Play.
Rodgers is the baddest man left in the playoffs.
Stephen A. Smith and Marcus Spears debate if the difference-maker in the playoffs is Rodgers or Donald. (1:45)
11:30 AM
In what has become the most famous living room in football, sipping a Scotch and wearing a half-zip with a Masters logo, Rodgers couldn't stop grinning.
As part of their ManningCast that streams during Monday Night Football, the Mannings asked him what some of the books were behind him. What had he been reading? Rodgers, who frequently does interviews from his home, with his bookshelf in the background, was happy to share his tastes with the world.
"I've got 'Atlas Shrugged' here by Ayn Rand," Rodgers said, trying hard to suppress a smile. The look on his face was obvious to those who watch him being interviewed weekly. This was intended for a different audience.
The truth? He had never read a novel. Rodgers didn't know how to properly pronounce his first name. He picked it because it was the biggest book on his bookshelf. He thought that might annoy some people.
He was correct. Thousands of people were ripped into Rodgers because they assumed he was celebrating the libertarianism of the novel. In different circles, the selection was applauded and Rodgers was hailed as an independent thinker. The whole episode was predictable.
The Green Bay Packers were set to play the San Francisco 49ers in the first round of the playoffs. I was moving some books over to another place and I was like, "Oh dude, I could never read this book." There are many pages. That is how stupid this thing is. These people are loving me up, I'm reading some mentions and they are loving me. They're like, "Oh yeah, libertarian." I'm not sure what to think. The people on the other side canceled me. That's kind of trashy, he's reading a book. I haven't read it. Who gives a s--- if I did? It's a book. I don't want to have it overtake my personal ideologies. Everything is triggering and offensive in society. It's crazy.
It was the perfect anecdote to show how this season has been a reflection of Rodgers' entire being. He has behaved as though he's 38 years old, both in his cleats and from the confines of his couch.
The Packers will face the 49ers at Lambeau Field on Saturday in a divisional-round game, and Rodgers has been bold both on and off the field this season.
It is the rare season of quarterback play that feels like Rodgers has left behind mechanics of the position and transformed them into something closer to art, because he has flexed his gifts so frequently. His numbers (4,115 yards, 37 touchdown, 4 ints) barely scratch the surface of what he's seen. Every game, Rodgers made a few throws that felt like a testament to his genius: throws where he was off balance, throws where he was falling down and throws where he couldn't see his receiver.
He has shown the world that he is unafraid to fight back, or at the very least to condemn anyone he believes has lied about him. There is no opinion that he will back down from if he feels he is right.
The two sides of Rodgers were powered by the same flood of self-confidence and joy. At the start of the year, he looked miserable and frustrated with his team, and admitted he contemplated retirement. He was as happy as he'd ever been.
I sent an email to the Packers asking if Rodgers would speak on the phone, and I created some questions that I thought might interest him. He called on Thursday afternoon and said he wanted to talk. When I asked him why, he was blunt.
Rodgers said it seemed like you were thinking about writing a hit piece. I want to make sure that you get questions answered from me before you do that.
Pat Mcafee Show/ZUMA Press Wire reported that Pat Mcafee, A.J. Hawk, and Aaron Rodgers all have a penchant for fiction.
I had been studying his interviews, watching his games and reading books he'd recommended. I think he wanted to be understood, but he didn't think most people were willing to listen.
Rodgers said he didn't think he was right about everything. He said it was necessary for us to listen to opposing views and debate.
Rodgers said that they only listen to things or read things to confirm their initial thoughts. That keeps us divided even more.
He wasn't going to back down from anything in the entire season.
Let's start with football. Do you remember Rodgers' fist pump against the 49ers?
It's okay if you missed it. The season was just beginning. There was so much happening before and after. It is an important part of the journey.
In September, the Packers weren't a big deal. After his failed rebellion, no one was sure how engaged Rodgers would be. The team looked listless in a 38-3 loss to the Saints, and Rodgers looked terrible, throwing two picks. In the days after the loss, one of his ex-teammates, Jermichael Finley, speculated that Rodgers wanted to quit and that he didn't have the hunger to win another championship. Boomer Esiason mocked his search for inner peace. Rodgers looked bored on the sideline. Bill Cowher questioned his commitment to continue playing football.
