And, just like that, Aaron Rodgers' season is over.
The Green Bay Packers placed Rodgers on injured reserve, the team announced Tuesday afternoon. It's the second time the veteran quarterback has been put on IR this year, but this time he isn't coming back. One week after the hype and hope that Rodgers could rescue the season, the Packers have shut him down.
Rodgers, who broke his collarbone Oct. 15 against the Minnesota Vikings, sat out two months after being placed on injured reserve with the designation to return. He recovered enough to be medically cleared to play last week and started on Sunday in Carolina, looking rusty but still productive in the critical loss to the Panthers.
Rodgers was reportedly not 100 percent healed when he took the field on Sunday, but following the loss at Carolina, he insisted he felt fine and said he would continue preparing to play until he was told otherwise. After the Atlanta Falcons' victory on Monday night officially eliminated Green Bay from playoff contention, the Packers clearly decided it wasn't worth the risk to expose Rodgers in their remaining two games.
Green Bay will miss the postseason for the first time since 2008, Rodgers' first year as a starter. The team's eight-year run of playoff appearances was tied with the Patriots for the longest active streak in the NFL, and was one season shy of tying the league record.
On Tuesday, head coach Mike McCarthy said the decision to place Rodgers on IR "was really a product of a number of different factors, and what we felt was best for Aaron. He was sore, took a number of hits."
McCarthy continued, "He's not happy about it. It's a hard day for him. This is not the way any player wants to see the conclusion come for their season. We all understand and appreciate his competitive spirit, but we felt as an organization this was in his best interest."
Rodgers finished the season with 1,675 passing yards, 16 touchdowns to six interceptions and a 97.2 rating in seven games.
Brett Hundley, who started seven games in place of Rodgers and went 3-4, will take over for the final two contests. Green Bay also signed quarterback Joe Callahan, who was recently released after spending time on the team's practice squad and active roster, to be Hundley's backup.
"It's very important for Brett Hundley," McCarthy said. "He gets two division game opportunities. It's important for him and the younger players who get to play in these games. We'll see how the roster shakes out in the next 24 hours. These are opportunities you don't get in the preseason."
The Packers host the Vikings on Saturday night at Lambeau Field, and travel to Detroit to face the Lions in Week 17.
Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.
After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.
Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.
