Aaron Rodgers represents one of the great puzzles in American professional sports.
Let's start with the fact that he certainly ranks as one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. Rodgers will skate into Canton's Pro Football Hall of Fame. He is a four-time Most Valuable Player in the National Football League, which puts him in very rare air, and he's a 10-time Pro Bowler. Aaron owns some NFL records, and he does have a Super Bowl ring - although it wouldn't have taken much for him to have many more. Rodgers is bright and articulate, making him a media favorite during large portions of his career.
But there's a flip side. Aaron isn't really even speaking to most of his family members, and no one (besides Rodgers) seem to know what went wrong along the way. Lately he's never seen a conspiracy theory he couldn't embrace, and his anti-vaccination stance during the pandemic - and the way he handled it - certainly was an odd episode.
Does all of this add up to something? That's difficult to say, so full credit to Ian O'Connor for trying. The author of worthwhile books on such subjects as Bill Belichick, Derek Jeter and Arnold Palmer/Jack Nicklaus is here with "Out of the Darkness," a biography of Rodgers. Perhaps the subtitle is more interesting in a sense: "The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers."
O'Connor certainly put in a lot of effort to decipher Rodgers' behavior over the years. He went back to California to find people who could talk about Rodgers' childhood, which was dominated by sports. Nobody wanted it more, and there are plenty of stories about how he'd do whatever it took to get to the proverbial next level. That meant that if Division I college football programs weren't interested in him, well, he'd go to a junior college for a year and show what they missed. He did exactly that. Then it was on to California, where he surprisingly took no time at all to win the starting job, and then no time at all to become a star.
That led to a very curious moment in Rodgers' life: the 2005 NFL draft. The San Francisco 49ers had the first overall pick, and the decision came down to Rodgers or Utah's Alex Smith. O'Connor does some of his best work here tracking down what exactly happened. While opinions differed on the two future pros, the Niners went with Smith even though Rodgers - who played a few miles from their offices - would have loved to have stayed close to home. Still, there were other picks in the first round, right?
But as the first round progressed, Rodgers' name continued to be unheard. With each pick, Rodgers became the talk of the draft. A chip developed on his shoulder that reached boulder proportions in no time. Finally, at No. 24, the Green Bay Packers ended the long wait and took him - which put Aaron in the midst of some new drama. Brett Favre, another sure-fire Hall of Famer, wasn't too happy that the Packers drafted his probable replacement and complained loudly. Rodgers had to sit and wait for his turn, and eventually Favre was traded to the Jets. Rodgers showed that he was worthy of the tam's faith.
The dramatic part of the overall story, of course, is that Rodgers wound up in the exact same position as Favre. At the end of a great career, he saw the Packers take a quarterback (Jordan Love) in the first round. Eventually, Rodgers needed to go elsewhere to play and he was traded to the .... Jets. Then Aaron suited up for Opening Night with New York, and he tore his Achilles in the first series of the season. His year was over almost before it started.
O'Connor couldn't wait to see how the last act of the story would play out. The author plays it up the middle, relaying stories about Rodgers' personal generosity and along with tales of beliefs in, shall we say, less-than-mainstream concepts. There's no solving this mystery.
"Out of the Darkness" will provide some insight into Rodgers' never-boring career (the book mostly avoids the personal side of the story, except about the family rift). But biographies often come down to how much the reader likes the subject, and Aaron Rodgers remains a strange figure after the last page.
Four stars
Learn more about this book from Amazon.com. (As an Amazon affiliate, I earn money from qualified purchases.)
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