Whitlock: Aaron Rodgers’ exit and Woody Johnson’s gold chain usher in the NFL’s hip-hop era

Shortly after the training staff escorted Aaron Rodgers off the field Monday night, ESPN cameras panned to New York Jets owner Woody Johnson standing helplessly in his stadium suite.

The look on Johnson’s face reflected the gravity of the moment. He and his franchise went all in on the last great old-school quarterback, trading for the Packers legend and bringing in complementary pieces (Randall Cobb, Allen Lazard, and Nathaniel Hackett) to make Rodgers comfortable. The investment lasted four plays. A routine twist on field turf damaged Rodgers’ Achilles, likely ending his season and perhaps his career.

Johnson purchased blue-chip stock right before its collapse. It's difficult to imagine Rodgers returning to MVP form at 40 years old. Monday’s season opener is a sad day for Jets fans.

But Rodgers’ injury and the stunned image of Woody Johnson symbolize far more than tragedy for New York football fans. They officially usher in the National Football League’s hip-hop era.

The rock-'n'-roll quarterbacks who made the NFL the unquestioned most powerful force in popular culture are done as traveling headliners. Over the last eight years, Father Time picked them off one by one. Peyton Manning was the first to go, retiring after the 2015 season. Five years later, Drew Brees left the stage. The next year, Ben Roethlisberger performed his closing act. Last season, Tom Brady sang his final encore. And last night, at his New York opening, the Buffalo Bills ruined Rodgers' first song.

It’s over. The NFL is hip-hop.

Woody Johnson, the 76-year-old owner of the Jets, showed up at Monday Night Football wearing a Rick Ross starter kit. The image of Rodgers limping off the field and Johnson looking on from on high with a gaudy, diamond-laden, white gold chain draped around his neck tell you everything you need to know about Roger Goodell’s NFL.

Hip-hop conquered the NFL the same way it conquered the NBA. Culturally there’s no difference between the NFL and the NBA.

Is this a good thing?

It depends on your perspective and worldview. Social media loves the NBA’s alliance with hip-hop and identity politics. Social media loves racial idolatry, matriarchal culture, and radical materialism, foundational tenets of hip-hop. If Twitter reflects your point of view, you’ll love the new NFL. It prioritizes race above everything else.

Fourteen black quarterbacks started for NFL teams this weekend. That’s not a negative. But my happiness with the NFL doesn’t revolve around the number of black starting quarterbacks. I just want to see quarterbacks play at a high level. That’s not what I saw over the weekend.

The quality of play in the NFL across all positions is at an all-time low. The NFL regular season is starting to mirror the NBA’s. Like NBA players and rappers, NFL players are grossly overpaid and the quality of their work has slipped, particularly in the regular season.

If your worldview and perspective are shaped by more traditional Christian values, you have been uncomfortable with the direction of the NFL for nearly a decade. You could see where this was all headed seven years ago when Roger Goodell allowed Colin Kaepernick to kneel during the national anthem for an entire season. Two years ago, when the NFL partnered with Jay-Z and gangsta rap legends Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and 50 Cent performed at halftime of the Super Bowl, you knew beyond a reasonable doubt that the league had abandoned its core values.

In my view, the NFL going hip-hop is bad. Real bad.

My first sports love was the NBA. My dad took my brothers and me to Pacers games when they played in the ABA. My favorite athlete as a kid was Magic Johnson. I absolutely adored the Magic, Larry, Michael, and Isiah era of the NBA. I enjoyed the early years of LeBron James.

But as the league became more and more aligned with hip-hop, my interest waned. The regular season is mostly unwatchable. The racial pandering in the aftermath of George Floyd turned me completely off.

I’m not alone. The NBA isn’t nearly as relevant as it used to be. Five years from now, as the NFL sinks deeper into the hip-hop abyss, it won’t be as relevant, especially not to people with my values.

Hip-hop, like all entertainment cultures aligned with Marxism, emasculates. Football has joined the victim olympics. Everything is racist. When discussing every black athlete or coach, the media must apply “black-affirming care,” which works the same way as “gender-affirming care.”

It’s a feminine mindset. Everything must be affirmed. Football was meant to be a rough game of resistance and imposition of will. The entire conversation around football and black quarterbacks centers on whether the level of criticism was too harsh.

Deion Sanders was celebrated by the media for conducting a postgame press conference challenging reporters who he believes failed to affirm his greatness.

Great men aren’t built by affirmation. They’re forged through their perseverance to resistance.

Two years ago, the NFL unveiled a commercial promoting the league as gay. That was another sign that football had gone hip-hop. Hip-hop is gay. The male rappers brag about prison sex. The female rappers simulate lesbian sex in their videos.

We’re gonna miss Aaron Rodgers and the NFL’s rock-'n'-roll era. Hip-hop is a poor substitute for great music.