Is Aaron Rodgers having an “Office Space” moment?
In that excellent 1999 film, which still holds up a quarter-century later, the monotony of cubicle culture is a central plot line. The main character essentially stops showing up to work regularly, and the more he slacks off the more he is praised by productivity consultants.
I won’t spoil the rest in case you have made it this far in your life without seeing “Office Space” but still intend to do so, but its resonance showed up this week in a strange place: New York Jets minicamp.
Rodgers, who arrived to much fanfare a year ago but missed almost the entire season with an Achilles injury, is not participating in this week’s minicamp. It is mandatory, much like one of those Saturdays from “Office Space” or any number of meetings any number of us might routinely attend.
But Rodgers is sitting it out because ... he just doesn’t feel like it?
That’s the reporting from NFL insider Dianna Russini, whose exact wording on social media is that Rodgers “prefers to be somewhere else away from football. That’s his choice.”
That doesn’t quite sound like the “very important event” Jets coach Robert Saleh described Tuesday in explaining why Rodgers wasn’t at minicamp. Maybe Rodgers is destroying an office printer?
Saleh, who said Tuesday the absence was not excused (Rodgers is being fined), said Wednesday: “Aaron and I are on the exact same page. There’s no issue between Aaron or his teammates for that matter. So, like I said, we addressed it yesterday.”