In Week 2, an easy win over the Lions gave only minor reassurances. During his weekly appearance on "The Pat McAfee Show," Rodgers made it clear he did not appreciate the baseless critiques of his mental state and suggested the "blue check marks" on social media were trying to use him to get famous. He wanted to make it clear that he wouldn't listen to people lie about him. Not anymore.
Rodgers told me that he was very private about everything and didn't like a lot of things. There were too many people who were trying to write the narrative of my life and writing things or speaking for me that perpetuated this idea about who I was or what I felt. It wasn't about caring what people said about me, it was about stopping narratives about me that are just, at their core, not true.
In Week 3, Rodgers silenced any doubt about his passion with a last-minute drive against the 49ers. "How can you not love football?" Rodgers asked the night before.
The real narrative of the season began to take shape after the Sunday night game in San Francisco.
The Packers looked like a boxer after absorbing a flurry of punches. The Packers had no timeouts after Jimmy Garoppolo threw a touchdown to give the 49ers a 28-27 lead. Levi's Stadium was loud. Rodgers was alone on the sideline, and he was drained of emotion. It felt like a moment early in the season.
It was as audacious as it was fascinating. The 49ers came out in a four-deep zone to stop any passes thrown toward the sideline. Warner retreated to the middle of the field. For half a second, he leaned the wrong way. He was standing at his own 14-yard line. He and Matt LaFleur had made up the playcall a few days before. Rodgers wasn't throwing the ball to Davante Adams as much as he was throwing it towards a spot only he could envision, a tiny pocket within the 49ers' defense, trusting Adams to be there. Warner leaped as high as his body would allow, straining his right arm. The ball flew past his fingertips and into Adams' arms. The throw looked mundane.
Adams said that Rodgers was calm, cool and collected when the game was on the line. He doesn't say much, but he's intense.
A spike stopped the clock with three seconds left. As Rodgers ran off the field, ceding the stage to kicker Mason Crosby for the winning field goal, he uncorked a vicious fist pump in the direction of the Packers' sideline. He reminded the world that there is no one else like him.
Rodgers said after the game that it gave them some legitimacy. The locker room felt like it had the energy I had been waiting for. It was a growth moment for us. It feels like we're on our way.
In his postgame news conference, Rodgers asked why he was still capable of so much magic, considering how poorly he was regarded as a high school prospect.
He said that he always felt like there were things he couldn't measure. I'm not the tallest guy, I'm not the fastest guy, but I feel like I have the intangibles. Over the years, I've grown. All great competitors have to be first critical of themselves and look for growth opportunities, and there are things I've said and done that I wish I'd done better over the years. I've always tried to stay true to who I am.
He didn't wear a mask when he met with the media, a violation of the NFL's protocols for unvaccinated players. Rodgers missed the Packers' game against Kansas City when he tested positive for COVID-19, but that wouldn't be clear until a month later. He was fined by the NFL. Rodgers said "Yeah, I've been immunized" four times when asked in the preseason if he was immunizations.
He said on Thursday that the wording was not misleading. It was specific.
Rodgers said that he had a plan for the question. It was a witch hunt, who was vaccine free or not. I was in a multimonth conversation that turned into an appeal process with the NFL at that time, and my appeal depended on that exact statement. Number one, it was true. I underwent a multi-immunization process. I don't know what you would call it, but I would call it immunized.
Why did one of America's most highly regarded athletes, a former "Jeopardy" host, thrust himself into the center of the vaccine debate? The clues have always been there. This is the person Rodgers has been dating all the way back to his childhood in California.
Some people have implied that he is a jerk. All he's doing is obeying his beliefs.
Rodgers doesn't want to apologize for being himself. I just want to be myself.
After little interest from major football programs, Rodgers took a roundabout way to the NFL.
He was a star quarterback at Pleasant Valley High School, but he felt like adrift. Most of the colleges where Rodgers wanted to play football didn't want him because they didn't think high school football played in the north was worth the effort. Florida State wouldn't look at him. He was told by Illinois that he could walk on. Someone on the staff wrote a letter to him explaining that they didn't like what he had sent them and wished him good luck in college football. He was enraged by the innocuous line. For a long time, Rodgers focused on it. His favorite band was CountingCrows, which was a perfect soundtrack for his brooding teenage years.
