that the average player feels a deep sense of loyalty to their organization, to the program, to the uniform, or to us, the fans, is probably wishful thinking.

For me, the poster child for a superstar player who never seemed to give two shits about his team is quarterback Aaron Rodgers. First, it must be conceded up front that Aaron Rodgers has had a great career. He’s won four MVPs, one Super Bowl (same number as Nick Foles, Trent Dilfer, and Doug Williams, if you’re keeping track), he’s a surefire Hall of Famer, and his ugly mug will surely be popping up on the NFL Network, in slow motion, until the end of time. He did all of this with the Green Bay Packers, and I’m sure the good people of Green Bay – all 100 of them – will choose to remember Aaron Rodgers fondly.

What I will remember, as a football fan but not a Packers fan, is that Aaron Rodgers never truly appreciated that he was the franchise player for one of the gold star organizations in all of professional sports. He always seemed to be in some state of job-related grievance, either with his co-workers (i.e., his defense, his receivers, the special teams, the ball-boys, probably, you name it) or the organization itself. Every off-season Aaron Rodgers did this little dance where he made everyone wonder whether he was going to return to the Packers for the next season. He would publicly hem and haw and then return to the team as if he was doing everyone a favor (and then he would win the MVP but lose miserably in the playoffs – yeah, sorry, Aaron, that one early Super Bowl only buys you so much dispensation). And then he would repeat the same drama queen act the next year. For a proud franchise and loyal fan base, those fans really had to squint hard to overlook this overt selfishness from their star quarterback.

This annual exercise of self-indulgence always suggested that Rodgers was a person of questionable character. At the very least, it revealed something about Aaron Rodgers’ hierarchy of values and where loyalty towards the uniform was situated. It was always clear to anyone watching that, for Aaron Rodgers, NFL teams are just counter-parties to commercial transactions, and that his football ego existed unregulated by anything higher than himself.

The Jets, being the Jets, didn’t understand any of this. I’m not a Jet fan, but I generally root for them because only a sociopath would not feel some pangs of sympathy for their fans. Regardless of your politics, there are some homeless people so destitute that you absolutely have to drop a dollar in the hat. The only thing their team has bestowed upon the fan base over the last three generations is the sports equivalent of herpes. Yet, this chronic disappointment has only led to self-defeating impatience, such that the fans—already a bit hyperbolic because they live in New York—actually make it impossible to build something enduring.

Aaron Rodgers took advantage of the hapless Jets the way a frat boy takes advantage of a girl with daddy issues. There was a vacuum of self-worth that needed to be filled, and the victim was willing to give him everything, including the keys to her daddy’s sports car, which Aaron Rodgers proceeded to drive off a cliff. But not before Rodgers made the team fire their head coach, trade future draft picks for his preferred wide receiver, and generally accommodate his personal vision of the offense, all in service of Aaron Rodgers’ selfish delusion that he was capable and deserving of playing the savior. He thought he could—and should—be like Tom Brady, not realizing that a good part of what made Tom Brady successful was his willingness to submit to the cruel hierarchy that defined the Patriots organization under Bill Belichick. Tom Brady, for all his faults, at least knew that there was a structure to a team, and that each player, coach, and assistant had a certain role to play in its functioning. And let’s be honest: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers might not be as high on the organizational pecking order as, say, the Pittsburgh Steelers, but next to the Jets, they’re the Harlem Globetrotters.

The sad part is that the Jets, when they signed Rodgers, were already several years into a well-designed and promising rebuilding effort, having drafted and signed a core group of young stud players who were just waiting for the rest of the pieces to come together. It’s not a coincidence that virtually every one of those football players has been playing football worse since Aaron Rodgers walked into that building. He’s the traveling salesmen from The Music Man. He might as well have convinced the Jets to build a monorail around MetLife Stadium.

