N.Y. Jets QB Aaron Rodgers Says He Regrets Falsely Claiming He Was ‘Immunized’ To Covid-19 After Rejecting Vaccine

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers regrets declaring in August 2021 that he had been “immunized” against COVID-19.

Rodgers was still with the Green Bay Packers in 2021 when he told reporters he was “immunized” against COVID-19. He then received backlash after being tested positive for the virus three months later, leaving him sidelined for ten days.

Rodgers did not appeal the league’s decison that his homeopathic treatment regimen should qualify him as vaccinated. At the time, the football quarterback said he was allergic to polyethylene glycol, an ingredient in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, and was worried about possible adverse reactions to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

He was widely condemned for not being truthful about his COVID-19 immunization status.

He shared that he regretted lying about his status in a soon-to-be-published biography, Out Of The Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers, written by sportswriter Ian O’Connor and going on sale next week.

“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 biography.

Rodgers also mentioned in the book his primary reason for claiming he was “immunized” was that the statement represented “the crux of my appeal.” He told O’Connor that if he could do it again, he would have said “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,'” the Jets quarterback stated. “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,” he added. “So, if I had just said [I was unvaccinated] at the moment, there’s no chance that the appeal would have been handled the same way.”

During an appearance on The Herd with Colin Cowherd in late June, Fox Sports 1 Nick Wright slammed Rodgers for not attending the mandatory Jets meeting so that he supposedly could do psychedelic drugs.

Many fans believed that he was somewhere using ayahuasca, the psychoactive substance that he openly used and spoke about in the past.

Rodgers also said in his biography that his ex-girlfriend, Olivia Munn, was not responsible for him being estranged from his family. 

He explained that these issues began long before he met Munn and that there were complicated reasons behind them.

The book elaborates on a pivotal moment in late 2014 when tensions grew. After Rodgers’s poor performance in a game against Buffalo, his ex-girlfriend confronted his parents, Ed and Darla Rodgers, about their plans to go to an upcoming game in Tampa Bay.

Despite the years of speculation, Rodgers insists that Munn “has nothing to do with all the years” of family issues.