Rodgers Going Into Darkness, Hoping to See NFL Light
GREEN BAY, Wis. – Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ NFL playing future will be decided in a dark room.
After Sunday’s Super Bowl, Rodgers plans on spending four nights at what he called a “sensory-deprivation isolation” retreat. It will be Rodgers, alone in his thoughts, alone in the dark, which he thought would bring him “a lot closer to a final, final decision” on his football future, he said on Tuesday’s edition of The Pat McAfee Show.
“It’s a darkness retreat,” he explained. “And I’ve had a number of friends who’ve done it and had some profound experiences, and it’s something that’s been on my radar for a few years now. I felt like it’d be awesome to do regardless of where I was leaning after this season, so it’s been on the calendar for months and months and it’s coming up in a couple weeks.”
There’s a two-way slot for food to be dropped off. And that’s it. No telephone. No TV. No books. No talking to anyone.
“It’s not like you bring a journal or you bring music or anything,” he said. “There’s no sounds. It’s just sitting in isolation, meditation, dealing with your thoughts. It stimulates DMT so there can be some hallucinations in there but it’s just kind of sitting in silence, which most of us never do. We rarely even turn our phone off or put the blinds down to sleep in darkness. I’m really looking forward to it.”
People who’ve done it, Rodgers said, have had some “really magical experiences and meaningful breakthroughs.” There is a door if the solitude is too much to handle.
This weekend in the light of day, Rodgers won the Pebble Beach Pro-Am with his PGA Tour playing partner, Ben Silverman.
With Rodgers’ football future in limbo – if he returns, will it be with the Packers or another team? – he heard from a number of fans at Pebble Beach who hope he lands with the Las Vegas Raiders.
The Raiders are the betting favorite to be Rodgers' team to start the 2023 season.
“There’s been a couple years where we got ousted from the playoffs by the Niners and then I went and played at Pebble and those years were very razzing, I would say, from the crowd,” Rodgers said.
“This year was a lot more positive, I think. The sentiment was very positive, people wanting me to get traded to their team, and the Raiders fans were probably the most vocal and the most numerous. But it was a lot of positive interactions with the crowd and the fans … I appreciated the positive words throughout the week.”
Rodgers scoffed at the notion that he’s going to play in 2023 just so he doesn’t have to share the Pro Football Hall of Fame spotlight with Tom Brady in 2028.
“The idea that I wouldn't want to share a stage with Tom Brady and J.J. Watt, I think, is ridiculous,” he said. “That’s already going to be an incredible Hall of Fame class. Their decisions don’t impact my own decision, doesn’t make me want to come back so I can have my own stage. That’s just not how I think. I don’t think like that. And that’s what’s going to be out there now until there’s a final decision. There’s a lot of fake news.”
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