Today, the destruction is almost complete. The team is rudderless, with three wins to their credit with the calendar already flipped to December, with no Rivalry Weekend to offer a chance at redemption. There’s chatter about Aaron Rodgers playing for a different team next season, some of that chatter likely coming out of Aaron Rodgers’ asymmetrical mouth. To state the obvious, the faster the Jets jettison Rodgers and resume what they were trying to build, the better. I would say that the Aaron Rodgers story should be regarded as a cautionary tale, but how can it be cautionary when every objective person saw this coming from a mile away? The only people who didn’t were the poor well-meaning souls within the New York Jets organization and, tragically, their fans. For them, from this day forward, Aaron Rodgers should be erased from the annals of Jets history, forever banished into unbelief, to pretend that he retired from the Packers after the 2022 season, which he should have done in the first place.

One might argue, not unreasonably, that this characterization is unfair to Aaron Rodgers because he is no different than any other professional football player. Rodgers should not be singled out solely because the expectations on him were that much higher. All players, not just Aaron Rodgers, enter into business transactions with their organizations and are paid to play football for those teams, nothing more.

Well, maybe not all players. Sure, there are lots of players who see it like Aaron Rodgers. But there are also players out there like George Teague.

George Teague was a cornerback and safety who was drafted by the Green Bay Packers in the first round of the 1993 NFL draft. He played four years with the Alabama Crimson Tide and was best known in college for his heroic effort in the Sugar Bowl national championship game, where he chased down a Miami receiver who was galloping freely towards the end zone, stripping the ball in the process.

He ended up playing nine seasons in the NFL, mostly as a free safety and nickel defensive back, playing with several teams, including Green Bay, Miami, and two stints with the Dallas Cowboys. His NFL career was respectable, although probably a mild disappointment given his first round pedigree. Teague grew up in a military family and, after his playing career was over, would go on to coach high school football in the Dallas area, where he still lives and works. It goes without saying that he didn’t have anything close to the career of Aaron Rodgers.

On September 24, 2000, Teague was playing safety for the Dallas Cowboys in a game against the San Francisco 49ers, at home in Texas Stadium. The teams were blood rivals for most of the preceding decade, although both were at the tail end of their respective dynasties. This would end up being Troy Aikman’s final season, Hall of Fame wider receiver Michael Irvin having already retired the previous season. The Cowboys would finish the season with a 5-11 record.

In the second quarter of that game, 49ers receiver Terrell Owens caught a 3-yard touchdown pass to put the 49ers up 17-3. After the score, Owens ran to the 50-yard line on Dallas’s field and placed the ball in the middle of the blue star, stretching his arms and looking skyward. Despite the clear provocation, there was no penalty called, but it did raise the temperature of the contest.

A few minutes later, Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith scored his own touchdown. He celebrated by running to the middle of the field and placing the ball on the star with one knee, a clear gesture to reclaim the honor of the Cowboys’ home field, as symbolized by the blue star. The home crowd loudly agreed with this action.

That should have restored the moral balance of the proceedings and ended the affair. However, later in the game, Terrell Owens scored another short touchdown, which put the 49ers up 40-17 in the 4th quarter. Surely, he wasn’t going to do that again, was he?

He was. Immediately after catching the ball in the end zone, Owens ran right for the 50-yard line, stood on top of the star, placed the ball down, and. . . was decked by none other than George Teague. After the touchdown, Teague saw what was happening and was the first Dallas player to react. He laid a shoulder into Owens and knocked him clear off the star and onto the turf. A small scuffle ensued, but even the 49ers knew they weren’t going to risk a brawl in defense of a player who was so clearly in the wrong. You might hate the Dallas Cowboys, but you can still respect a player like George Teague.

Owens was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct and was suspended by his team for the next game, which to this day Owens for some reason regards as a personal insult. For his part, George Teague was ejected from the game while simultaneously being granted the status of an all-time hero to Dallas Cowboys fans. In later interviews, he has made it clear that he stands by his actions that day because “it was the right thing to do.” And he never has to pay for a drink in Texas for the rest of his life.

What is the lesson here? It is of course impossible to construct a team entirely out of Aaron Rodgers(es), just as it is impossible to construct a team entirely out of George Teagues. The first team would implode in on itself, likely in a nanosecond, while the second team would probably end up conquering the moon. But it is useful to at least know the difference.

Even if it’s too late for the Jets.