Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers may have lost his favorite receiver, Davante Adams, to the Las Vegas Raiders during the offseason, but he gained a much more lenient set of COVID-19 rules.
Rodgers and other unvaccinated players are no longer subject to mandatory testing. Additionally, the isolation period after a positive test is now less than one week long.
“Players, however, must self-report symptoms and show a negative test before entering team facilities. If they test positive ... they must self-isolate for five days,” Sporting News reported in August.
Rodgers praised these changes and others during his Sept. 2 appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show,” while also criticizing the NFL’s past approach to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Us non-vax guys went through hell last year,” he said.
Rodgers’ unvaccinated status fueled one of the major scandals of the 2021 NFL season. After he contracted COVID-19 in early November and faced a mandatory absence from team activities, reporters realized that his statements from earlier in the season about being “immunized” had been intentionally misleading.
“Rodgers (had) pursued an alternative treatment and then petitioned the NFL to recognize him as vaccinated. The NFL refused,” ESPN reported in November 2021.
During an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast this summer, Rodgers reiterated that he would have said more about what he meant by “immunized” in August 2021 if reporters had thought to ask. (He was using the word to refer to a homeopathic treatment.)
The quarterback also said that an allergy to polyethylene glycol prevented him from receiving the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, as the SB Nation site Acme Packing Co. reported in its summary of Rodgers’ Rogan appearance.
That article noted that the NFL likely rejected Rodgers’ effort to sidestep its vaccination since he still could have gotten the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The NFL and NFL Players Association jointly agreed to do away with most COVID-19 safety rules in March, according to NFL.com.