After reading an in-depth article on Aaron Rodgers by ESPN’s Tim Keown, Boomer is convinced that the future Hall of Famer has negatively impacted the Jets locker room, when many expected his arrival to have the opposite effect on an organization starving for a culture change.
“There’s no shock why this isn’t working…stuff like this happens,” Boomer said. “Everyone is deferring to him, his comments are upsetting players and upsetting people in their private lives, who are now questioning if Aaron Rodgers is what he was supposed to be when he got here.
“I keep on saying that locker rooms are very fragile places…when you’re losing, all of a sudden, that’s when things start fraying around the edges, and players start looking around going, ‘He ain’t as good as we thought he was.’”
Boomer had already wondered weeks back if Rodgers was “sucking the air out of” the Jets locker room due to high expectations not being met, Rodgers himself calling out teammates like Mike Williams, and the results not being close to what many expected them to be once he arrived. Now, he is even more convinced that Rodgers came in with too much power, and it didn’t help the cohesiveness of the team or the culture in the locker room.
“It’s one thing to have respect for a player,” Boomer said. Then there’s the kind of manipulation around the locker room and how you deal with people…he can’t control the outside world when it comes to his teammates reacting to something that he may have said.
“This chips away at what you’re trying to build as a team.”
With that in mind, Boomer says the Jets will likely have to move on after this failed season, and try to repair the culture and start over yet again.
“It just basically fractures the entire locker room…that locker room is completely fractured,” Boomer said. “It makes me think that I don’t know how the Jets can come back with him next year. I really don’t. I just don’t see it. As great as he was in Green Bay…it is evident to me now, after reading this article, is that it’s just too much. He’s just too big.”