One medicine that he famously hasn’t tried is the COVID-19 vaccine. In 2021, Rodgers told NFL officials that he was “immunized” against the virus. When he tested positive for the virus that November, the truth came out: He hadn’t gotten the shots, explaining that he was allergic to an ingredient in the Moderna and Pfizer formulations, and that he wasn’t comfortable with what he perceived as possible risks associated with the Johnson & Johnson shot. He was benched for 10 days and fined $14,650 by the league. The NFL also fined the Green Bay Packers, Rodgers’ team at the time, $300,000 after an investigation into the program’s COVID-19 protocols.
Rodgers told Ian O’Connor, who in August 2024 published the unauthorized biography Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers, that he regretted his wording. “If there’s one thing I wish could have gone different, it’s that, because that’s the only thing [critics] could hit me with,” Rodgers is quoted as saying in O’Connor’s book.
“He told me, I should have told the truth,” O’Connor said in an interview with Vanity Fair around the time of the book’s publication. “That’s the first time he’s ever said that.”
In the doc, Rodgers claims that he submitted a roughly 500-page appeal to the league to avoid the mandatory protocol for non-vaccinated players, which included masking and daily testing, which Rodgers called “wild.” He revealed that he didn’t get the flu vaccine when he was young either, because his father was suspicious of it. Discussing the “I’m immunized” comment he shared with the press, Rodgers placed the blame on the media for not asking follow-up questions that would have made it clear that he had not gotten the shot. He called the ensuing coverage of the issue a “smear campaign.”
In the Netflix series’ second episode, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted vaccine naysayer, enters the picture. Rodgers and Kennedy are shown in a clip labeled February 2024 enjoying a hike together. “Have you thought about going into politics?” Kennedy asked Rodgers on camera. Later, Rodgers reveals, “I got asked by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be his vice president right after the hike we went on.”
Though Jets owner Woody Johnson, in an interview with ESPN, insisted that Rodgers is “back 100 percent” to football, never say never: Kennedy is president-elect Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, with a directive to “go wild”, so maybe there’s a chance yet for Rodgers to reconnect with his old pal.
