Craig Carton urges Aaron Rodgers to drop COVID schtick: ‘We’ve moved past the vaccine’

Aaron Rodgers might think he’s being an outspoken intellectual every time he opens his mouth, but Craig Carton knows the NFL quarterback is just a terrible person.

Rodgers’ latest tell-all came with his Pittsburgh Steelers teammate, joining Not Just Football with Cam Heyward for a lengthy podcast appearance where he recycled many of the same topics we’ve learned to expect from the four-time NFL MVP. During the podcast, Rodgers ripped ESPN; he called out former teammates, disparaged his exes Shailene Woodley and Danica Patrick for seemingly no reason at all, and yes, he even talked about COVID vaccines.

After once again proving he’s better at producing headlines for what he says off the field than what he’s capable of doing on the field at this point in his career, Craig Carton ripped Rodgers on his recently launched show for Fox’s OutKick. Carton called Rodgers out for publicly embarrassing the women he used to date, and for rehashing topics no one cares to talk about.

“Remember when he said he got vaccinated and he lied about it?” Carton asked. “Half this podcast is about vaccinations, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson. Big guy, give it a rest. You got it right; I’m not saying you didn’t, but stop, dude. That’s not the platform Americans want to hear about anymore. We’ve moved past the vaccine. You’re the only cat talking about the vaccine, and none of us want to hear it.”

It’s been more than seven years since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the world. It’s similarly been years since COVID stopped being at the forefront of our minds. But every time Rodgers speaks in an open forum, he bizarrely acts like COVID is still at the center of the national conversation.

“This is a guy that claims he’s always been misunderstood, the haters have it wrong, he’s the greatest guy on the planet, he’s low maintenance,” Carton said of Rodgers. “Yet here he is seven years later still talking about COVID. Here he is all these years later talking about women who have moved on from him.”

Rodgers seems to think the world turned on him for not getting vaccinated in 2021, ignoring the fact that Kirk Cousins’ wholesome personality has been embraced in recent years despite his earlier refusal of the COVID vaccine. It wasn’t declining the vaccine that made Rodgers into a polarizing figure. It’s the fact that he lies, spreads misinformation, turns allies into enemies, whines about being a victim, and claims not to care about it, when in reality, he’s the only one who cares about it. And he might be the last person who cares enough about COVID to continue circling everything back to vaccines.