The book is “Out Of The Darkness: The Mystery Of Aaron Rodgers” ($29.99 in hardcover from Mariner Books; also for Amazon Kindle). The “long-shot kid from upstate Chico” might not “lead the Jets to their first Super Bowl appearance since they won it all in January 1969”; yet, as the new season beckons, one never knows.
“Rodgers,” O’Connor writes, is “the most compelling and polarizing figure in professional football, hands down… I wrote this book to explain why.”
What follows is an account of Rodgers’ life, beginning with Pines Elementary in Magalia and concluding with his move to the New York Jets and his season-ending injury early in the first regular game of the season. O’Connor takes the reader inside Rodgers’ most crucial games, at Pleasant Valley, Butte College, Cal, the Green Bay Packers, and the Jets.
But the book captures Aaron’s personal odyssey as well against the backdrop of strained family relationships (O’Connor flew to Chico to take Rodgers’ parents, Ed and Darla, to that fateful Jets game), the sometimes prickly relationships with teammates, friends, and coaches, and the ever-present question of what is next after a Super Bowl ring (with the Packers in 2011) and MVP awards attesting his status as one of the greatest QBs in history.
Butte College is especially formative. Smart as a whip, Rodgers finds a mentor in coach Craig Rigsbee. It is 2002; Aaron is 18. Rigs overrules his staff and makes Rodgers “the guy.” O’Connor writes that “it was a decision that set up the most important season of football that Aaron Rodgers would play—ever—and leave Rigsbee as the man most responsible for changing the trajectory of his career.”
Despite his “self-generated controversies,” O’Connor notes, friends “talked often about Rodgers’ generosity, his outsized heart, and the money he had donated in the wake of the great wildfire and the great pandemic.”
This, too, is Aaron Rodgers, Chico’s son.
