Aaron Rodgers created some controversy after Sunday’s heavy home defeat to the Buffalo Bills. But it didn’t stop there as it spilled over into a dispute between Steelers beat reporters and NBC’s Mike Florio.
After the Bills game, the aging quarterback seemed to call out teammates for not putting in effort by implying that his receivers weren’t all showing up for film sessions.
Rodgers met with the media again on Wednesday and Florio was quick to pounce on what appeared to be a lack of follow-up questions towards Rodgers regarding his Sunday comments about his teammates.
At roughly 5:00 p.m. ET, Florio wrote a post at Pro Football Talk that was critical of reporters for not asking Rodgers any questions about his Sunday comments on his teammates’ work ethic. He also linked a YouTube video of Rodgers’ brief media availability. He closed his article by writing, “It’s inexcusable. It’s collective malpractice. And it does nothing to advance the basic reason that people get paychecks to cover the ins and outs and ups and downs of an NFL team.”
Except there was just one problem… Aaron Rodgers was asked about it. And there was video proof of it.
ESPN’s Pittsburgh Steelers reporter Brooke Pryor quote-tweeted the Pro Football Talk social media post of Florio’s article with a video of herself asking about the Sunday film session comments.
That’s incorrect. I asked and he answered. Here’s the exchange ⬇️ https://t.co/8o45TPH9Q8 pic.twitter.com/U618Y7L5GT
— Brooke Pryor (@bepryor) December 3, 2025
Pryor can be heard asking, “One of the things you said on Sunday that could help you and the pass-catchers get on the same page is everybody coming to those film review sessions. To be clear, has there been less than 100% attendance? Is that something you feel like needs to improve?”
She then hit back at Florio saying his work was “lazy and wrong” by only checking one source and not verifying his assumption with any number of people that cover the team.
As reporters, we’re supposed to trust but verify — and check with multiple sources before going with something.
PFT checked one source and didn’t bother to verify with any number of outlets covering the team.
That’s lazy and wrong.
— Brooke Pryor (@bepryor) December 3, 2025
Longtime Steelers reporter Mark Kaboly also responded to Florio with a video saying, “there’s a lot of fake news out there.”
— Mark Kaboly (@MarkKaboly) December 3, 2025
After clearly being proven wrong in his original sentiment, Mike Florio added not one but two updates to the bottom of his post about Aaron Rodgers and the reporters on the Pittsburgh Steelers beat. He noted that the question from Pryor was not posted by the Steelers in their original video chronicling the Rodgers gaggle with reporters, which is where he made the assumption that he was not asked about the film session remark.
UPDATED 6:53 p.m. ET: Apparently, Rodgers was asked at least one question about his remarks, as part of a 10-minute session with reporters. The Steelers, however, did not post that portion of the press conference on their website or on their YouTube channel. We’ve asked the team to explain the failure to post the full comments, and we’ll be posting a new item with the specific question(s) Rodgers was asked, along with his answer(s).
UPDATED 9:51 p.m. ET: We’ve obtained and reviewed the full video of Rodgers’s Wednesday press conference. He was asked one question about his comments. One day after coach Mike Tomlin was asked none.
That would seem to be the end of the story, right? Well, not so fast. Mike Florio then posted a separate article just before 10 p.m. ET acknowledging that Aaron Rodgers was asked one solitary question about the comments at his press availability that seemed to bristle at the direct response from Pryor and company.
As it turns out, the rough-and-tumble Steelers beat did indeed interrogate quarterback Aaron Rodgers thoroughly and aggressively regarding his surprising comments after Sunday’s loss to the Bills.
Well, not really. He was asked one question about it on Wednesday, with no follow up.
[…]
Here’s the bottom line. Although I’ll take full responsibility for incorrectly assuming that the Steelers had posted the full video from Rodgers’s Wednesday press conference, a meaty issue has not received the treatment it merits. And, again, if anyone believes it has, I’m not going to try to convince them otherwise.
Although Mike Florio wrote that he took responsibility for the mistake, it didn’t exactly come with an apology to the Steelers reporters after the video evidence discounted his original story.
This dispute easily could have ended with that acknowledgement and everyone could have moved on. However, it would seem that Pryor’s question was not enough to satisfy his original thesis that the Steelers press corps is not doing enough to hold the feet of Aaron Rodgers and Mike Tomlin to the fire on this issue. So who knows where this might go next.
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