Aaron Rodgers clinched the dignified end he deserved, if this is indeed goodbye

 

PITTSBURGH — Aaron Rodgers was cutting easily through a thick haze of cigar smoke in a winners locker room that was louder than the loudest nightclub on New Year’s Eve, wearing flip-flops and shorts with his AFC North championship T-shirt and cap. He was stopping at different lockers to hug different Steelers teammates, too busy basking in the delirious present to ponder the failures of the recent past.

Later, as he headed for the showers, Rodgers smirked when saying he hadn’t given any thought to the fact that he won 10 games while the team that told him he wasn’t good enough to do what he did Sunday night, the New York Jets, won three. But the truth is, his fourth-quarter mastery in a breathless conquest of the Ravens was all about securing a dignified ending worthy of his first-ballot Hall of Fame career.

An ending that Rodgers tucked inside his hip pocket, preserved forever, if he indeed decides to say goodbye when Pittsburgh’s playoff run is done.

Even if the Ravens’ Tyler Loop had nailed that field goal attempt on the final play and sent him home at age 42, Rodgers could have lived with the result. He did what he had to do even without having DK Metcalf on the field, leading the Steelers on those two touchdown drives in the fourth, hitting Calvin Austin on that 26-yard scoring pass inside the final minute before a missed Chris Boswell extra point left the score at a perilous 26-24.

Rodgers had been betrayed by special teams and other assorted breakdowns in his Green Bay prime — the failure to recover an onside kick once cost him a second trip to the Super Bowl. So as he watched Loop line up that fateful kick, of course Rodgers couldn’t believe he was back in that position, with his career potentially on the brink of ending in a most heartbreaking way.