Good times head? Aaron Rodgers made a rare — and cryptically optimistic — comment regarding his falling out with his family, including brother Jordan Rodgers.
“Many people have issues with family and deal with them in their own ways. For me, I’ve always tried to deal with it quietly behind closed doors,” the 38-year-old NFL quarterback said on the “Aubrey Marcus Podcast” on Wednesday, August 3. “That hasn’t always been the case or hasn’t been good enough for a lot of people who want to write about it, or pick it apart, or talk about it, or even some things that my family has said or done over the years that’s been public. But at the core, I have deep gratitude and love for the way I was raised, the lessons that I was taught, the environment that I was in. The fact that my dad made a point to make my and my brothers’ sporting events the No. 1 priority.”
The Rodgers family drama made headlines when Jordan, 33, competed on JoJo Fletcher’s season of The Bachelorette in 2016. During his hometown date, Jordan admitted that he wasn’t close to Aaron as his parents and brother Luke Rodgers were the only ones there to meet JoJo, 31.
“The fact that [my dad] was willing to take a chance and go through the poverty that we experienced to make a better life for his kids by going back to school as a middle-aged man,” the Green Bay Packers player continued on Wednesday. “My age, he went back to chiropractic college trying to give us a better life — I have deep, deep gratitude for that and really appreciate the sacrifices that were made on our behalf to give us a better life.”
Aaron noted that he does “believe in healing” and “in the possibility of reconciliation at some point.”
He continued: “But it’s a different journey for all of us. And to judge on the outside about what should be, or what it should look like, or who’s wrong and who’s right, it’s just a game I’ve never wanted to play and still don’t want to play.”
The athlete added that the “most important” thing is “deep love and gratitude” for his family. Us Weekly previously confirmed, however, that Aaron was missing from Jordan and Fletcher’s nuptials in May.
“Who knows what that future is going to look like, when it’s going to look like, when the time is going to come,” Aaron said. “But I have no bitterness in my heart, I have no resentment. I just have deep love and appreciation for the lessons that I learned and the fact that if I hadn’t been raised that way, all the good and all the frustrating, there’s no way I’d be sitting here today. So to not have that perspective that because of the things that I experienced I turned out the way I did is looking at the glass as half empty and I just won’t do that. I look at it as there were experiences that were important. I chose to be in this family and to deal with everything that I dealt with positive and difficult and I have deep love and gratitude for them and their journeys and hope for the future.”
Aaron and Jordan’s father, Ed Rodgers, is the most recent member of the family to comment on the rift, telling USA Today that he was “proud” of his son amid the controversy regarding his COVID-19 vaccination status.
“The main thing [is] I just support him,” Ed said, telling the newspaper that “things are progressing” between the father-son duo. “I’m proud of him. I trust his judgment and decisions. I think that’s what I would’ve done.”
