The Ringer NFL Show - The Curious Case of Aaron Rodgers | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Aaron Rodgers is one of the most prominent faces of the NFL—and also one of the league's most controversial figures. As he begins what could be a legacy-cementing season with the Jets, Nora Princiotti takes a look back at his evolution from a media darling and almost-host of 'Jeopardy!' to a lightning rod of a cultural figure who peddles conspiracy theories. Host: Nora Princiotti Story Editing: Lindsay Jones and Conor Nevins Producers: Kaya McMullen and Vikram Patel Sound Design: Kaya McMullen Mixing and Mastering: Scott Somerville Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's Thursday. Are you watching the game tonight? The hapless jets flipping the script on the once dominant pads is a fun narrative. Out with the old, in with the new. These are the kinds of easy archetypes that tell the story of the NFL each season. But the player we're about to talk about has made that kind of typecasting much more complicated. Aaron Rogers is an NFL player with a rare degree of influence. He's a Super Bowl champion, a four-time MVP, and one of the most recognizable players in the league.

The Jets have staked their season on his ability to reclaim his status as one of the best passers in the game. He's your typical star quarterback, here to rescue a long-suffering franchise and win the hearts of New York City. Except for one thing. When it comes to Aaron Rogers, wins and losses are rarely the whole story,

because he is also someone who makes people say things like this. The most disingenuous athlete of my lifetime. Wild and unhinged conspiracy theories. He genuinely thinks that because God gave him the ability to throw a ball. He's smarter than everyone else. I'm fascinated by the ways football reflects the broader culture and how the real world sneaks into the football world whether the NFL wants it to or not.

And that's why I can't get enough of Aaron Rogers. Rogers has always presented as a curious intellectual. But in the last few years, he's become something of a political provocateur, which leaves the rest of us just trying to make sense of him. From Spotify and The Ringer, I'm Nora Princiotti. And this is The Curious Case of Aaron Rogers, a special audio feature on the Ringer NFL show. Aaron Rogers wasn't always so controversial.

Just a few years ago, as recently as 2021, Rogers was the thinking man's quarterback of the NFL, Long-form profiles of him were practically their own genre. He was a true media darling. I remember reading a lot about how Aaron Rogers liked books. Does this ring a bell to you? It does. He was a quarterback who was also curious about the world,

which is a real sports writer favorite, because we like books. That's Brian Curtis, a colleague of mine who covers media at the ringer. So any athlete that evinces even the slightest interests in the things we like, we thought, oh, oh, can I interview you? Can I talk to you more about your intellectual passions? Brian's spot on. I've been a beat reporter, and it is hard to get an athlete to say something,

anything other than boilerplate. But not Aaron Rogers. He'd talk all the time about books and music and doing crossword puzzles. He had takes on Game of Thrones plot lines. He was a rebuttal to another basic sports archetype, the dumb jock. And he seemed to relish that. Rogers was such a renaissance man that he was asked to guest host Celebrity Jeopardy in the spring of 2021. That is a great question.

Should be correct. But unfortunately for this game today, that's incorrect. He was funny. He bantered with the guests. he was just really good at it. Rogers made the short list for the permanent gig, and though he didn't get it, at the time it made total sense

that Jeopardy would be interested in him. Put simply, he was a good talker. It's not that he wasn't ever prickly, but he was almost always willing to engage. Here's Curtis again. Aaron Rogers has given a ton of interviews, and he's given a ton of interviews long before he ever went on the Pat McAfee show.

Like he was interested in talking to us, which is, again, the ultimate flattering thing you can say to a sports writer. Heading into the 2021 NFL season, Kevin Van Valkenberg was one of the many sports writers jockeying for time with Rogers. Back then, Van Valkenberg was a senior writer at ESPN, trying to convince his bosses that there was room for one more Rogers' profile. Who was he, to you? You said he was one of your favorite football players. Did you have a particular attachment or a particular perspective on him? I loved always the way that the football came out of his hand. I mean, I think he's thrown the prettiest spirals in the history of football.

It's just, you know, there are other people maybe who can make a claim they're a better quarterback, but the pure mechanics of, like, what Aaron Rogers can do with the football has always been so fascinating. Van Valkenberg had wanted to spend the 2021 season following Rogers. The quarterback's relationship with Green Bay had been fraying, ever since the Packers drafted his replacement, Jordan Love, the previous year. Rogers thought he had a few good years left, and he did not try to hide his disappointment at the succession planning. But in the lead-up to a week-nine match-up against the Kansas City Chiefs, Rogers tested positive for COVID. The story of his season, and possibly his career, would never be the same.

