It wasn't too long ago that a torn achilles was by far the worst injury an athlete could suffer. Far worse than a torn ACL. The thought of coming back from an achilles tear in less than a full calendar year wasn't even conceivable. Go back twenty years, and it might as well have been a career death sentence. Yet Aaron Rodgers, who will be turning 40 years old on December 2nd, tore his achilles tendon on the second Monday of September, has now returned to the practice field 79 days later.

Look, I don't know how this is all going to play out. With the Jets barely clinging to life in the AFC playoff race, it's possible that Robert Saleh and the Jets front office will throw themselves in front of Rogers to try to dissuade him from playing in otherwise meaningless games in December and January, when they could just pack it in and regroup for next year, when hopefully Rodgers won't tear his achilles tendon one series into the season again. But Rodgers has put a target on his own back every time he's insisted that he'd return to action this season, and we know how headstrong this man could be. Are the Jets going to stand in his way when he could very easily say to them, “Alright, I'm off to host Jeopardy! I'll say hi to Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik for you guys, thanks for nothing!” if they tell him he can't return to the field this year? It certainly wouldn't be the most surprising outcome to all of this.

My best guess is that Aaron Rodgers will continue with light practice work for the next couple of weeks. The Jets will continue to lose games and eventually find themselves mathematically eliminated from the Playoffs, and not too long after that, there will be a press conference where Robert Saleh comes out and says that the Jets are shutting Rodgers down. Rodgers will appear on the Pat McAfee Show a day or two later, predictably throw Saleh under the bus, telling McAfee “I'm ready to play, but they don't want to let me,” or something like that before making some kind of crack about how Travis Kelce is Mr. Pfizer.

Sounds pretty on-brand for Aaron Rodgers, no?