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.
