Aaron Rodgers proves he's not immunized against being a loser

It’s a weird feeling when the team you’ve rooted for your entire life is led by a man you truly despise. Every former wide-eyed Wisconsin boy who ever imagined himself in a Packers uniform feels an almost gravitational pull toward his ancestral homeland when the team plays—and especially when it’s poised to make big waves in the playoffs.

Then again, the schadenfreude potential of seeing the world’s biggest needle baby fall on his face is equally as powerful, if not more so. Needless to say, I was pulled in separate directions Saturday night as my Packers took on the San Francisco 49ers in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs, and while I was admittedly rooting for evil, in the end good prevailed. Niners 13, Packers 10. Throughout much of the game Rodgers appeared bemused and ineffectual. In the second half he basically looked like an injured toad trying to escape from a Folgers can. And it was another monumental postseason fail for the greatest regular season quarterback to ever play the game.

Yes, Aaron Rodgers settled in for another early playoff dirt nap, and all was right with the world. Unless you were Aaron Rodgers. Or a Packers fan. Or a bettor who saw that this was arguably the Packers’ best team in years and thought they could somehow overcome the refulgent loser stink waves pouring off Rodgers like the hearty musk of a Chernobyl reindeer’s asshole.

Of course, going into last night’s game, I had already seen the following Rodgers bons mots, in which he simultaneously doubles down on his anti-vax fuckery and slyly suggests that Joe Biden may not be a legitimate president.

ESPN.com:

In December, he was not happy when President Joe Biden, while taking a tour of tornado-ravaged towns in Kentucky, joked with a woman wearing a Packers jacket that she should tell Rodgers to get the vaccine.
"When the president of the United States says, 'This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,' it's because him and his constituents, which, I don't know how there are any if you watch any of his attempts at public speaking, but I guess he got 81 million votes," Rodgers said Thursday. "But when you say stuff like that, and then you have the CDC, which, how do you even trust them, but then they come out and talk about 75% of the COVID deaths have at least four comorbidities. And you still have this fake White House set saying that this is the pandemic of the unvaccinated, that's not helping the conversation."

Oh, no! My quarterback is attacking my president! Whoever shall I side with? Hmm. I’ll get back to y’all. But I’m leaning in one direction, just so you know.

Of course, because Rodgers never knows what the fuck he’s talking about with respect to the pandemic and the vaccine, ESPN was forced to issue a contemporaneous correction:

(Editor's note: The CDC study found that in a group of 1.2 million people who were fully vaccinated between December 2020 and October 2021, 36 of them had a death associated with COVID-19 -- and that of those 36 people, 28, or about 78%, had at least four of eight risk factors.)

So the CDC was talking about the vanishingly small number of deaths among the fully vaccinated, not the general population. In other words, the vaccine is highly effective against the worst possible outcomes unless you have a lot of serious unrelated health problems. And even then the number of deaths is minuscule compared to the total number of vaccinated people.

Hmm, a Joe Rogan fan who doesn’t have his facts straight? No. Fucking. Way.

There’s been speculation all season long that Rodgers will fly the coop in the offseason so he can be free to make someone else’s playoff nightmares come true, and I really hope he does. He’s poisoned my team long enough. I’d prefer a plucky, up-and-coming 7-10 team with a young quarterback who doesn’t prize freedom phlegm over the health of his teammates. Indeed, #AllYouNeedIsLove.

Frankly, I’d love for Rodgers to see the light, get vaccinated, and then do a series of PSAs touting the safety, efficacy, and lifesaving potential of the jab. Then again, I guess I’d prefer that a winner take on that burden. This dude can’t even see wide-open receivers. Must have been wearing homeopathic contact lenses or something.

Well, there’s always next year, Packers fans. Unless you’ve taken Aaron Rodgers’ advice on vaccines, that is—in which case, maybe you should hold up on reordering those season tickets for the moment. Just a hunch.