On Friday, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers traded 48 hours of silence for 45 minutes of the exact opposite. It didn’t go well. And Rodgers knows it.
According to People.com (yes, People.com), a source close to Rodgers says that the reigning NFL MVP is not pleased with the response to his effort to explain himself, after testing positive for COVID-19 while being secretly unvaccinated.
He reportedly “feels like he just shared his point of view, and now he’s being crucified for it.”
“He knew some people would disagree with him, but he didn’t know that it would become the shitstorm it became,” per the report. “People who he thought were friends are turning on him.”
Rodgers reportedly is “upset,” and “very unhappy with the response to him.”
Yes, he’s the victim. He’s always the victim. And he’s surely feeling even more victimized because he’s being criticized not only by people in the media whom he can simply write off as part of the “woke mob,” but by Hall of Famers like Fox’s Terry Bradshaw, Michael Strahan, Jimmy Johnson, and Howie Long.
The fact that Rodgers -- who does nothing accidentally -- has leaked his viewpoint to People.com underscores a topic from Monday’s PFT Live. Although the chances of it happening remain very low, there’s a soft blip on the edge of the radar screen that bears watching over the next few days. Given the torrent of criticism, the looming NFL discipline, and the inevitable mandate from 345 Park Avenue warning Rodgers that he must comply with mask requirements or else, Rodgers could be thinking about calling it quits.
I’m not saying he is. I’m saying he could be. He was supposedly 50-50 on retiring just a few days before reporting for training camp. Was he ambivalent in part because he didn’t want to get vaccinated and he didn’t want to comply with the onerous protocols for the unvaccinated? He was able to have it both ways for weeks. Now that his ruse has been exposed, his choices are: (1) get vaccinated; (2) comply with the protocols; or (3) retire.
This woe-is-me routine could be (not is or will be, but could be) a precursor to Rodgers giving EVERYONE a double-barreled middle finger and walking away.