Definitely on the Right Side of History, Aaron Rodgers Stands Firm on His COVID-19 Vaccine Refusal

When Aaron Rodgers walked into the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium on a November afternoon in 2021, he was still the reigning NFL Most Valuable Player, a four-time winner of the award, and arguably the most talented quarterback in professional football. Within a week, he would be quarantined at home, missing a game against the Kansas City Chiefs, facing a league investigation, losing a sponsorship deal, and fielding calls from a press corps that felt it had been misled.

All of it, because he had told reporters that summer that he was “immunized,” a word choice, he later acknowledged, that he used deliberately but that he wished, in hindsight, he had never uttered. What followed was a firestorm that reshaped his public image from rugged All-American quarterback to polarizing figure, a label that has followed him from Green Bay to New York to Pittsburgh, and that he has never once tried to walk away from.

More than four years after that first Pat McAfee Show appearance in November 2021, Rodgers returned to the same program and made the same basic argument that he made the right call, that he stood his ground when few would, and that the cultural and political winds have since turned in his direction.

In December 2023, Rodgers told McAfee he believed he was on the “right side of history” regarding his decision not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine or booster shots. The remark drew renewed criticism and viral attention, but Rodgers did not retreat. His position has remained consistent since 2021, and he has repeated versions of it at every opportunity since.

1. How A $14K NFL Fine & Lost Sponsorship For ‘Immunized’ Lie Launched Aaron Rodgers’ ‘Right Side of History’ Stance

Rodgers’ viral statement that continues to circulate originated during a December 2023 appearance on ESPN’s Pat McAfee Show, and it has resurfaced repeatedly ever since. Here’s what he said, “As I sit here today, I feel like I’m definitely on the right side of history and went through a lot of shit for an opinion that was my own personal belief based on what was best for my body. And in an era of censorship and quelling free speech, I’m glad that I took the stand that I did and welcoming more and more people to the side of freedom and free speech.”

2. From MVP Glory to Achilles Tear: The Career Cost of Rodgers’ Vaccine Stance

To fully appreciate what the vaccine controversy cost Aaron Rodgers, and what he believes he preserved, it is necessary to understand where he stood in the fall of 2021, and how dramatically his professional trajectory shifted in its wake. In the 2020 season, Rodgers was at the summit of his career. He threw 48 touchdown passes against just 5 interceptions, won his third MVP award, and led the Green Bay Packers to the NFC Championship Game for the second consecutive year. That 2021 season, during which he was sidelined for 10 days as a result of his COVID-19 diagnosis, was his final season as a winning quarterback. The following season, the Packers went 8-9. He was traded to the New York Jets in 2023, where he tore his Achilles tendon in the first game of the season, a catastrophic injury that ended his year before it had barely begun. A Netflix documentary series titled “Aaron Rodgers: Enigma” followed him through his Achilles rehabilitation and return to football, and also explored his controversial stance on the COVID-19 vaccine. The documentary captured a man engaged in an intense personal transformation; spiritually, physically, and philosophically, that he framed as inseparable from the resistance he had shown in 2021. Rodgers had previously developed a well-documented connection to vaccine-skeptic circles, including his public association with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. That association became significantly more consequential when Kennedy was confirmed as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services in February 2025. In June 2025, Kennedy dismissed all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the body that advises the CDC on vaccine policy, claiming they had conflicts of interest. He then appointed eight new members, several of whom are known to be critical of vaccines and have spread misinformation, according to researchers at Rice University’s Baker Institute.

3. Did the Vaccine Controversy Kill His Career? Aaron Rodgers’ Shocking Statistical Decline Since 2021

Rodgers joined the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2025, where new head coach Mike McCarthy, who coached Rodgers in Green Bay from 2006 to 2018 and was the architect of their Super Bowl XLV championship, was brought in to lead the franchise. McCarthy has expressed openness to a reunion for the 2026 season. The Steelers placed a rarely-used unrestricted free agent tender on Rodgers, and multiple reports suggest the odds of his return have been increasing. Former Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, who stepped away from the organization after the 2025 season, publicly stated that he expects Rodgers to return to Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh chapter is meaningful for another reason. In the years since 2021, Rodgers’ career statistics have measurably trended downward. His touchdown rate dropped from 9.1% in 2020 to 4.8% in 2022, with a similar mark posted in 2024. His passing success rate has declined. Multiple plausible explanations exist for this; age, a change of franchise late in a career, the Achilles injury, but the correlation between the vaccine controversy and the arc of his career is impossible to ignore when cataloguing his timeline. Whether the two are connected in any medical or performance sense remains a matter of genuine uncertainty; what is not uncertain is that his public identity was profoundly and permanently altered beginning in November 2021. In the 2025 NFL season with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Rodgers posted a 68.7 overall PFF grade, ranking 29th among 43 qualified quarterbacks, throwing for 3,322 yards and 24 touchdowns against 7 interceptions.

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