Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers recently disclosed to Mike Silver of The Athletic that Rodgers was ill before the January playoff loss to the Texans. The illness was not disclosed by the Steelers.
In response to an inquiry from PFT on the situation, the NFL declined comment.
In 2023, the NFL fined the Falcons $75,000 and then-coach Arthur Smith $25,000 for failing to disclose that running back Bijan Robinson had an illness on the morning of a game against the Buccaneers.
The fact that the NFL has declined comment doesn’t mean the league will ignore it. How can they? In this age of legalized and normalized betting, the failure of the Steelers to update their injury report to reveal that Rodgers had an illness is a problem on its face.
The league has no choice but to investigate. If the reporting is true (and it is, we’ve confirmed), the league will have no choice but to act. Any other approach amounts to the league looking the other way on the Steelers concealing an important piece of inside information.
Given the various ways in which inside information has allegedly or actually been misused in multiple sports (the NFL recently suspended a Cardinals executive for allegedly sharing information about the team’s draft picks), inaction is not acceptable. If the league is going to profit from gambling, either directly through sponsorships or indirectly by owners owning up to five percent of companies that operate sportsbooks, the NFL cannot ignore clear instances of teams having inside information about a player’s health and failing to reveal it.
On Monday, Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers relentlessly attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci. The Rodgers assault, launched on ESPN, included calling Fauci an “absolute criminal” and repeatedly labeled Fauci an “absolute coward.”
At one point, Rodgers promoted a false conspiracy theory that Fauci’s wife’s sister is Ghislaine Maxwell.
On Tuesday, Fauci’s lawyer responded to Rodgers.
Via Saud Yousuf of The Athletic, David Schertler said this via email: “Aaron Rodgers doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He should stick to football.”
The other target of Rodgers’s ire — ESPN — has repeatedly declined comment on Rodgers’s comments.
And so, as to Fauci, the ball returns to Rodgers’s court. It remains to be seen whether he continues the dialogue at a league-required press conference, or during a resumption of his habit of appearing on McAfee’s show on a regular basis.
Last year, Rodgers stopped his Tuesday visits. This year, it’s possible that he’s just getting warmed up.
The Steelers signed wide receiver Jakobie Kenney-James, the team announced Tuesday.
In a corresponding move, the Steelers waived wide receiver Cole Burgess with an injury designation. Burgess went down with a lower-body injury earlier this week.
Keeney-James was among the players who worked out for the team last week.
He originally signed with the Lions as a college free agent following the 2025 draft.
Kenney-James spent time with the Packers as a rookie, initially signing to the practice squad on Sept. 23 before being elevated to the active roster for the Week 18 game against Minnesota. He started one game and recorded two receptions for 15 yards. He also returned two kicks for 47 yards.
Kenney-James played his final season of college football at the University of Massachusetts, where he appeared in nine games. He had 40 receptions for 603 yards and five touchdowns. He transferred to UMass from Eastern Washington and appeared in 49 collegiate games, with 111 receptions for 1,664 yards and 10 touchdowns.
If Aaron Rodgers was looking a little pale before Pittsburgh’s playoff loss to the Texans, it wasn’t because he was about to face the best defense in the NFL.
As explained by Mike Silver of The Athletic, Rodgers was sick before the 30-6 home loss to Houston in the wild-card round.
“I wasn’t feeling good, and I actually came over to the team hotel, and they sent me home — probably because I was pale and looked like shit,” Rodgers told Silver on Saturday from training camp.
Silver said Rodgers’s symptoms included fever and vomiting. He insisted that he had recovered before kickoff.
“He’s definitely downplaying it,” former Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith told Silver. “There was never a question he was gonna play, and he’s never one to complain, but he looked terrible [before the game].”
It’s not a great look nearly six months after the game, because the Steelers didn’t disclose that Rodgers had an illness.
Against the Texans, Rodgers completed 17 of 33 passes for 146 yards, no touchdowns, and one interception. His passer rating was a postseason career-low 50.8, with his final throw turning into a pick-six.
Smith knows all too well the potential consequences of failing to disclose an illness. In 2023, Smith received a $25,000 fine (the Falcons separately had to fork over $75,000) for not disclosing that running back Bijan Robinson was ill on the morning of a game. (Robinson played in the game.)
And so, in a week that has caused plenty of commotion regarding things Rodgers said publicly, what he (and, more specifically, the Steelers) failed to say before the playoff loss could cause a bit of a ruckus, as far as the league office is concerned.
The fact that Aaron Rodgers’s scorched-earth attack on Dr. Anthony Fauci and ESPN, while appearing on ESPN, has prompted a comment from the team and a question to the head coach makes it, necessarily, a distraction.
Still, coach Mike McCarthy’s goal will be to keep any of it from interfering with the task at hand.
“You know, these are grown men,” McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday. “They all have different opinions. There’s no question about that. But at the end of the day, my job is to keep it about football, keep the focus on winning. That’s why we’re here. We have a good locker room. We have a player council that’s in place and we had our second meeting yesterday, and so I think we’re in a good spot.”
It remains to be seen whether Rodgers’s rollicking Monday appearance with Pat McAfee was a one-time thing, or whether Rodgers will revert to his pre-2025 habit of showing up on the show every week — and saying whatever he wants.
It also remains to be seen whether, if/when the Steelers encounter adversity, McCarthy’s methods will become a direct or indirect subject of Rodgers’s current approach (as he said on Monday) of no longer giving a shit.
