'Aaron Rodgers: Enigma' Netflix documentary hits differently with Jets at 4-10
Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers before the game against the Jacksonville Jaguars at EverBank Stadium on December 15, 2024. Credit: Getty Images
The biggest problem with “Aaron Rodgers: Enigma,” the Netflix documentary about you-know-who that premiered on Tuesday, is not the filmmakers’ fault.
The biggest problem is this: The Jets are 4-10.
It is impossible to watch the series’ three hour-plus episodes without wondering how much different it would feel if Rodgers’ Jets were 10-4.
That presumably was what Rodgers and everyone behind the series, including co-directors Gotham Chopra and Liam Hughes, had in mind when the cameras began following Rodgers shortly after he tore his left Achilles tendon in the 2023 opener.
This would be the dramatic story of an aging superstar rising from physical and emotional despair to fulfill in 2024 the glory that was denied him last season.
But the series ends with the 2024 opener – a loss to the 49ers – then leaves the rest of us to fill in the three-month gap that followed, which has included a 1-9 stretch and the firings of coach Robert Saleh and general manager Joe Douglas.
That plot twist, which we all know about but Rodgers and everyone else in the series does not, changes everything.
What is left is a vanity project that includes a lot of Rodgers talking in multiple interviews, friends and colleagues saying nice things about him and, inevitably, complex philosophical musings from the famously deep-thinking quarterback.
Most memorably, in Episode 2 we follow his three-day ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica, in which he and others consume the hallucinogenic drink, or as he likes to call it, “plant medicine.”
One of his revelations on that trip involves tapping into his feminine side. “We can model a new way of thinking about masculinity and what it means to be a man,” he says. “It’s the balance between the divine masculine and the divine feminine.”
Rodgers also has a strong interest in the notion of “ego deaths.”
“I want to be friends between observer and ego, and so I think we need the death of the ego, because the ego needs to be like the phoenix and rise from the ashes and take on a new form, which hopefully is way more in conjunction with the observer, so you’re not strictly living life through your ego.”
Um, sure. Why not?
Rodgers is not everyone’s cup of tea, to say the least. And more than three hours in his company can be a bit much. But give the guy credit for being smarter and more interesting than the average jock, even if it often gets him into trouble on and off the field.
But this is not exactly a journalistic approach to the enigma that is Rodgers. For that, see Ian O’Connor’s recent book, “Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers.”
Most of the criticism of him in “Enigma” comes in the form of background audio snippets from skeptical television and radio commentators over many years.
His high-profile romances are mentioned only in passing, but Rodgers does delve into his strained relationship with his family, attributing it largely to his rejection of their conservative religious beliefs in favor of questioning organized religion.
Rodgers ties many of his adult perspectives to his childhood experience, including a desire to prove to his parents he is tougher than they thought he was.
“I’m definitely thankful to my parents for thinking I was soft growing up,” he says.
The series does cover Rodgers’ controversial anti-vaccination stance – and misleading comments about his vax status – during the COVID-19 pandemic, a key turning point in his public image.
Like him or not, Rodgers is unique, and he revels in that.
We see him winning on “Jeopardy!,” talking politics with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and pursuing various eclectic interests while still being able to flip a macho switch and perform an expletive-laden speech to his teammates the night before a game.
As awkward as the timing for this series is, it will serve as a valuable document of the life and times of a football great for curious fans 10, 25 or 50 years from now.
But for those of us living in mid-December of 2024, not so much.
The series ends with Rodgers looking into the camera and saying, “Could be the last year. But it could not be.”
That still is true, but the vibe is far different now than it was when he said it before the season.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
