Every Tuesday during football season (and on at least one very memorable Friday), Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers appears with Pat McAfee and A.J. Hawk on SiriusXM Mad Dog Radio. Rodgers almost always says something that creates news and/or raises eyebrows, often through the voicing of complaints.
This week, Rodgers complained about reports regarding his broken pinkie toe.
“With these reports, I don’t know where they’re coming from,” Rodgers said, via Mediaite.com. “I don’t know who’s talking. It seems like there are certain coaches that may have friends in the media that they don’t realize are actually just trying to report things on . . .”
Asked by Hawk whether Rodgers is referring to members of the Green Bay coaching staff, Rodgers said, “There were guys for a while who had their people who they would leak stuff to.”
Rodgers’s latest Green Bay grievance seems odd, given that the vast majority of the talk about his broken toe has come from Rodgers himself. Yes, the Packers listed him as having a toe injury on the same day he returned from the COVID reserve list. They had to. But Rodgers then spoke repeatedly and candidly about his toe, calling it worse than turf toe before joking (not everyone got the memo) that he has COVID toe to ironically blaming the wrong person for not getting the joke about COVID toe to talking openly after Sunday’s win over the game that he’d have further testing on Monday to determine whether surgery is needed.
The only reporting about the toe that came not from Rodgers himself related to the Monday decision that he won’t have surgery for now. That’s it.
So why take shots? Why cast aspersions? It helps no one for Rodgers to do that.
Taking a broader look at his newfound propensity to utilize his platforms to speak for himself, Rodgers needs to ask himself whether he’s doing more harm than good to his overall image and brand by being so open with his views. Although his decision to put the front office on blast after showing up for training camp after weeks of building a mystery more carefully than constructing a ship in a bottle drew rave reviews, his pivot to saying whatever whenever however isn’t helping him in the eyes of the average fan.
I want him to keep talking. It’s good for business. But just like Ben Roethlisberger, who eventually pulled the plug on weekly radio visits that were creating more trouble for him than they were worth, Rodgers would be wise to ask himself whether his chattiness is truly having the desired effect.