You probably remember what happened next. But let's recap just in case. After he tested positive, Rogers was placed in the NFL's system of protocols for unvaccinated placement. which was a surprise, since back in the summer, he'd said this to reporters at a press conference during training camp. Are you vaccinated and what's your stance on vaccinations? Yeah, I've been immunized. Yeah, I've been immunized.

Those four words would be revisited. A lot. Roger said he hadn't lied. Less than a week after his positive test, while still in quarantine at his house, he went on the Pat McAvey show for nearly 50. minutes and made his case. He told McAfee that he believed he was inoculated against COVID because he'd done multiple alternative treatments. He was taking zinc and the drug ivermectin and getting shots of what are known as monoclonal antibodies. None of the reporters in Green Bay had

followed up on what exactly he meant when he said immunized. Rogers blamed the controversy over his comments on cancel culture, and his words set kind of an intense tone. I realize I'm in the crosshairs of the woke mob right now. So before my final nail gets put in my cancel culture casket, I think I'd like to set the record straight on so many of the blatant lies that are out there about myself right now. This was November 2021. COVID had killed millions of people around the world. And even though the worst of the pandemic was over, it was still making a mess of the economy and affecting daily life. And because vaccines, skepticism had become a cultural and political battleground.

The rhetoric around Rogers' unvaccinated status got heated pretty quickly. I could not be more patently disappointed by what Aaron Rogers told Pat McAfee today. Aaron Rogers is very smart. That's why they were considering him to be the next host of Jeopardy. And he's smart enough to know the difference between saying you're immunized and saying you're vaccinated. Aaron Rogers is a liar. He lied through his teeth.

What a smirk on his face. The story became national news. We were watching an NFL MVP become a high-profile culture warrior and not a reluctant one. With each passing interview, and there were a lot of them, Rogers seemed more and more comfortable

telling us how he was really feeling, railing against wokeness in the government, sharing his takes on which parts of science were legit and which were bunk, and calling the NFL's COVID protocols a witch hunt. Meanwhile, the Packers were on their way to a 13 and 4 season, and Rogers was on his way to winning MVP. And yet when most people think back on that season,

what comes to mind isn't his play on the field, but what he was saying off of it. Aaron Rogers was far from the only unvaccinated player in the NFL, but he was certainly the loudest. And his stance had a lot of sports media totally thrown. A star player, a media darling, had made a heel turn during a public health crisis, no less. Aaron Rogers was suddenly playing the part of a villain.

So Kevin Van Valkenberg found a new approach. He refocused his reporting on trying to understand where Rogers' seemingly new belief system came from. As it turned out, Rogers had been bucking expectations for a long time. Nobody believes in me is one of the most well-worn athlete cliches out there. But in Rogers' case, it's actually kind of fair. You know, he's 5'6 when he's a freshman in high school, and he's 5'7 when he's a sophomore in high school. And so he's immediately kind of looked down upon as like, well, you're not like a real prospect.

You're not like a particularly great athlete. Rogers was an accomplished quarterback at Pleasant Valley High School in Northern California. But he struggled to get the attention of major college recruiters. Nobody believed in him. Without any D1 offers, Rogers' best path forward was Butte. the junior college just down the road from his hometown. At first, Rogers' parents didn't like the idea of their son going to a junior college. But Craig Rigsby, the coach at Butte, was persuasive.

He pitched the idea that Rogers could use a season at Butte as a springboard to transfer to a bigger program at a four-year school. Rigsby's appeal also included a more philosophical take. He told Rogers' parents that they shouldn't give so much credit to a name-brand education. That point especially seemed to resonate with Aaron. He still wound up at UC Berkeley after a season of Butte, but Rigsby's words stuck with him. He has this quote that he repeats a lot. The War of 1812 is the same that they're teaching the War of 1812 at Cal.

So like there's no, no one has cornered the market on like ideas and history. Like you're being taught the same thing. It's just kind of the packaging and the labeling. He took all that of like, man, like I don't need to be like a Harvard intellectual. I can be just as smart as any of these people. having this background, and I think that that stuck with him throughout his life. I find this anecdote really interesting, because it's a twist on the usual underdog athlete self mythology.

