Aaron Rodgers’ latest trip b...

Yes, NFL fans are interested to see if the Kansas City Chiefs can run it back, if Bryce Young and CJ Stroud will live up to their lofty draft perch, and if the godawful Cardinals can somehow manage to lose 18 games in a 17-game season. But the most fascinating story remains Aaron Rodgers in New York, and not just from a “he could actually make the Jets decent, couldn’t he?” perspective.

Rodgers remains a headline-generating machine, the human equivalent of ChatGPT — serve up a prompt, get back a fully formed nugget of content suitable for discussion on blogs, podcasts and sports-talk radio for a full news cycle. Combine that with the voracious appetite for all things sports in the New York media, and bang, you’ve got yourself a news-making operation with enough energy to power Manhattan.

Consider the latest Rodgers bit: his appearance at a Denver psychedelics conference Wednesday where he made an appeal for the substances to be legalized. Given Rodgers’ extensive history with alternative medicine, this comes as literally no surprise at all.

“Is it not ironic that the things that actually expand your mind are illegal and the things that . . . dumb you down have been legal for centuries?” Rodgers wondered, according to audio obtained by ProFootballTalk. “We’ve got to change that. We’ve got to change that. It’s through awareness and education.”

Rodgers has advocated for the health benefits of ayahuasca, a plant-based psychedelic, for several years. He consumed ayahuasca prior to the 2020 and 2021 seasons, years in which he won his third and fourth MVP awards.

"I don't think it's a coincidence," Rodgers told "The Aubrey Marcus Podcast" last August. "I really don't. I don't really believe in coincidences at this point. It's the universe bringing things to happen when they're supposed to happen."

The universe has now brought Rodgers to New York, a split from Green Bay that, yes, was supposed to happen. Rodgers now has the opportunity to take his message to a much larger, more aggressive and more self-impressed media corps than he faced on a regular basis in Green Bay. And hoo boy, are the New York papers going to dance coming up with headlines for quotes like this:

“You know,” Rodgers said, “words are so interesting. They have such power in their spells. There’s a reason it’s called ‘spelling,’ because the way that the letters are put together have such power.”

What’s fascinating is that even amid all the 2 a.m. dorm room-style meandering, Rodgers often hits on the deep questions that all athletes face, whether they know it or not, whether they’re able to articulate them or not. When you achieve everything you’ve wanted in life … what do you do the next morning?

“Success in life was holding the Lombardi Trophy,” Rodgers said in Denver. “Now I’ve done it. Now what? Now what’s the purpose of all this?”

It’s a question that’s vexed even the greatest. Michael Jordan has struggled to find purpose in his post-playing years, and Tom Brady is headed that way soon enough. Credit Rodgers, then, for asking the right questions … even if he’s not quite ready to shed his critics.

“I guarantee you all these bums who want to come after me online about my experience and stuff, they’ve never tried it,” he said in Denver. “They’re the perfect people for it. We need to get these people taking it.” (To be honest, he’s not wrong here; a whole lot of NFL media — and fans, for that matter — could stand to chill out a bit, one way or another.)

Rodgers has mastered that uniquely 21st century skill of arrogant victimhood, standing atop the world while still claiming he’s suffering unjust persecution. That’s very good news for the Jets, though. What better way to prove all the haters wrong than to take one of the NFL’s most woebegone franchises to a Super Bowl?