He was interested in Division III schools like Lewis & Clark and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. He contemplated not playing football anymore. It wasn't until Craig Rigsbee begged Rodgers to play for the Roadrunners, the junior college just south of Chico, that he figured out his non-traditional path forward.
His mom said that he wouldn't be going to junior college. "I said that our general ed classes are the same as they are anywhere, whether you're at Cal or Harvard." The War of 1812 isn't different just because you're at a college. The classes will transfer anywhere in the world. Your degree is not going to say Butte College.
Rodgers agreed to enroll at Butte as long as he could compete for the job as a freshman. He was named the starter at the end of the preseason two-a-day practices, over a senior who'd been with the program for three years.
The other guy was a really good player, but he quit, and his mom wrote me the most critical letter. "She said that you don't know anything about quarterbacks." My son is 10 times better than Rodgers. You wait and see.
Rodgers was playing at Cal after leading Butte Community College to a 10-1 record. He was a first-round draft pick two years later. It's a story that has been told many times, but it's important to understand him. He learned to trust his instincts and that knowledge could come from anywhere. He was drifting away from his family's religious views.
Rodgers talked about how he came to see himself as spiritual rather than religious in a 2020 interview with Danica Patrick. Some people need structure and tradition. That works for them. I don't have a problem with it. It doesn't make sense to me.
Rodgers' time at the college is an important part of his story.
Over the years, Rigsbee has remained close to Rodgers. Maybe not in his inner circle, but something outside. The coach thinks of the quarterback as a family. He has two signed jerseys of Rodgers hanging in his rec room, one thanking him for believing in him when no one else would. They text off and on, and Rigsbee tries to see him in person at least once a year. Rodgers has taken him to concerts. It's not something many people from Rodgers' hometown can say. It's not uncommon for aspiring intellectuals to leave pieces of their past behind, but Rodgers did it in order to become the man he wanted to be. Rodgers hasn't spoken to his parents or his brothers in a long time.
"He's traveled the world," Rigsbee said. He's seen a lot. He's not a little boy anymore. He's seen people lie to him, he's seen his friends dog him, and he's seen his relatives dog him. You end up not having as many friends.
When his former player became involved in a controversy over the vaccine, Rigsbee wasn't surprised. "He's an independent thinker," Rigsbee said. He doesn't want to be an activist for anyone. He thinks you should be able to think for yourself. The press didn't follow up when he said he was immunized, that's why they're mad at him. They should have said what immunized means. Are you a vaccine patient or not? The press thinks he's smarter than them. Well, guess what? He is smarter than them. He told the truth. They didn't ask the right questions. I was proud of him.
One of the lower rates in the state for fully vaccineed residents is in Butte County, where only half of residents are considered fully vaccineed. Oroville, a city of 20,000 just south of Chico, made national headlines in November when it was declared a "constitutional republic" that wouldn't enforce Gov.Gavin Newsom's vaccine mandates. Ed Rodgers, the father of Rodgers, has been very critical of vaccine mandates on the internet, calling out "brain liberal idiots" who are "destroying their organs" by taking the vaccine. Ed Rodgers did not respond to an interview request.
Rigsbee didn't hesitate to get the vaccine. It was a decision that put him in the minority among his friends, but he believed it was the right one for him.
"My best friend in the whole world was an anti-vax guy," Rigsbee said. He had a successful roofing company. He would work out with me and we would walk our dogs together. He said that the government was trying to track him. I teased him, "I hate to break it to you, buddy, but no one gives a s--- about tracking you."
A friend of Rigsbee's started coughing at breakfast but insisted it was a cold. He and his wife were admitted to the hospital the next day. His friend died of a heart attack after a blood clot formed in his lung.
"My friend Greg gave it to three of our friends," Rigsbee said. All three of them were close to death. One guy in our group didn't get it. Guess who that was? Me. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out.
It didn't change how he felt about Rodgers' decision to have a vaccine.