The institutions Rogers respected, the elite programs he'd hoped would recruit him out of high school, failed to recognize his talent. I can imagine him thinking, if all those prestigious football schools could miss on me, Does prestige matter? And how many other people who are supposed experts, people who are supposed to know better,

get things wrong all the time? Other experiences in Rogers' life have also led him to question conventional wisdom and expertise. Here's one example. In high school, he did a book report on John F. Kennedy and went deep down a rabbit hole about his assassination. And he claims that he read the entirety of the Warren Commission. And like in his brain, like he talks about this in Tucker Carlson interview that, you know, he really kind of was like, we're being lied to about this.

Like there's no magic bullet. I was like, there's some bullshit in here. This doesn't make sense. You tell me this magic bullet from this guy went boom, boom, boom, boom, by through him. And then they just happened to find it, you know, in the hospital a certain spot. I was like, that doesn't sound right. So that kind of got me into questioning things, conspiracies, you know, for sure. It wasn't a straight line from re-examining the Warren Commission,

a common gateway conspiracy for budding theorists, to becoming a full-blown culture warrior. But Rogers' story is littered with less pointed steps towards various countercultures. Take, for example, religion. Rogers grew up in a Christian house, but over time, he's rejected its more conformist elements, pointing at the role of shame in particular.

Of course, a lot of people become less religious as they get older, but for Rogers, this has come at a cost. It's one of the main points of tension between him and his now estranged family. Rogers has also dabbled in the paranormal, claiming to have seen a UFO himself. And even in his personal life, Rogers has chosen romantic partners who are themselves publicly unconventional celebrities, like the famously crunchy Shaline Woodley and conspiracy curious Danica Patrick. Taken separately, these aren't silver bullet examples of

Rogers' proclivity to reject norms. Together, though, they do paint a picture. Conspiracy theories have been having a moment. Anti-vaxxers, the deep state, QAnon, these phrases didn't mean anything to me until fairly recently. I can't speak for everyone, but I know that over the last few years, it seems like they come up more and more in everyday conversation. To understand how this happened, I wanted to talk to an expert.

My name's John Ronson. I am a writer and documentary maker. I guess my expertise regard in the context of this conversation is that for like 30 years or even more, I've been chronicling the rise of conspiracy culture. I was like the first person ever to interview Alex Jones, way back in the day. So that's why we're talking. Do you know who Aaron Rogers is in a sports context? Not really. No. I come from. Britain where our sports are different to your sports. Your sports are like a mystery to me. As Ronson explained to me, yes, it is true that more people believe in conspiracy theories than they used to. That trend has accelerated since COVID, but as he mentioned, it's been going on a lot

longer than that. I remember going to gun shows in Tulsa with white separatists back in the mid-90s. And the most popular tables at the gun shows weren't the AR-15 tables. They were the conspiracy VHS tables. And these were terrible films. These were boring men droning on about the all-seeing eye on the back of the dollar bill. Yet at the gun shows, those are the tables that were like, you're packed. I asked Ronson what he thinks has helped conspiratorial thinking take off since. He said it was a combination of factors. The first one is kind of obvious. The internet. In the 90s, even if you had a long line waiting to hear your fringe theory at a gun show, that's still only a couple hundred people. The internet and social media completely changed the game.

The second piece? You need a compelling voice for the conspiracy theory. And thanks to the internet, new voices have emerged, commentators who don't have the typical mainstream credentials. The Trump presidency, especially, was big for this. And third, you need opportunity. Bronson talked about moments of significant tragedy or failures of effective leadership that create a vacuum, when people want answers or someone to blame. Over the last 30 years, a few major events have especially fit the bill.

The run-up to the Gulf War, 9-11, and then COVID. Good evening and thank you for joining us. As we come on the air tonight, life here in America is changing. Spending its season. Full scope of the coronavirus outbreak is coming into focus. Utah Jazz Center, Rudy Goberra is the latest Utah. Schools in entire cities and states have been ordered closed, including in a while. Tom Hanks announcing overnight that Wall Street had its worst day since the 1987 crash. And this virus has been ahead of us every step of the way. I think we can all agree that March of 2020.

was not the best of times. People were scared. Information on how to be COVID safe was scarce and often changing. Even the best informed and intentioned leaders did not get everything right. Exactly the type of environment

in which Ronson told me conspiracies thrive and new voices emerge. Before the pandemic, anti-vaxxers were out there, but most didn't have much of a platform, and their ideas remained relatively fringe. But when COVID hit,

