Aaron Rodgers activated to Jets 53-man roster, will continue practicing with team

Well, the New York Jets have said that Aaron Rodgers will NOT play this season despite his best attempts to recover from the Achilles injury, but he will continue to practice this season.

On Wednesday, the team made the decision to elevate Rodger to the active 53-man roster just so he can continue to practice during these final few weeks of the season. Here was news of that move, as reported by ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

“Even though Aaron Rodgers will not play in a game this year, he has been activated on to the Jets’ 53-man roster just so he can continue practicing this season.”

On the surface level, wasting a valuable roster spot on a dude who has a zero percent chance of playing this season seems foolish. Why take a spot away from a linebacker or backup O-lineman for a dude who can’t even play?

Well, there’s a couple reasons. For starters, the Jets were just eliminated from the NFL playoff race in last week’s depressing 30-0 loss against division rival Miami. So the games mean very little at this point. Plus, with some of the offensive showings by the Jets this season, even with Rodgers, the unit needs to improve for next season.

Perhaps that happens by allowing Rodgers to log crucial practice time with an offense he’s still not very familiar with.

Rodgers shuts it down, discusses re-injury risk

Aaron Rodgers said Tuesday he’s basically closing the door to returning to the field this season. With the Jets now out of the playoffs, there’s no reason to risk reinjuring his Achilles.

Rodgers said all this during his weekly appearance on The Pat McAfee Show. Even before he talked, it seemed obvious the 40-year-old probably wouldn’t risk trying to come back for the Jets game against the Commanders. After all, his team was mathematically eliminated from the playoffs when the Jets lost 30-0 to the Dolphins.

“We talked about this the entire time, about the difference between stretching and stressing,” Aaron Rodgers said. “You got to allow that Achilles to heal up completely before you’re stretching it. But there’s, you know, again, there’s a lot of different ways to attack this rehab.

“I tried to get on my feet quickly and kind of cut a lot of protocols in half, just to see if I could do it a different way. And I wanted to push it for the first two months, as hard as I could and get to that eight week mark and see where I was at and then adjust accordingly the rehab schedule after that.

“So like at eight weeks, I felt really really good. I was walking basically normal. I was able to start jogging on the ultra G as far as I could. (And) I wouldn’t have done anything. I wanted to you know to get back.”

But Rodgers said that as of Tuesday, he’s not 100 percent. And he probably won’t reach that point for another four weeks or so.

“There’s ways fear of reinury.” he said. Then he conceded, there’s now no timetable for him to come back in 2023.

Aaron Rodgers said that he now plays on playing at least another two seasons. He plans to start at age 40, he said, and at 41.