Philip Lanier

Hot take: Matt Ryan was a better QB than Eli Manning… people just worship rings. Agree or nah? 👀

WSJ claims military advisers deliberately kept President Trump out of Situation Room during high-risk Iran rescue mission over “temperament concerns.”

Of course AJ Brown would rather play with Drake Maye than Jalen Hurts. Is there a single NFL player in the league who would rather play with Jalen Hurts than Aaron Rodgers? Not a player who would rather play in Philadelphia because of the roster. Not a player who would rather have Hurts' age on his side. A player who, given equal circumstances, would choose Jalen Hurts to throw him the football over Aaron Rodgers. That player does not exist. Aaron Rodgers is 42 years old. He tore his Achilles tendon on the fourth snap of the 2023 season. He came back and played all 17 games in 2024 on a Jets team that went 5-12 around him. He signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers for 2025, and according to multiple reports was the primary reason Pittsburgh reached the playoffs. He is closer to a senior citizen than he is to his athletic prime, and he is still a better quarterback than Jalen Hurts in every measurable way that matters. Start with the numbers that define a career. Rodgers has four MVP awards. Four. He won them in 2011, 2014, 2020, and 2021, including back-to-back MVPs in his late thirties. Hurts has zero. His best MVP finish was second place in 2022, when he lost the award to Patrick Mahomes. Rodgers has four First-Team All-Pro selections. Hurts has one Second-Team All-Pro. Rodgers has 10 Pro Bowl selections. Hurts has three. Rodgers has a career passer rating of 102.3. Hurts has never sustained anything close to that over the course of a career. Rodgers' career touchdown-to-interception ratio is 4.56 to 1, the best in NFL history. He once threw 402 consecutive passes without an interception, an NFL record. Hurts threw four interceptions and fumbled in a single game against the Los Angeles Chargers in December 2024 and became the first player since 1978 to turn the ball over twice on the same play. Those are not comparable resumes. Those are not even in the same conversation. But the argument people will make for Hurts is the ring. Hurts won Super Bowl LIX in February 2025, beating the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 and earning Super Bowl MVP with 17 completions on 22 attempts, 221 passing yards, two touchdown passes, and 72 rushing yards. That is a real accomplishment. Nobody should take that from him. He also lost Super Bowl LVII two years earlier, 38-35 to those same Chiefs, despite putting up 304 passing yards and three rushing touchdowns, because a fumble in the second quarter was returned for a touchdown by Nick Bolton and shifted the momentum of the game. Rodgers won Super Bowl XLV after the 2010 season, beating the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25. He went 24 of 39 for 304 yards, three touchdowns, zero interceptions, and a 111.5 passer rating. He won Super Bowl MVP. One ring each. The difference is what comes after. What came after for Rodgers was four more MVP awards, a decade of elite play, and a career that put him in the conversation for the most talented quarterback to ever throw a football. What came after for Hurts was the 2025 season. Hurts' 2025 was a regression by every measure. According to reports, he posted a career-low 7.1 yards per attempt and a 65 percent completion rate, his worst in four years. His rushing production dropped to 421 yards after putting up 630 the year before. ESPN reported that Hurts "continually fights against under-center play" because he does not like turning his back on the defense, and that the Eagles have "catered to Hurts by playing to his strengths and subsequently limiting how diverse the offense can be." His relationship with offensive coordinator Kellen Moore was described as tense. The locker room frustrations that had been whispered about in prior seasons became louder. And in the Wild Card round of the 2025 playoffs, Hurts and the Eagles were eliminated 23-19 by the San Francisco 49ers. He went 20 of 35 for 168 yards in a game that looked nothing like a Super Bowl champion. Eight months after winning it all, Philadelphia was one and done. That is who Jalen Hurts is. He is a quarterback who can look transcendent when everything around him is working, when Saquon Barkley is averaging five yards a carry, when the offensive line is giving him clean pockets, when the defense is holding leads. And he is a quarterback who falls apart when the infrastructure cracks. His arm does not save him. His processing does not save him. His legs are not enough. Rodgers is the opposite. Rodgers has spent the last two decades elevating whatever was around him. The 2024 Jets went 5-12 with one of the worst rosters in football, and Rodgers still threw 28 touchdowns with 11 interceptions and a 90.5 passer rating at age 40 coming off a torn Achilles. The 2025 Steelers won the AFC North and made the playoffs with Rodgers, at 41, throwing 24 touchdowns and just 7 interceptions across a 10-7 season. He does not need the infrastructure. He is the infrastructure. The arm talent gap is not close. Rodgers has one of the strongest, most accurate arms in the history of the position. His ability to throw off-platform, change arm angles, and place the ball in windows that should not exist is something that cannot be taught and cannot be replicated. Hurts has improved his completion percentage from 52.9 percent as a rookie to the mid-60s, and his deep ball has gotten better, but nobody who watches both quarterbacks throw a football would confuse the two. Rodgers makes throws that Hurts cannot make. That is not an insult. It is a description of physical reality. The football IQ gap might be even wider. Jason Kelce, who has played with Hurts, has described Rodgers as being "on another level of intellectual ability" for the game. Rodgers scored a 35 on the Wonderlic, placing him in the 96th percentile. He reads defenses pre-snap and adjusts at the line of scrimmage in ways that Hurts, by ESPN's own reporting, resists doing. The report that Hurts "continually fights against under-center play" is not a minor detail. It means he is limiting his own offense because he is uncomfortable with a fundamental aspect of quarterback play. Rodgers has never needed to be catered to. He has always been the one dictating the offense, not the other way around. The contract makes it worse. Hurts signed a five-year, $255 million extension in April 2023, with $179.3 million fully guaranteed. That made him the highest-paid player in NFL history at the time. The first no-trade clause in Eagles franchise history. For that money, you are not paying for a quarterback who needs a perfect ecosystem to succeed. You are paying for a quarterback who creates the ecosystem. Hurts has not been that player consistently enough to justify the investment, and the 2025 season was the clearest evidence yet. Rodgers at 42 makes $13.65 million on a one-year deal with the Steelers. He costs a fraction of what Hurts costs and provides more from the quarterback position in the areas that actually matter: accuracy, decision-making, pre-snap reads, pocket presence, and the ability to elevate the players around him regardless of what the defense shows. The Super Bowl argument is the only card Hurts has that Rodgers cannot match right now, and even that argument is flawed. Rodgers won his Super Bowl as the clear best player on his team. He was the MVP of the game and the engine that drove the entire postseason. Hurts won his Super Bowl on a team that also had Saquon Barkley, one of the best offensive lines in football, and a defense that held the Chiefs to 22 points. His Super Bowl MVP performance was 17 of 22 for 221 yards. That is efficient. It is not carrying. There is not a receiver in the NFL who would rather catch passes from Jalen Hurts than Aaron Rodgers. There is not a running back who would rather have Hurts' arm keeping safeties honest than Rodgers' arm. There is not a coach who, given the choice, would rather build around Hurts' limitations than Rodgers' command of an offense. Hurts is a good quarterback on a great team. Rodgers is a great quarterback who has been great regardless of the team. The gap between them is not close. It has never been close. And the fact that one of them has a $255 million contract and the other is on a $13.65 million prove-it deal does not change the fact that the cheaper option is the better quarterback. It always has been.

Hit me with the harshest reality truth.

Mr. President, I am not giving up any of my rights for anyone or any cause.

THAT'S A GRITTY HOGS WIN!!!