As Rodgers explained Wednesday, he’s grown as a person and realized he enjoyed his time at Wisconsin, regardless of how it went.
“We’re always working on ourselves and trying to be better than we were the day before, the month before, the year before,” Rodgers said. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder. I have a lot of great memories from my time there. Lots of great fan interactions over the years. Lived in Green Bay, lived in Suamico, lived in Hobart. Going to Chives, being out and about, seeing people at Piggly Wiggly when I’m grocery shopping. I grew up there from 2 to 18 and I grew up there from 18 to 18. Grateful. for my time there.
“Obviously, I would have loved to ride off into the sunset after a Super Bowl win, but that’s not the way the league is sometimes. I knew the writing was on the wall when Jordan was drafted. It was just a matter of time. I was MVP the first two years he was with us, but I knew at some point there was going to be a change and if I wanted to play it somewhere else, I would have it.”
Rodgers didn’t embrace Love’s arrival in 2020 with a first-round pick — a pick many Packers fans believed would have been more usefully spent on a weapon Rodgers could use in his final years. But that was then, and this is now; Love is clearly Green Bay’s long-term answer at quarterback, and after Rodgers’ search for greener grass ended in bitter disappointment with the Jets, he’s just happy to lead a capable team that’s more focused on chasing a championship than trying to get revenge.
Oddly enough, perhaps both parties have realized that their split was for the best. They will test that result in front of a national audience in the Steel City, one game shared between two teams after separate journeys that each hope to end with football glory.