Who am I to condemn someone for their beliefs? The person said, Rigsbee said. "If you don't want to have a vaccine, do I have to tell you that's wrong?" He's in his prime as an athlete. He has a lot of doctors working for him. He is not the average guy. It's true when he says he did his own research. Most people don't have access to a level of medicine that he has. He's not like a friend who goes on the internet and thinks they've found something they've never seen before.
Rodgers had one of his best performances of the season in Week 6 against the Bears.
It's possible that Rodgers' personal lives or political views are irrelevant to you if you think football is a game of chess. Is anyone interested in the fact that Picasso was a bad person? Did J.D. Salinger cut people out of his life? Their talents gave them an easy path to redemption. Michael Jordan taught us that hubris is the core of ambition.
When the teams met at Soldier Field in October, Rodgers did not have his best game of the season. He threw for 195 yards. He might have given us the season's signature moment when the Packers were leading 17-14 in the fourth quarter.
From the Bears' 6-yard line, Rodgers dropped back to pass and then began dancing in the pocket. Everything was covered. His eyes were darting in every direction as he looked flustered. The wall of white jerseys suffocating the green ones made it hard for Rodgers to find a route in the other half of the end zone. He ran toward the corner of the end zone after faking another pump-fake. Eddie Jackson lowered his shoulder and knocked Rodgers off his feet, even though he was late to the pylon. Touchdown. A ball game.
I own you! I own you! Rodgers looked down at the crowd of Bears fans. I still own you! All my life!
He couldn't remember what he shouted after the game.
Rodgers said that sometimes you black out on the field. The woman gave me the double bird while I looked up in the stands. I don't know what came out of my mouth next.
The Rodgers Tour of Audaciousness was just getting started.
"That's A-Rod," Jones said. I love it. What can you say? He's correct.
Rodgers missed the Packers game against the Chiefs after testing positive for a banned substance.
"The Four Agreements" is a self-help book that encourages readers to not make assumptions and not take anything personally. The two tenets of the philosophy have been difficult for Rodgers. He takes a lot of things personally. His friends alert him to slights big and small. He claps back at those who have hurt him.
For the past two seasons, he has appeared on "The Pat McAfee Show" every Tuesday because he likes discussion and doesn't care for scrutiny. It's a place where Rodgers can opine on the existence of aliens or recommend books that have been important to him, such as "The Four Agreements," "The Alchemist" or Mark Manson's "The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F---".
Rodgers said that the book club needed more people to read.
After he retired from the Colts, McAfee became friends with Rodgers and started a podcasting career, and he hosts nearly every show bouncing on the balls of his feet, in a tank top. No topic is off-limits, no matter how trivial. Even though Rodgers likes to address serious topics, the conversations are usually not meant to be serious. It's part of a new media paradigm that has given the world access to Rodgers that would have been unimaginable in the past.
"This really does take the guessing out of it because you can now watch the interview, you can see my expressions, you can understand when there's sarcasm for most publications," Rodgers said Thursday. It's hard to take what I'm saying out of context because most people will probably look at a clip or watch the show instead of reading the transcript. I enjoy that. I enjoy talking football with Pat and A.J., but not football with the boys.
Rodgers doesn't give interviews on the show as much as he uses them to preach about life. The casual listener is sometimes part of the fun of the playful prank of McAfee and Rodgers. Media that aggregate pieces of the show and reuse them for their own content may do so at their own risk because of the context of the show. If you strip it away, you could end up with Rodgers and McAfee calling you out on the next show. That's how The Wall Street Journal ended up writing a 900-word story based on a joke that was made about the quarterback having a painful case of "COVID toe." He had a broken pinkie toe but didn't explain how it happened.
The story was shared by The Wall Street Journal at 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 24 and was shared by thousands of people over the next several hours.
The schedule and format are full.
The first look at the divisional round.
The wild-card weekend has overreactions.
See more playoff content.
One of the people who shared it was Molly Knight, a journalist and author who wrote about baseball for The Athletic and now has her own Substack. Knight was getting ready to go to an outdoor class in Los Angeles when she saw that "COVID toe" had been popular for hours. She read the Journal piece after clicking a link. It seemed credible. Doctors were quoted. It was from a news organization. She shared it to her own feed and said it was likely a joke.
