Aaron Rodgers goes to Egypt for good street food ... or maybe to re-enact Stargate

Aaron Rodgers missed mini-camp because he was in Egypt, where apparently he was on vacation, not top secret business. But we know better, don't we!

Listen up Jets fans, a trip to Egypt can only mean one of 5 things, so let's explore the possibilities:

1. Aliens: Rodgers has been in touch with space crafts that texted him about the origins of the Pyramids. The messages urged him to visit the grand structures and inscribe his initials on the wall of an ancient toilet within.

2. Street food: The Jets QB heard about a fantastic falafel stand just outside of Cairo and was eager to try it before anyone else at ESPN, you know, for a review on McAfee. 

3. Relationship-building: He thought the trip would help him get closer to Coach Saleh, who unbeknown to Rodgers, is actually Lebanese. 

4. Travel mishap: He told a New York cabbie he was headed to the Falls in East Ridge and, what do you know, he ended up on the other side of the world. 

5. Binging: A late-night sci-fi move session ended up with No.8 high as a kite and grasping for answers. Unable to shake the plot from Stargate, he frantically searched for a portal on eBay and early the next morning, charged through it, American flag in hand.

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8 career options for benched Jets QB, Zach Wilson

With Zach Wilson out of a gig in New York, we thought we’d chip in with some career advice. 

So here are 8 things Zach can take up while he licks his wounds and gels his quiff on the sideline. Honestly, he won't be able to say NO to some of these ideas!

1. Mug for novelty mugs: Perhaps the most obvious role for the Jets No.1 is to sell a series of ‘No.1’ branded merch. Think about it ... #1 Brat mugs, #1 Prima Donna t-shirts, #1 Back-up toilet paper, #1 in the Clubhouse headbands.

2. Serve one too many: Could there be a better opportunity for Zach than partnering with former QB sh@t-stirer, Jay Cutler? They could open a nice little unfriendly bar together, ‘Zach and Jay’s Sunday Sulk’.

3. Karate chop! The time is right for a new villain on the hit show, Cobra Kai. Listen, Zach has the looks, the attitude and even the goofy headband. 

4. Be a hero to punks everywhere: Gen Z’s most questionable cohort have had some pretty precarious champions in the past, so it’s high time they nab a new role model punk, right? Nobody lacks self-awareness or fails to take responsibility like Wilson.

5. Soak up the sideline: The Jets former no.2 pick needn’t give up football, gang! There are many in the NFL fraternity who feel there just aren’t enough self-appointed sideline stars. Zach might not throw well but word is he can really clip a board and stare at a laminated diner menu.

6. Autographs! Saved By The Bell pics sell for a pretty penny on eBay. Let the Bell save you, Zach!

7. Make "No" your thing: Press conferences are fairly boring but if you need someone who can’t read the room and has a knack for one-word answers, Wilson is your man! Sure, Belichick owns the corner, but the press can't resist a much sexier negative response, surely. 

8. Get about town, man: Nobody out there has been willing to suggest gigolo, but we’ll go there. He’s got the experience, perfect hair and the Saleh-endorsed beefiness.

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Let's get Monday Night Football back to being iconic

By J.P. Pelosi

*NFL's MNF started tentatively in 1964, untelevised 
*The 'spectacle' as we know it kicked off in the seventies
*First game saw the Browns beat the Jets 31-21, Sep 21, 1970

Football on Monday night seems a grand idea, no matter which way you dial it up.

Unless you're Tony Robbins or Hugh Hefner, most weeks start with a thud, a cold hard realisation that work awaits, the clothes hamper is festering and dinner might well be frozen.

Indeed, many of us need the relief of Monday night sports to ease us into the five day circus. But there's a problem: the ringmaster has found his way into our TVs to mess up Monday football, too.

Take the first two Monday games of the upcoming NFL season: Steelers - Redskins, Niners - Rams. Sure, they're interesting enough teams, and I get it, an east coast match-up complimented by a west coast clash. But this is the once legendary Monday Night Football!

Cossell, Gifford, Michaels, Madden. Marino. Plunkett. Montana. That freaking fantastic theme song... ba ba baaaaam ... babadum...ba ba baaaaa ...

How did it all become so, well, pedestrian?

Surely Giants - Cowboys would see more chips spat across living rooms. Chargers - Chiefs, too, would ignite some action. But there's a weird shift toward airing second rate contests, a trend that's making Monday sports fixtures feel blander than date night with Bill Belichick.

A rugby scrum of content

It's the same issue with football in my backyard, the National Rugby League (NRL). Instead of being a beer cracking, after-work barbecuing extravaganza, Monday NRL games are really an afterthought.

I'm not even sure most fans know it's on, and that's largely to do with it being a cable TV offering only. Perhaps the TV stations are just happy to lock big deals in with sporting codes and the games have become throwaway details. Or maybe with all the content flying around now, programmers simply don't know what constitutes a feature game anymore.

