Couch: Aaron Rodgers Pout-A-Thon Marches On

Today is officially Aaron Rodgers Day in the NFL. Of course, what day isn’t?

But today, the Green Bay Packers report to mandatory minicamp, and players and coaches and suits and media will all sit around at 11 a.m. staring at the door.

Reports are that Rodgers won’t walk in. Probably. He’s letting everyone hang. I expect that at 11:10 a.m., fashionably late, he’ll tweet a picture of himself in Bora Bora playing the ukulele or something. And then we can all talk about Rodgers some more, the way we have the entire offseason, the way he has crafted it.

I can already tell you what it means. It means that Rodgers’ pout-a-thon continues. We keep waiting for him to tell us what in the hell is actually bothering him. And you know what? At this point, I don’t care anymore.

My point is this: Just shut up already, Aaron Rodgers.

I know he isn’t saying much, actually, but his nonstop passive-aggressiveness screams volumes.

Rodgers has been playing Packers’ management, making them squirm, but also he’s playing his teammates and all the Packers fans and everyone else. This whole thing has just been so carefully orchestrated.

Rodgers is a smart guy, but he can’t clearly explain himself? Really?

Rodgers isn’t expressing what’s bugging him for one of three reasons: 1) He’s so petty that he knows it’ll look bad. 2) If you don’t know, he’s not going to tell you. 3) Much like a 2-year-old, he’s not really sure himself.

All he knows for sure is that his tummy hurts and he’s cranky.

Rodgers made NFL Draft Day “Aaron Rodgers Day” when reports -- carefully planted -- came out that he wasn’t going to come back to Green Bay. He was demanding a trade.

That’s fine, but a few days later, reports -- carefully planted by Rodgers -- came out that Rodgers was unhappy that reports had come out.

So we got to see Rodgers be the guest host on Jeopardy!, which was Aaron Rodgers Day; appear at the Kentucky Derby, which was Aaron Rodgers Day. He even hijacked Kenny Mayne Day on the ESPN host’s final SportsCenter by turning that into Aaron Rodgers Day.

“The people,’’ Rodgers said. “That’s the most important thing. The people make an organization. People make the business. And sometimes that gets forgotten. Culture, foundation of it, brick-by-brick, is built by the people. Not by the organization. Not by the building. Not by the corporation. It’s built by the people.’’

Insert eye-roll here. That was just so intentionally vague.

“Anything’s on the table,’’ Rodgers said.

Since then, we keep getting accidental (read: carefully planted) sightings of Rodgers and his fiancee, Shailene Woodley, and friends on the beach in Hawaii, or playing guitar, or dancing or whatever.

OK, we get it already, Aaron. Your life is happy without the Packers. They need you more than you need them.

Meanwhile, he has left Packers’ management to squirm publicly, to beg him to stay. But here’s the thing: He has left his teammates and fans to squirm and beg, too.

Apparently, he doesn’t care about them. I’m guessing the players aren’t upset about this. Not yet, anyway. They know the game. And the fans are just wanting him to make up his mind, or at least tell them what’s on it. At this point, the whole Aaron Rodgers Day campaign is in their face.

Packers president Mark Murphy took questions from fans on the team’s website the other day and said the Rodgers “situation’’ has divided the fan base. He also backed general manager Brian Gutekunst and said, yet again, that Rodgers won’t be traded.

So the organization’s passive-aggressiveness is a little more passive. But Packers’ management smartly includes fans in its public responses, though it’s going to be hard to get fans to take management’s side over the quarterback who brought them a dynasty.

And by “dynasty,” I mean that he has won one Super Bowl.

The closest anyone can come to figuring out what Rodgers is upset about is that the Packers drafted a long-term project, Jordan Love, at quarterback while Rodgers went into his late 30s.

To me, this feels like a prolonged contract negotiation, and Rodgers has already decided to come back but doesn’t know how anymore. If he has already decided not to come back, then all he’s doing now is hurting the team and fans out of spite.

People keep saying that if Rodgers skips this minicamp, he can be fined up to $100,000. True, but management can also wipe away that fine by ruling his absence excused.

Presumably, they’ll do that on Aaron Rodgers Day. And then training camp will start on Aaron Rodgers Day.

Rodgers told Mayne that it’s all about character and doing things the right way.

Ha!

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