The world will soon get its behind the scenes taste of New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers preparing for his first season away from Green Bay on HBO’s Hard Knocks. Though the decision to profile Rodgers and the Jets didn’t come without some pushback from the team.
New York was among several other teams across the NFL that were actively trying to avoid having NFL Films cameras around their training camp. The Jets were ultimately voluntold they would be the team for the training camp portion of the series.
In an interview with KPIX at the American Century Championship at Lake Tahoe last week, Rodgers said aside from actor Liev Schreiber narrating the series, there’s not much else about the show that he’s a fan of. He added that he will just embrace it considering the choice wasn’t his to make.
“They force it down our throats, and we gotta deal with it,” Rodgers said.
On The Rich Eisen Show on Friday, Eisen said it’s clear that Rodgers is the only reason the Jets were chosen over the Bears or Commanders.
“He understands why the Jets are on Hard Knocks,” Eisen said. “It’s cause of him. If it’s Zach Wilson, then they’re like, ‘Let’s see what Sam Howell’s up to in Washington, D.C.'”
Rich also acknowledged that Rodgers will have some pull in terms of access, and that’s totally fair.
“Rodgers knows everybody is trying to poke around him, and he knows the Jets will have his back,” he said. “Literally they are bending over backwards and appropriately so. Every egg has been placed in the number eight basket, and if he wants to take the us against them approach, us against the world mentality, win the games and you could take whatever mentality you want.”
“And I am sure if Rodgers doesn’t want the camera here, or camera there, they don’t need the Jets to tell them not to do it,” Eisen added. “NFL Films will just back off. They want Rodgers mic’d up for games, they want Rodgers as happy as anybody else in the Jets organization. And HBO knows what type of show they’re buying, and they may push back. But at the end of the day, they wanted I’m sure years ago Antonio Brown behind the scenes of him going absolutely nutty when things started to completely unravel with the Raiders. And that never made air.”
But while there may be some forced compliance with things from Rodgers, Eisen knows that if Aaron says don’t film or don’t show this, NFL Films will listen.
“I am sure there may be one moment or two, right, where Rodgers is like, ‘I’m uncomfortable with this,'” “Do you think NFL Films is gonna be like, ‘Tough noogies, Aaron, we’re rolling,’ of course not.”