Vaccination became a hot topic, and some of those voices blew up. A group of discredited scientists found a group of podcasters and politicians willing to broadcast their ideas. They got to know each other and started reading and sharing each other's work, egging each other on and amplifying their collective message. It has become an echo chamber with increasingly broad reach, a reach that includes Aaron Rogers. Rogers is part of this community. One way to tell, he's a fan of Joe Rogan, who I should mention also podcasts under the Spotify umbrella. Rogan's podcast has hosted several members of the Anti-Vax Echo Chamber,

from ex-president Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the discredited scientist Robert Malone. Rogers has also been a guest on Rogan's podcast. He's also shared the works of Robert Malone, and connected by their views on socials. science, Rogers and RFK Jr. grew so close that Rogers made the shortlist for the candidate's vice presidential running mate. RFK, Rogan, Rogers, people know these guys. They listen to them. The echoes have left the chamber. When Rogers talks about COVID, you can almost hear how misinformation

trickles up from a group of fringe scientists to podcast hosts, presidential hopefuls, and star and out into the world. For many fans, COVID was Rogers' turning point. It's when he became loudly outspoken about his controversial ideology. But it's hard to pin down whether that was something he'd recently adopted or whether he'd just gotten comfortable sharing it publicly. Over the past few years, since his COVID controversy, some information has come to light that suggests Rogers had peddled conspiracy theories well before then.

One of those reports came during a podcast appearance on the Brennaman show a couple years ago when former Packers quarterback to Shone Kaiser told a story about the first time he met Rogers in Green Bay in 2017. The first thing that Aaron Roger, that comes out of Aaron Rogers' mouth was, do you believe in 9-11? What? Do I believe in 9-11? Yeah, I mean, why wouldn't I? He was like, you should read up on that.

I should read up on that. Okay. Then, this past spring, just after Rogers' name came up on RFK Jr.'s Vice Presidential Shortlist, CNN reported that, as early as 2013,

Rogers had privately shared the conspiracy theory, but the Sandy Hook shooting had been staged by the government. Rogers denied the story, posting on social media that he has, quote, never been of the opinion that the events did not take place.

But it was still a story. And even after Rogers' denial, it added to the impression that, to the extent his interest in conspiracy theories has surprised people, it's an interest that others might have seen coming. At the same time, though Rogers' politics have always been hard to pin down,

some of his past behavior has created at least the impression of a political realignment. Before COVID, the last issue that put the NFL in the political spotlight involved Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem. It's just one example, but Rogers supported Kaepernick, and his comments back then seemed at least roughly leftward leaning.

But his more recent comments on the vaccine and quote-unquote woke culture have echoed those more typical of the right. Ronson, the conspiracy expert, told me that the backlash Rogers experienced over the vaccination controversy might have made him dig in his heels and become more defiant since then. That kind of hardened response is common. It's agony. You know, humans are social people.

We want to feel part of a community. And when your own community, which is why when you're attacked by your own, it's worse than when you're attacked by people who aren't in your tribe. It's extremely psychologically hurtful. It's not just a schoolboy insult. It does something to you. And that's a reason why people double down. Since COVID, Rogers has lost his media darling status. And with it, lucrative.

partnerships, including a long-time deal with State Farm that was not renewed. His intellect, the thing he'd made the centerpiece of a glowing reputation, became something people made fun of. The doubling down Ronson is talking about happens as a reaction to that rejection. And it spurred along by an extensive anti-establishment community of politicians, podcasters, and thinkers who can offer a new home to the publicly shamed. Then at the same time, you've got like the main. mainstream people, liberals, are like yelling at you for your wrong beliefs. And then you've got, you know, the Alex Jonesism and the Joe Rogan saying, come to us. You know, we're going to accept you uncritically.

All of these things, I think, conspire to make you sort of double down and become this, you know, baffling caricature of yourself. Rogers has grown comfortable in conspiracy media circles. The glossy sports and men's magazines that used to offer fawning coverage are now a bit more skeptical. And I suppose now is a good time to mention that via the Jets organization, Rogers has not responded to my requests for a recorded interview. Anyways, while Rogers doesn't have the same access to mainstream coverage with no strings attached, he's now a frequent guest of some of the world's most famous conspiracy mongers. And he's not just talking about vaccines anymore. This past spring, he went on the Tucker Carlson show and promoted a full menu of anti-establishment conspiracy theories.

