Leif Weatherby offers an analysis of Aaron Rodgers’ career as it declined, framing it within the context of societal shifts and struggles.
The game’s violence and its relationship to America itself has been the topic of football from the beginning. To win a Super Bowl, as Aaron did, is to become a hero in the American epic, to found—or refound—a city, like Gilgamesh, or Aeneas.
America can’t throw off that founding violence, and neither can Aaron. “Going soft” is part of the story of being unable to secure legitimacy after you win, after there’s a state, a government, a grown-ass man, in place. The question stops being about the violence itself, and starts being about knowledge of violence. It stops being action too fast for reflection, and starts being narrative. It is at this moment that the quarterback becomes a talking head.