Aaron Rodgers Is Lighting His Football Legacy on Fire
In recent years, Rodgers’s opinions have become more and more embarrassing.
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One of Aaron Rodgers’s biggest strengths as a Hall of Fame–caliber player is his awareness. At his best, the New York Jets quarterback can anticipate the movements of aggressive defenders and use his legs to create breathtaking plays down the field.
If only Rodgers possessed such sharp awareness away from the football field, where he seems to have a knack for creating unnecessary drama and exposing himself as a fake intellectual who can’t seem to stop showcasing his rampant narcissism. He isn’t in danger of jeopardizing his inevitable entrance into the Hall of Fame, but the more he digs into these conspiracies and attempts to moonlight as an infectious-disease expert, the more his moves will overshadow his brilliant career.
Rodgers’s latest controversy began earlier this month during his weekly paid appearance on ESPN’s daily sports program The Pat McAfee Show. During the show, the Super Bowl champion insinuated that the late-night talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel was linked to the financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of operating an elaborate sex-trafficking ring involving underage girls who catered to high-profile clientele. Recently, a set of court documents was unsealed and released to the public as part of a lawsuit against Epstein’s girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking girls for Epstein. He died by suicide in 2019. The unsealed records include various deposition transcripts and exhibits from the Maxwell suit, in which lots of famous (and not so famous) names appear.
Rodgers’s fascination with the Epstein documents has resurfaced again, only this time he took things further by personalizing. “There’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, really hoping that doesn’t come out,” Rogers said on McAfee’s show, the day after a portion of the Epstein documents was released. “If that list comes out, I definitely will be popping some sort of bottle.”
Kimmel first responded with a tweet, threatening to sue Rodgers, who pretty much missed all of this football season after rupturing his Achilles tendon. And then last Monday, Kimmel excoriated Rodgers during a monologue on his show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, in which he denied having any association with Epstein whatsoever.
“My guess is he won’t apologize; I hope I’m wrong,” Kimmel said on his show.
The conflict created a thorny situation for ESPN and McAfee, who brought his popular show to the network last May in a massive deal that reportedly is worth $85 million. McAfee kind of apologized on Rodgers’s behalf while on air, explaining that his famous guest was “just trying to talk shit.”
However, Rodgers’s irresponsible rhetoric came at a significant cost. It pitted him—and, by extension, McAfee—against Kimmel, one of ABC’s biggest stars. Both ESPN and ABC are owned by the Walt Disney Company, making this conflict much more complex. McAfee announced on Wednesday that Rodgers would not be appearing on his show during the NFL playoffs—even though Rodgers was a regular guest during the playoffs last season. But a day after that announcement, Rodgers made a surprise appearance on the show to comment on the legendary coach Bill Belichick leaving the New England Patriots after 24 seasons and six Super Bowl titles. McAfee said his statement that Rodgers was done for the season didn't mean he was done permanently.
Kimmel was wrong about Rodgers being decent enough to apologize. When Rodgers appeared on McAfee’s show the week after his comments, he not only didn’t apologize; he gave a rambling explanation.
“I’m glad that Jimmy is not on the list,” Rodgers said. “I really am. And I don’t think he’s the P-word [pedophile], and, you know, I think it’s impressive that a man who went to Arizona State and has 10 joke writers can read off a prompter … I wish him the best. Again, I don’t give a shit what he says about me. But as long as he understands what I actually said and that I’m not accusing him of being on the list, then I’m all for moving forward.”
Despite having said some stupid things, Rodgers is not a stupid man. He knew exactly what he was doing by mentioning Kimmel’s name alongside Epstein’s. Rodgers was being petty because Kimmel often clowned Rodgers on his show for his staunch anti-vaccination opinions and his affinity for ludicrous conspiracy theories.
In 2021, Rodgers, who was then the quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, was heavily criticized for lying to the media about his vaccination status, which didn’t come to light until Rodgers tested positive for the coronavirus. Months before testing positive, the four-time NFL MVP was asked point-blank by a reporter if he’d been vaccinated. “Yeah, I’ve been immunized,” he responded. Later, Kimmel mocked Rodgers for misleading the public, referring to him as a “Karen.” The host also joked: “In just a few months, [Rodgers] went from hosting Jeopardy to hitchhiker trying to steal your kidney.”
Rodgers has an obvious talent for playing word games to avoid accountability. As I previously wrote, Rodgers misleading the public about his vaccination status was a by-product of his entitlement, selfishness, and cowardice. He didn’t have the guts to stand behind his decision to not be vaccinated and, worse, he put other people’s health in jeopardy by violating the league’s coronavirus guidelines. Days before Rodgers tested positive for the virus, he attended a team-sanctioned Halloween party maskless. There were countless times that Rodgers didn’t follow the league’s protocols during his press conferences at the Packers’ facility, where he was supposed to wear a mask at all times. Eventually, the NFL fined the Packers $300,000 and Rodgers himself $14,650 for violating the COVID-19 protocols.
In recent years, Rodgers’s opinions have become problematic, as if he’s secretly auditioning to be the next right-wing media star. He uses some of the same familiar conservative catchphrases, such as woke mob. Rodgers has spent the past few years criticizing Anthony Fauci, the former longtime infectious-disease expert who was instrumental in leading the country’s response to COVID-19. “If science is Dr. Fauci, you’re damn right I’m defying science,” Rodgers said on McAfee’s show last October. Rodgers has even theorized on the show that a series of UFO sightings surfaced in order to distract the public from other news events. To make matters worse, he seems to consider any pushback on his opinions as an example of people trying to cancel him.
If he were really being silenced, the public wouldn’t know so much about some of his questionable opinions, and he certainly wouldn’t have a weekly guest spot on a national platform.
If Rodgers doesn’t want to get the vaccine, fine. If Rodgers wants to be critical of experts who dedicated their lives to the study of infectious diseases, that’s also fine, because not even experts are above criticisms and questioning. But it’s hypocritical for Rodgers to demand that people respect his choices and opinions when he has taken part in ridiculing players whose vaccine decisions didn’t align with his own. On McAfee’s show, Rodgers challenged the Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce to a debate about the vaccines and called him “Mr. Pfizer” because Kelce partnered with the pharmaceutical company to encourage the public to get the COVID-19 vaccination and a flu shot.
Rodgers is a generational talent. He turned 40 last month, so it’s likely he won’t be playing that much longer. His opinions are becoming dangerously close to making some people embarrassed they ever supported him. Unfortunately in the meantime, he’s become someone who is increasingly hard to root for because of his lack of awareness.