They did talk about COVID, of course, but also got into topics like election denialism and the idea that, quote, spiritual forces, end quote, are at work affecting global politics. On a February 2024 appearance on another podcast hosted by a prominent conspiracy theorist, Eddie Bravo's look into it,

Rogers discussed the idea that immigrants to the United States were planning to enlist in the army and the fear that they could turn against Native-born Americans. A lot of Rogers' comments have been buried in the second and third hours of podcasts, but not all of them. In January, Rogers publicly feuded with Jimmy Kimmel after saying on the Pat McAfee show that Kimmel should be fearful of the release of a list of Jeffrey Epstein's known associates. Kimmel, whose name was not on the list, threatened to sue and mocked Rogers in one of his monologues.

A lot of delusional people honestly believe I am meeting up with Tom Hessexie. Hank's and Oprah at Shaky's once a week to eat pizza and drink the blood of children. Either he actually believes my name was going to be on Epstein's list, which is insane, or the more likely scenario is he doesn't actually believe that he just said it because he's mad at me for making fun of his top knot and his lies about being vaccinated. In about two years' time, Rogers' public identity had gotten a complete makeover. Just a couple years ago, Aaron Rogers almost hosted. jeopardy. Now he's spouting conspiracy theories. It's a strange circumstance for the NFL and its fans

to try and square the Jet Star Savior quarterback with the anti-establishment ideologue. After all, the NFL itself is a major American institution, one whose culture thrives on hierarchy and obedience, the very things Rogers seems more and more bent on rejecting. And now, in the 11th hour of his career, Rogers' legacy seems to hang in the balance of those competing values. This is the main story of our times. This is the individual versus the institution. As a team, the Jets have tied their Super Bowl hopes to Aaron Rogers and to their ability to give him what he wants, which perhaps above all else is to be his own man. The Jets have given Rogers input on decisions about coaching hires and personnel moves.

It's a level of influence that's rare, even for a star player. Rogers missed the team's mini-camp this spring because of a pre-planned trip to Egypt. It caused a mini-controversy after head coach Robert Sala described the absences as quote-unquote unexcused, but that has since blown over. It's a delicate balance, not because football teams aren't used to having players with all sorts of belief systems, or because they don't know how to handle some bad press. But most teams want their quarterbacks to model the beach. behaviors they expect from everyone else.

In a word, to lead. And handling Rogers is a challenge because the kind of falling into place the NFL typically rewards is exactly the thing he won't do. As far as the Jets seem concerned, if Rogers wants to spend his off days this fall talking with podcasters and pundits, so be it.

Their approach over the past few months has been to turn the other cheek and stick to football even if he won't. It's an unprecedented situation, not only because Rogers is not your typical quarterback, but also because of the media ecosystem that gives him a platform. Here's Brian Curtis again. I think if you and I went back through football history, we could find a lot of quarterbacks, or a lot of players at least, that had political views that weren't that different than Aaron Rogers, or were just, you know, let's say outside the bounds of mainstream thinking in the same way that Aaron Rogers's opinion, some of. sometimes are. I don't think we would find any that either were willing to share them like he is or had the platforms to share them like he does. I think that's part of what really what makes him

unique. He's coming up in this age where he can not only hop on the Pat McAfee show, but he can hop on any podcast and just go for an hour. Roger Stalbach couldn't have done that. Joe Montana couldn't have done that even if they had wanted to. When you say couldn't have done that, do you mean they couldn't have done that because it would have been too controversial? It would have had actual impacts on their standing in the NFL. Do you mean couldn't have done that because the sort of media environment was not quite as polarized? They would have been worried about what it would have done to their image or what it would have done to their locker rooms in a different way than Aaron Rogers, but also where would they

have done it. What hour of television in 1985 would have afforded them a forum to talk about politics and vaccines and other things? There just wasn't a comparable platform for them. To me, all of this gets to the heart of why Rogers is a hard figure to make sense of. How are we supposed to think of him? He is a citizen with a right to his own opinions, sure. But he also has a major platform as a star athlete, which comes with certain expectations of using it wisely. And he's also become a main character in a moment when sports and politics are mixing it a strange way. Our politics have become more and more welcoming to cultural figures who don't have the usual credentials and who don't go through much real vetting. There's genuine power to that.

I mean, Aaron Rogers was nearly a candidate for vice president. Context matters. The closer he's got into real politics, the more sharply his views have been analyzed. The CNN report claiming Rogers had denied the Sandy Hook shooting, for instance, came just after RFK Jr. revealed that Rogers was on his VP shortlist. One of the reporters on that CNN story, Pamela Brown, said she had heard Rogers make those claims herself in 2013. When Rogers was just a quarterback, it wasn't relevant news. Once it seemed like there was a chance he'd wind up on a presidential ticket, though, it was. There's definitely some logic to that. Elected officials have influenced that NFL quarterbacks don't.