Either way, rugby league won't be played on Mondays anymore and columnists are already rejoicing. Given its soft crowds, Thursday Night Football could well be next.

Strength in numbers

The NFL can get away with a casual strategy because of the size of the US population, and more importantly, the sheer number of cable subscribers. NFL games attract massive crowds, both to the stadium and the box, so there's no real danger of losing fans over, say, a lazy Jags - Bucs game. Oh, they'll be watching, even with three sheets to the wind.

In Australia, however, cable isn't as prevalent. Even if it was, I don't think fans care enough about Monday's night of football because the fixtures are rarely appealing, and consequently, crowds a smaller than at local kids pantomime. It's not a good look.

Top shelf old boy!

One sporting competition that seems to have the gist of things is the English Premier League, which sometimes will serve up a Monday nighter for the ages. Take a recent affair between London rivals Chelsea and West Ham: The Telegraph called it a whizz-bang of a match. No messing around, just give the people what they want.

The NFL equivalent might be heated iteration of Pats - Giants, or Packers - Bears. Not the Rams (sorry LA), just because you have a new stadium to show off. Or the Skins because, I don't know, it's an election year?

Pretty packaging enough?

Listen, you have to love the nostalgic themed intro by Peter Berg that ESPN's MNF now uses. It's perfect. I'm in. But the scheduling needs work. It needs to draw a throng and fill the stadium. It needs to set digital recording boxes into a frenzy. And certainly test a few marriages.

The point of non-weekend football is to make it an event, right? You know, something you put your best undies on for that day. We have to want to rush home to kick off our shoes and fire up the grill.

Otherwise it just ends up being something we click on and move past, eventually landing on something with more action, like The Bachelor.

The Jets know what they're doing, okay?

The New York Jets have ensured that their long held strategy of fielding an inadequate starting quarterback remains in place, by neglecting to sign anyone of talent at the position for the 2015 season.

Jets brass confirmed this past month that the wildly inaccurate and remarkably illogical, Geno Smith, will continue to hold the club's starting QB job and that it is - amazingly - his to lose. New Yorkers, perhaps indifferent to the situation after watching Jets quarterbacks perform the role with all the ineptitude of Peanuts' Charlie Brown, must thank their lucky stars that their city has two football teams.

This, of course, is little consolation for those who bleed Jets green and not Giants blue. Instead, these fans must do all they can to sedate themselves amid the lunacy exhibited by their team's management, who clearly hold the sport's premiere position in such low regard. How else can one explain the club's signing of journeyman Ryan Fitzpatrick, a notably more intelligent signal-caller than Smith, and equally evasive in the open field, only to relegate him to the back-up role?

Fitzpatrick isn't a Manning, it should go without saying, but he's also no Mark Sanchez. The problem, it seems, is that he's somewhere in between and for the Jets, this poses a confounding situation: Should they play Smith and guarantee themselves perhaps four wins, or run with Fitzpatrick and aim for eight, maybe nine?

The former is a more familiar goal, and as suggested, within the club's existing mode of operation. The latter, meanwhile, bears potential, and that's never been the Jets' strong suit. They prefer tallying up picks and turnovers, you see. We all work better with what we know, right?

NFL training camp's most telling numbers

Infographics are in seemingly more places now than Terrell Owens. But unlike TO, they're not going to unsettle your favourite quarterback, or disrupt the inner workings of your team. They're simply colorful and informative...like John Madden.

So we're pleased to bring you our first ever football infographic, courtesy of our new friends over at The Football Educator. This one is about training camp, and interestingly represents the amount of Gatorade consumed, or at least made available for consumption---twenty-five cases! (Note: we can't confirm how much of the Jets' 25 were solely consumed by Rex Ryan but hope an infographic is in the offing).

Cowboys are the American Dream

According to the statistical maestros at ESPN, the Dallas Cowboys are America's most popular pro football team - still. ESPN Sports Polls has found that 8.8 per cent of surveyed fans support the 'Boys, which makes them more popular than even media darlings like the Packers, Pats, Steelers, or Jets - and presumably their hottest fan, Kate Upton, too. While that last point seems implausible, there hasn't been a club in the NFL's history that has built on its All American aura quite like the Cowboys, and for such a sustained period. It's the sort of branding brilliance Pete Campbell depends on to close a deal, failing other measures that is.

Think Dallas Cowboys and a multitude of images come to mind: the iconic starred helmet, Tom Landry's hat, buxom cheerleaders, Staubach's spirals and sideburns, Emmitt's spins - on an off the field, the Ring of Honor, Parcells raging along the sideline, Tony Romo scrambling, Jerry's giant arena, and well, bags and bags full of profit. America's team continues living the dream folks.