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Three years after Aaron Rodgers told reporters he'd been "immunized" against the COVID-19 virus, the quarterback says in a soon-to-be-published unauthorized biography that he should have been truthful about his status.
Rodgers, who previously said the controversy had a dramatic impact on his public image, told author Ian O'Connor that the primary reason he claimed he was "immunized" was the statement represented "the crux of my appeal."
"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 said in the book.
In November 2021, the Green Bay Packers' four-time league MVP tested positive for COVID-19 as an unvaccinated player and was sidelined for a minimum of 10 days. Rodgers had appealed to the NFL to have his homeopathic treatment regimen qualify him as vaccinated and faced widespread criticism for his misleading remarks. He was turned down.
Three months earlier, at a widely reported preseason news conference, Rodgers told reporters he had been "immunized" and was heavily criticized by fans and much of the media.
Rodgers later said on "The Pat McAfee Show" that his research showed he was allergic to an ingredient -- polyethylene glycol, or PEG -- in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, and that he was concerned about reports of adverse medical reactions to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
"But if I could do it again, I would have said [in August], f--- the appeal. I'm just going to tell them I'm allergic to PEG, I'm not getting Johnson & Johnson, I'm not going to be vaxxed,'" Rodgers, now the quarterback of the New York Jets, said in the book titled "Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers".
Rodgers told O'Connor the statement represented his appeal to the league.
He said: "I had an immunization card from my holistic doctor, which looked similar. I wasn't trying to pawn it off as a vaccine card, but I said, 'Listen, here's my protocol. Here's what you can follow to look this up.' And it was an ongoing appeal. So, if I had just said [I was unvaccinated] in the moment, there's no chance that the appeal would have been handled the exact same way."
Asked if he would have gotten vaccinated had a local mandate sidelined him like New York's had sidelined then-Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving, Rodgers said, "I wouldn't have done it."
Rodgers was traded to the Jets prior to the 2023 season. He told O'Connor that he has joked with Jets vice chairman Christopher Johnson, brother of team owner Woody from the Johnson & Johnson family, about his refusal to take the pharmaceutical company's vaccine.
Other new reporting in the book includes:
• New details about the near decade-long estrangement between Rodgers and his family, including interviews with the quarterback, his parents, his grandmother and other relatives. It also includes a look at the purported role in the family dynamics played by actor and former Rodgers girlfriend Olivia Munn, and the story of the recent first step Rodgers and his father made toward a potential reconciliation with a brief but meaningful expression of love last summer that compelled Rodgers to say he wanted to reestablish a relationship with his dad.
• The story of Edward Rodgers, Aaron's paternal grandfather and a decorated World War II combat pilot who completed 43 successful missions against Hitler's war machine before being shot down, captured, and beaten as a POW. On St. Patrick's Day 1944, Rodgers saved his crew of 10 men in their burning, bullet-ridden B-24 by somehow flying it back to his base in Italy. Rodgers recalled that he was piloting his damaged plane "all alone over Germany. It was the loneliest feeling in the world."
• Why Rodgers was upset by Packers coach Mike McCarthy during his most devastating defeat, the 2014 NFC Championship Game collapse at Seattle. Rodgers wanted to call six plays he had seem on film that "seemed indefensible" when Dallas beat the Seahawks in the regular season. One veteran Packers player said Rodgers "wanted those plays called over and over against Seattle, and McCarthy called only a few of them one time each."
• That then-San Francisco 49ers coach Mike Nolan, who drafted Alex Smith instead of Rodgers with the first overall pick in 2005, is "still bother[ed]" that his offensive coordinator, McCarthy, benefited most from that decision. "[McCarthy] had a lot to do with picking the other one [Smith], and in the end he got the one [Rodgers] that he didn't pick, and it elevated his career," Nolan says in the book.
• A look at the much-discussed text to ESPN senior NFL insider Adam Schefter, who was seeking confirmation that he was being dealt to the Jets in 2023. Rodgers told Schefter, "Lose my number. Good try tho." Later at the owners' meetings, Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst, whose repeated messages to Rodgers had gone unreturned, told people, "At least Adam got a response from him."
O'Connor's book will be released next week.
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