Aaron Rodgers talks leaks with Pat McAfee (L) and A.J. Hawk (R).
NFLBy Andrew Bucholtz on

An interesting part of Aaron Rodgers’ regular appearance on The Pat McAfee Show (with McAfee and A.J. Hawk, seen at left and right of Rodgers above) on SiriusXM and YouTube Tuesday came with his response to a question from McAfee on if his toe would require surgery. After Rodgers talked about how that’s still being evaluated, and if he did get surgery, it wouldn’t cause him to miss a game, McAfee said “Oh, so we still might get surgery, it sounds like? Because there was a report that you might get surgery, then a report that you might not get surgery, there’s still a chance you might get surgery on the toe?” And Rodgers responded by saying that Packers’ coaches might be the sources for those reports, and (in a response to a follow-up from Hawk) that there at least were “people in the building” leaking to media when Rodgers and Hawk played together in Green Bay (2006-2014). Here’s that back-and-forth, starting around 2:10:45:

Rodgers says “Look, again, with these reports, I don’t know where they’re coming from. I don’t know who’s talking. It seems like there’s certain coaches that may have friends in the media that they don’t realize are actually just trying to report things.” Hawk asks “Guys on the Green Bay staff, you’re saying?” And Rodgers says “Oh yeah, you’ve known about that for a while, AJ, guys who had their people that they would leak stuff to.”

McAfee says “Aw, can’t have it, Aaron, can’t have it! But you think that’s what’s happening, that somebody got word that there was a potential surgery and somebody else was like ‘Well, he’s not having it right now?’, and that’s why it’s potentially getting reported? And the fact that you might still get it on, like, Monday and still be able to play, I would assume the follow-up of ‘Why not do it now?’, is there something that can happen between now and Monday to find out if you can’t do surgery, like a healing process that’s already happening?”

Rodgers says “The surgery would immobilize the toe, and so then that would be an issue the entire season I’d be dealing with. It would avoid any further displacement, but it would immobilize the toe. So we’re hoping that with a couple weeks here we can get enough healing that maybe I can avoid doing that. We’ll reassess, like I said, probably later this week and early next week, with the ultimate goal of not having to do surgery, if this thing heals up a bit better and I make it through a few more weeks, and it doesn’t bother me for the rest of the season.”

There are a few things that are unusual about this, and the most notable is the suggestion that Packers’ coaches “may have friends in the media that they don’t realize are actually just trying to report things.” First, it’s interesting to see an accusation of leaks from people who work for the team Rodgers plays for, and second, it’s notable that that particular phrasing spins it as unintentional (but it would seem pretty remarkable for NFL coaches to not realize their conversations with reporters might get reported). And Rodgers then implies more intentionality around the leaks with his response to Hawk, but puts that potentially in the past (he doesn’t specify that it’s still going on).

Is it possible that people in the Packers’ organization are leaking information to media? Absolutely. Given the amount of anonymously-sourced reporting around the NFL, it seems likely that people in every one of the league’s teams do that at some point. And some particular information would seemingly only be known within the organization, until it gets out to reporters (or until the team announces it); this isn’t the case for everything, as some information could come from team sources or league office sources, but it’s the case with some things. But it’s unusual to see a player offer some seeming criticism of people in his organization for doing that, and to spell out that he’s at least partly talking about coaches (not just any Packers’ employees).

What’s also notable here is that much of the actual reporting doesn’t seem that wrong, or that driven by leaks, and it’s certainly not about back-and-forth leaks saying different things. The “report that you might get surgery” appears to be centered around NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport’s Good Morning Football appearance Monday morning:

“The whole goal for Aaron Rodgers and the Packers was just to get to the bye. …Rodgers is going to have some more tests today, and he’s mentioned a couple of times the possibility of surgery. Usually at this point, Kay, when you mention the possibility of surgery, it sounds more  like the likelihood of surgery. If Aaron Rodgers’ tests go well today and he decides to have surgery, the plan is, of course, as he mentioned, fix that little baby toe that is broken, figure there’s something in there that’s not great because they do need to have surgery, then not miss any time, heal up during the bye week, get back for I believe that Sunday night game against the Bears and be fine. That is the goal for this bye. Rodgers is going to have more tests today to see where he’s at, but certainly it sounds like a high likelihood surgery is coming.”