"I think I was the 1 millionth person to make that joke," Knight said. I was late to the party.
She followed it up with a message encouraging people to get the vaccine. She didn't think much of it from there. Packers fans told her they hoped she would die after bombarding her with mentions.
Knight thought it was another day of being a woman online in sports. I didn't know that Rodgers had called me out in a press conference and said I owed him an apology, so I argued with a few of them.
Rodgers was convinced that Knight had written the piece. He went after her during his weekly Zoom with the media, at one point thrusting his bare foot in front of the camera to prove he didn't have any of the lesions mentioned in the story.
Rodgers said that it's called "disinformation" when you perpetuate false information about an individual. I have a broken toe. I expect a full apology from Molly Knight and whoever her editor was.
After unpacking what had happened, Knight was confused. Her mentions and direct messages were being overwhelmed by venom. She got death threats. She was contacted by the New York Post to ask if she had any comment. Knight tried to explain that she wasn't the author of the piece, but it only slowed the harassment.
"It felt like the walls were closing in and I couldn't breathe," Knight said. I felt like I had to explain myself to everyone, but there would be people who wouldn't ever hear his press conference. They're not going to figure out that it wasn't me. They're going to hate me forever.
Rodgers didn't show any remorse when he learned that Knight wasn't the author of the story. He appreciated Andrew Beaton reaching out to the Packers to clear things up, and he had a "respectful conversation" with Andrew Beaton. "I still don't think there was an ulterior motive, but we had a nice conversation," Rodgers said. Knight was definitely not without blame. He implied that she tried to use the situation to her advantage and offered no apology.
Knight was having panic attacks. The Packers fans were harassing her. She left her apartment and went to stay with her mom because she was afraid someone would follow her and harass her. It was the perfect example of a popular play that men run on the internet: If facing a sea of criticism, find one woman among your critics, single her out, and let your followers take it from there.
Does he think I deserved to make a joke about him and Joe Rogan? Knight said something. He had to be aware that people would come after me. My mental health was impacted by it. I believe it would have had a huge impact on anyone's mental health.
I asked Rodgers if there was any part he wished he had handled differently.
"Maybe it would have been different if I'd read it first," Rodgers said. I wouldn't have mentioned her name. She was working hard. It was a perfect storm for her to jump on this anti-vaxxer, flat-earther, who ended up getting Covid toe, and he had some skin problems on the bottom of his feet. She chose her platform to run with a ridiculous story.
He threw his throws as the season went on.
He hit Adams in stride on a throw down the left sideline late in the second quarter that, if you studied it closely, seemed to defy the laws of physics. He'd let it fly. Adams was double-covered when the ball went 45 yards in the air, but he was able to catch it.
"He had his feet in the air," said Dan Orlovsky, an analyst who has been friendly with Rodgers for 20 years. He called the pass to Adams his favorite throw. He has the ability to throw with very little windup. I don't think most of us were taught to think of throwing a football as a hammer, but with him, it's like he's throwing a dart. His ability to control the football is outrageous.
He needed injections to cope with the pain of his broken toe. Getting jabbed by the trainers seemed to be an acceptable trade-off to stay on the field.
Rodgers said getting shot up before a game does a good job of reducing the pain.
He was bolder with his opinions.
I don't want to apologize for being myself. I just want to be myself. Rodgers is a person.
Rodgers wore a sweatshirt with the words "Cancel Culture" on the front, but with every letter crossed out, a gift from his friend Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports. In December, he was not happy when President Joe Biden joked with a woman wearing a Packers jacket that she should tell Rodgers to get the vaccine.
I don't know how there are any if you watch any of his attempts at public speaking, but I guess he got it. How do you even trust the CDC when they come out and say that 75% of the COVID deaths have at least four comorbidities? You still have a fake White House set saying that the unvaccinated are the problem, that's not helping the conversation.
The CDC study found that in a group of 1.2 million people who were fully vaccine-vaccinated between December 2020 and October 2021, 36 of them had a death associated with COVID-19, and that of those 36 people, 28, or about 78%, had at least four of eight risk.
On New Year's Day, Rodgers recommended Rogan's interview with Dr. Robert Malone, who was recently banned from social media for violating policies on spreading "vaccine misinformation."
