I’m still so proud of my headline last week, “Aaron Rodgers: My never-seen wife Brittani exists and has a right to privacy.” I’m still patting myself on the back over that one. So, yeah, Aaron Rodgers is back and playing for one year only with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He will probably retire next year, but who knows. Around the time when he signed his Steelers contract, Aaron announced that he’d gotten married to a woman named Brittani. No one has seen Brittani, no one knows if she exists and no one knows what the hell is going on with Aaron these days. That’s the point of this week’s Us Weekly cover story. They’re painting him as a local/national man of mystery, when really, his brain became irretrievably broken during the pandemic and he’s never recovered. It really is that simple – he was already a man prone to toxicity in his personal relationships, and all of it got magnified and then snowballed during the pandemic. From Us Weekly:

Aaon Rodgers remains shrouded in mystery. He surprised reporters at a June 10 press conference when he revealed he’d married his girlfriend, Brittani, “a couple of months” earlier. (He announced he was in “a serious relationship” during an April appearance on The Pat McAfee Show and sparked speculation he’d tied the knot after he was spotted wearing a ring at a Kentucky Derby event in May.) As of press time, he has yet to be seen with his new bride.

With talk about his eventual retirement (Rodgers said that he’d chosen to “stay in the public eye for one more season” during a June 24 interview on The Pat McAfee Show), the question of who he really is lingers: Is he a loyal teammate and leader or an arrogant and overrated player? An emotionally-evolved male or a toxic, conspiracist bro? A victim of negative media bias or a master of controlling the narrative? An alpha athlete or a spiritual seeker?

“Aaron [marches] to the beat of his own drum,” his trainer and Align Podcast host, Aaron Alexander, tells Us, while Rodgers’ childhood friend Jordan Russell, with whom he’s still close, calls him “a multifaceted person.” Even sports commentator Skip Bayless, who’s been critical of Rodgers admits, “I have never encountered a professional athlete like him on and off the field.”

During a 2023 episode of HBO Max’s Hard Knocks, the QB talked about seeing a UFO, and in 2024, Jimmy Kimmel threatened legal action after Rodgers implied the talk show host had ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The Chico, California, native has been labeled a contrarian, but Russell says his pal is simply standing up for what he believes in. “If Aaron disagrees, he’s going to share his disagreement. He’s not contradictory just to be contradictory.” Rodgers’ friend and Chicago Bears safety Adrian Colbert tells Us the QB doesn’t follow the status quo for the sake of it. “Aaron understands that we all get to choose how we want to live our lives. Whether it disrupts or upsets people, that’s not really his problem.”

[From Us Weekly]

I think he is contradictory just for the hell of it – a contrarian with no real belief system, a “debate me, bro” with absolutely no knowledge. I also think he had multiple Covid infections which have affected him long-term, but that’s just my armchair diagnosis. Anyway, I find it curious that there’s an attempt to “clean up” his image at this point, or that Us Weekly would even bother to give him the benefit of doubt. He’s done absolutely nothing to deserve it – he’s shown everyone who he is, people should believe him. And Free Brittani! If she exists.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of Us Weekly.