Obviously, there has not been a surgery yet, and Rodgers discussed why not. And Rapoport’s comments here don’t quite align with what Rodgers said to McAfee Tuesday. However, it’s hard to blame this on leaks of inaccurate information, as most of what Rapoport is presenting there is material he’s presenting as his opinion (based on other past cases where the possibility of surgery became actual surgery, and based on the Packers having a bye this week) rather than reporting or facts. The real report is “Rodgers is going to have some more tests today.” And that was known; Rodgers told Fox’s Erin Andrews after the game he was going to talk to the team doctors, do more X-rays, “everything is on the table,” and he’s “hoping to avoid surgery, but we’ll see”:

So nothing in that Rapoport report appears to have been leaked. Now, there were comments that did come from anonymous sources later Monday, to ESPN’s Rob Demovsky (“Packers coach Matt LaFleur said Monday that Rodgers is “gathering other opinions, so we’ll see where that goes,” but a source said those opinions are not expected to lead to surgery during this week’s bye”) and to Rapoport and colleague Tom Pelissero:

Yes, there’s probably a leak there. But the actual information is exactly what Rodgers told McAfee and Hawk Tuesday. So in this case, this whole particular “leak” conversation doesn’t appear to have led to much of a bad outcome, unless Rodgers didn’t want anyone to know he wasn’t having surgery until his appearance with McAfee and Hawk Tuesday. (But that would be a pretty hard secret to keep, with a lot of people heavily focused on finding the answer out.) The “leaks” actually produced more accurate information than Rapoport’s earlier commentary; to be fair, he did indicate that was commentary, and he did go only as far as “a pretty good likelihood,” but that likelihood didn’t come to pass yet. So this isn’t really a case of people leaking wrong information.

This isn’t the first time Rodgers has brought up leaks, though, and the one he really appeared to have a problem with was with it coming out that he was unvaccinated. That reportedly made him “furious,” and it was part of his long rant about the media and about vaccines during his Nov. 5 appearance on McAfee’s show. Here’s what he said there in a response to a question about why he didn’t reveal his unvaccinated status when asked by media this summer:

“It was such a witch hunt. They wanted to out and shame and denigrate every single person who did not immediately say ‘I got the Pfizer, I got the Moderna, whatever.’ I wanted it to go away. Everyone in the squad knew I was not vaccinated, everyone in the organization knew I was not vaccinated.”

“I wasn’t hiding from anyone, I was trying to minimize this conversation, and having it go on and on. And there were people in the media who somehow found out about it and had been sitting on it for a couple of months. So it wasn’t like this thing was hidden until this week. People knew it, and they sat on it. And at some point, I knew I was going to have to discuss it. And I was ready to discuss it.”

That would seem to provide more of an upsetting leak, with Rodgers saying he didn’t want media to know his status. However, that one really does not have to come from the team, as the league has a list of vaccinated and unvaccinated players (and, as Rodgers revealed in that conversation, had a back-and-forth with him about his push to be considered vaccinated). So a lot of people at the league knew about this, and Florio wrote about a league source who tried to tell him on Oct. 5 that Rodgers was unvaccinated. And with the initial report of this coming from NFL Media’s Rapoport and Mike Garafolo, it definitely seems possible they got it from a league source rather than someone in the Packers’ building (although that’s not a certainty, with Rodgers also saying that everyone in the Packers’ building knew this).

The other thing that’s worth discussing around Rodgers and leaks is his reported trade request in April, which obviously didn’t come to pass. Rodgers spoke to NBC’s Mike Tirico off-camera at May’s Kentucky Derby, and Tirico said Rodgers said he was disappointed the rift with the Packers became public:

Around then, a lot of reporters did start reporting various details of Rodgers’ supposed requests (including for the firing of GM Brian Gutekunst, which did not come to pass). So it’s possible Rodgers is still upset about those leaks, and it’s possible they may have come from the coaching staff or from other Packers’ employees. But that would have been a better situation to bring up leak accusations around rather than this one, where the leaks seem mostly designed to correct Rapoport’s previous speculation. (And it’s notable that earlier in his discussion with McAfee and Hawk Tuesday, Rodgers continued to blast The Wall Street Journal, and Molly Knight for retweeting their story on “COVID toe” (which he said he had, but said he was joking about), and suggested that the WSJ should have checked with the Packers’ media staff before running that story. That’s not necessarily a “leak,” but it’s a case where Rodgers wants media to check with organization members to get accurate information out, and that doesn’t seem that different from what happened with Monday evening’s “leaks.”)

The overall takeaway here is that Rodgers seems displeased by leaks in general, and that he’s specifically suggesting some of them come from his own organization, and specifically from that organization’s coaching staff. And maybe they do. But the specific leak (or leaks; it’s possible different people spoke to ESPN and NFL Network) in question Monday evening actually revealed the true situation, certainly much more so than Rapoport’s previous speculation about surgery Monday morning. So this is an interesting spot to choose to make an anti-leak case, especially one that shines a particular spotlight on his own coaches.

[Mediaite]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

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