A SELFISH RODGERS CONTINUES TO BE HIS OWN WORST ENEMY
By playing a hocus-pocus game with vaccinations, the reigning MVP has tested positive, disrupted a promising season in Green Bay and undermined a personal legacy that might go unfulfilled
Always a maverick, always floating above the rest of us on his cooler-than-thou cloud, he just assumed he was an epidemiological expert, too. Aaron Rodgers would combat COVID-19 not with tried-and-true vaccines but … an alternative treatment, based in homeopathic medicine, the sort of quack thing he might have discovered on his Hawaiian vacation with his movie-star fiancee.
He considered himself “immunized.’’ The NFL, which pays handsome salaries to health experts, didn’t agree with him. Typically, he petitioned the league to classify him as a vaccinated player anyway. The NFL said no and required him to undergo daily coronavirus testing. Incredibly, even amid the swirling uncertainties of a pandemic, Aaron Rodgers figured he was larger than life.
Did he not understand what a selfish act this was? After spending an entire offseason attacking Packers management for not helping him win, for not informing him before drafting his eventual replacement, didn’t he realize he was placing the franchise in peril and risking his health — and that of teammates, coaches and others in the team facility? Did he not grasp that his act of hypocrisy might sabotage his final shot of winning another Super Bowl in Green Bay?
Maybe he does now, though I doubt it.
To the shock of no one suffering from Aaron Fatigue, Rodgers tested positive for the coronavirus. By insisting on doing his own thing, he has interrupted the NFL season and disrupted the promising outlook of the Packers, who were positioned to claim the NFC’s No. 1 seed as Rodgers was bidding for back-to-back Most Valuable Player honors. In a stacked conference, having two playoff home games on Lambeau Field’s tundra might have been enough to fend off Tom Brady and Tampa Bay, Kyler Murray and Arizona and the superstar-loaded Los Angeles Rams.
But if the Packers lose Sunday in Kansas City, with Rodgers in COVID isolation for 10 days and successor Jordan Love forced to face Patrick Mahomes, they could lose home advantage and slip-slide toward playoff elimination. Because of his no-vaccine decision, Rodgers could flip a narrative that had been trending positively into another dark episode that further damages his legacy. This is a man who should be recalled among the five or six greatest quarterbacks ever. At this point, it will take more than State Farm insurance to save his footprint.
Immersed in his image and how he’s perceived on social media, was Rodgers playing a hocus-pocus game when asked in August about his vaccination status? Let’s just say it: He was lying. “You know, there's a lot of conversation around it, around the league, and a lot of guys who have made statements and not made statements, owners who have made statements,’’ he said then. “There's guys on the team that haven't been vaccinated. I think it's a personal decision. I'm not going to judge those guys. There are guys that've been vaccinated that have contracted COVID. It's an interesting issue that I think we're going to see played out the entire season.’’
Still ambiguous, he added, “I think I like to learn about everything that I'm doing, and there was a lot of research that even went into that. But like I said, there's been people that have tested positive, and I think it's only vaccinated people here. It's going to be interesting to see how things work moving forward. Obviously, there could be some issues with vaccinated people only testing every couple weeks and then non-vaccinated testing every day.’’
Without a vaccine mandate, the NFL can’t force Rodgers to seek a jab or two. But consider this the latest reminder to sports that COVID-19 is with us for the long haul. Just as the NBA title will be influenced by the no-vax stance of Kyrie Irving, whose absence already is draining the Brooklyn Nets, the Super Bowl participants could trace back to the day No-Vax Aaron tested positive. Consider how history could be impacted. Will it give Brady a chance to win his eighth championship? Might the Rams become the latest team to play the big game at home? Will it allow Mahomes and the Chiefs, a mess right now, to recover and make an AFC postseason run as originally predicted? Consider the gamblers who were starting to buy into the Packers and bury the Chiefs. That quickly, the Sunday line shifted from Kansas City as a 2 1/2-point favorite to an 8-point favorite.
And to think all had been swell for the Packers, who knocked off the previously unbeaten Cardinals last week to extend their winning streak to seven. Remember when Rodgers looked adrift and aloof in a season-opening blowout loss, prompting criticism that he cared more about his “Jeopardy!’’ guest-hosting gig than playing football.
“Obviously, winning cures a lot of that,’’ Rodgers said Tuesday in his weekly appearance on Pat McAfee’s show, adding that he has “a great coaching staff that I love’’ and that he’s “still in Green Bay and having the time of my life.’’
Oh, there was more gushing. “I love football, I’m invested completely in this season. I am. I know it’s surprising,’’ said Rodgers, cracking wise. “Life’s been really good. ... It’s a game. You got to have fun with it. You got to enjoy it.’’
Nothing will be fun as he quarantines until at least Nov. 13, assuming he remains asymptomatic, among the league’s protocol requirements of players considered unvaccinated. That would put him back in uniform just in time for the next day’s home game against Seattle. Tough tests await the Packers in subsequent weeks — at Minnesota, at home against the Rams, at Baltimore — and if Rodgers refuses to be vaccinated moving forward, who knows how the coronavirus will impact the health and morale of the locker room?
Asked if Rodgers erred in using the word “immunized,’’ coach Matt LaFleur deferred to his absent QB. “That’s a great question for Aaron,’’ he said. “I’m not going to comment on it.’’
In general, the coach thinks his players are virus-responsible. “I watch what these guys do. I can only speak to our football space, but yeah, absolutely. We've got cameras everywhere,’’ he said. “I think our guys do an outstanding job with it. And it's just unfortunate. It's not like this thing can't happen to anybody. It's happened to a lot of people outside of this building.”
He spoke before the NFL said it would review how the Packers are handling COVID protocols. “The primary responsibility for enforcement of COVID protocols within club facilities rests with each club," a league spokesman said. “Failure to properly enforce the protocols has resulted in discipline being assessed against individual clubs in the past.’’
If little else is clear about sport’s coronavirus era, it’s obvious teams that manage COVID-19 well are the one that celebrate championships. For now, the Packers are focused on whether Love — thrown into the Arrowhead Stadium inferno in a raucous environment, where Chiefs fans are upset about the team’s struggles — was worthy of drafting in the first round and angering the franchise icon. “Well, we'll find out, right?" LaFleur said. “I know he's been working hard every day.’’
Regardless of whether Love succeeds or stumbles, or whether the Packers reach a Super Bowl or sputter out again, Rodgers will expect management to honor his demand for an offseason trade. The new problem for Mr. Know It All is that other franchises, which might have assumed he was vaxxed before, won’t be as eager to acquire him this winter if he isn’t vaxxed.
So, in the tragicomic end, the biggest impediment to Aaron Rodgers’ contentment seems to be … Aaron Rodgers.
Didn’t we always suspect that, anyway?
Jay Mariotti, called “the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he has gravitated by osmosis to film projects.