But the muddier the line gets between athlete and public intellect, the harder that logic is to measure out. Does every one of Aaron Rogers' utterances this season need to be fact-checked like a statement from a candidate? If he voices a conspiracy theory from an NFL podium, who is expected to respond? The Jets? The league? Anyone?

These are all things that no one really needed to work out, at least on a daily basis, 20 years ago. And so, like, in a way, like, he's just, he happens to be the guy that we get to work all these things out of it. I have a feeling a lot of us will have the opportunity to keep working through those things as this season continues. That said, as Rogers approaches what's probably his last best chance to finish an NFL season as a Super Bowl champ, I also bet he's enough of a media buff to know this. If he and the Jets can make a real go of winning the Super Bowl this season, that story may at least temporarily drown out any others. I think winning games changes a lot of people's minds.

Winning games is a way to make people think of you as a football player full stop and to have temporary amnesia about the rest of you. I think if Aaron Rogers goes out and wins 12 games for the Jets or God forbid a Jets Super Bowl, I think there'll be a lot of people that start thinking about him more as a quarterback than as a public intellectual. I just think that's how it happens. Conventional wisdom in the football world says to shun distractions.

But to Rogers, they aren't distractions at all. He is still trying to win the argument. Or maybe he's still trying to win all the arguments. Vaccines, censorship, how long it takes to recover from an Achilles injury. Basically anyone ever who's told him what to do or doubted what he could do. What sets him apart from other controversial athletes

is the zeal he seems to have for being part of the controversy. It's not a sideshow. It's his identity. When I talked to Kevin Van der Leyen, Volkenberg, he brought up something Rogers said earlier this year that drove that home. There's this insane line in the Tucker Carlson interview that he did last year where he basically says, like, I don't care if they kill me, at least I won't die on my knees. And like for an NFL

quarterback to say that, like about, you know, basically like this, my opinions matter way more to me than anything else. Aaron Rogers's opinions matter to a lot of people. And whether you agree with him or not, they're hard to get away from. He's one of the faces of a game that is akin to a national religion. He's made a cause out of a pandemic that's defined much of the last five years. And by doing so, he's made himself a prism for an argument between institutions and individuals that increasingly defines our times. Rogers keeps railing against the man.

It's not just the CDC. Rogers' list of adversaries includes the government more broadly, the media, and even the sports establishment. To him, these are the big bats. They're powerful and coordinated. They're self-interested bodies that aren't to be trusted, who silence their critics. But does he have it quite right?

Rogers seems to think he's a big underdog in this struggle. But I'm not sure I see it that way. Rogers himself certainly hasn't been silenced. He seems to have the jets under his thumb. He's got a standing invitation from the Pat McAfee show to talk about whatever he wants each week on ESPN's air. He got within spitting distance of a presidential ticket. In all of those cases, his willingness to pick fights and ignore convention

has helped him get where he is at the expense of institutional strength. Rogers has lost a certain type of comfortable appeal, but the man? He's doing about as well containing Rogers as your average bear's defense. In fact, I can't think of many better examples of the challenges that institutions face these days than Aaron Rogers himself. Rogers is 40. Whether or not this is his last season, he's writing the last chapter of his career. This is legacy time. If he wants to fall in line and use a winning season to distract his detractors, he'll probably be able to. But if he wants to keep leveraging his platform to stare down the establishment, maybe that's his legacy.

If he were to retire tomorrow, his outspokenness might be how we remember him. I posed this question to Brian Curtis. Do you think big picture, all of the dust settles, it's years from now, he's retired, do you think he will go down truly first and foremost as an NFL quarterback? Or do you think this all gets sort of mixed up together in how people remember his career? That's such a good question. I sort of think it's, in a way, it's up to Aaron Rogers. This narrative audio feature was written and reported by me, Nora Princiotti.

The executive producers are Juliet Litman and Sean Fennessee. Story editing by Lindsay Jones and Connor Nevins. This feature was produced by Kaya McMullen and Vikram Patel. Fact-checking by Kellyn B-Coats, copy editing by Craig Gaines. Sound design by Kaya McMullen, mixing and mastering by Scott Somerville. The music you heard in this feature is from Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Special thanks to our Juno Ramgapal. Thanks for listening.