Rodgers shared a link to "The Joe Rogan Experience."
The hundreds of scientists credited with the invention of the vaccine are not the only ones who believe that the vaccine side effects are being suppressed. He believes that what's happening in America is similar to what happened in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.
Rodgers suggested that I listen to the podcast and think about its assertions with an open mind. I was interested in what Rodgers wanted people to do. I could hear his voice in my head after he gave an answer that was so passionate.
"When in the course of human history has the side that's censoring and trying to shut people up and make them show papers and marginalize a part of the community ever been?" Rodgers spoke Thursday. Is it possible that we're censoring dissenting opinions? What are we trying to do? Save people from being able to decide on their own, or to listen and think about things, or to come to their own conclusion? If freedom of speech doesn't align with the mainstream narrative, it's dangerous. I wanted people to understand that there's a lot of censorship going on in this country right now, and that's what I wanted them to understand.
Is it possible that they are censoring terrorists or pedophiles? Criminals who use social media? They're censoring people and banning people from having opinions about vaccines. Why is that happening? Is it because Pfizer cleared $33 billion last year and Big pharma has more lobbyists in Washington than senators and representatives combined? Why is it happening? If you want to be an open minded person, you should listen to both sides. There are people on the other side. I read stuff on the vaccine side and the vaccine side in general.
It doesn't make sense to make pariahs out of people who question what the mainstream narrative is.
It sounded like what he was saying mattered more to him than any football game he'd ever played in.
The journey that Rodgers hopes will end in the Super Bowl for the first time since he beat the Steelers is something he has tried to appreciate. He says "let's treasure these conversations, these lessons, these times of adversity, times of joy."
In early January, the NFL announced that unvaccinated players would still be tested daily by the league leading up to the Super Bowl. Rodgers is currently exempt from that testing because he contracted COVID-19 in the past 90 days, but will see that exemption expire soon. A scenario in which Rodgers tests positive in the days leading up to a playoff game would be a nightmare scenario for the Packers and the NFL, but with the omicron variant spreading rapidly through the American population, it's certainly possible. The biggest twist may be yet to come in this crazy season. If that happens, scientists like Dr. Angie Rasmussen are worried about how the debate will be framed.
It will be about whether or not Rodgers was so selfish that he cost his team in the playoffs. He said that. It's not about the playoffs, it's about the playoffs of ending the epidemic.
The influence of public figures who are anti-vaccine has played a role in prolonging the Pandemic.
"It's profoundly selfish for Joe Rogan and his followers to say that this is just a decision about you," he said. Vaccines do provide individual benefits, but the bigger benefits of vaccines and masks and all the measures we've been taking is reducing the prevalence of COVID so we can end the f---ing Pandemic. That is what gets missed. This is all about the risk to Rodgers and whether he is being selfish or not, rather than something that affects all of us as a community.
Rodgers has been eager to speak his mind this season, but he insists he is closer to zen than he is to resentment. He has been keeping a low profile throughout the year, just in case he ends up leaving the Packers. He will make a decision about his future after the season is over.
In Green Bay's 31-30 win over the Ravens in Week 15, Rodgers gathered the offense together before the final kneel-down and delivered a short speech. As he spoke, he wagged his finger. He told reporters that he wanted them to savor the moment. They might have bigger goals, but the future could be waiting. He urged them to at least try to enjoy it. A career can happen in a blink of an eye.
It reminded me of a line from Rodgers' favorite show, "The Office," where Ed Helms' character complains in the final episode, "I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you've been here."
Rodgers admitted that the quote had been bouncing around in his head. He'd rewatch the series in its entirety for the third time after the Pandemic, and a lot of it had lingered ever since.
Rodgers said that quote was on his mind. The moment when Ed turns to the camera has always stuck with me. It's a common thread, because I was close with some guys who retired and moved on. I think it's good to know that we're in the middle of some moments that we're going to be talking about for a long time. Let's treasure the conversations, the lessons, the times of joy. It means a lot more when we're sitting on the bench talking about the good old days.
Our conversation ended after 28 minutes. He told me he was happy to answer my questions. It was time for Rodgers to get back to his job as a football coach: trying to win a football game.
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