Aaron Rodgers led the Green Bay Packers to a tremendous win over the Dallas Cowboys Sunday, further cementing his living legend status.
As the NFL star’s legacy grows and his heroics shine, though, Rodgers’ strained relationship with his family continues to make headlines.
A rift in the Rodgers family became public, of course, when Aaron’s younger brother, Jordan, appeared as a contestant on The Bachelorette.
While romancing star JoJo Fletcher, Jordan told her that she would not be meeting his NFL QB sibling on a coming visit to his hometown.
The Green Bay signal-caller, he explained, had distanced himself from his kin; Jordan Rodgers did not offer much beyond vague explanations.
So what went on between these all-American boys?
Their father Ed, who appeared on The Bachelorette and also spoke (vaguely) about this family feud, spoke to the N.Y. Times this weekend.
“One in the news is enough for us,” Ed said.
“Fame can change things.”
Ed’s comment was in response to Jordan winning The Bachelorette in August and detailing his tense relationship with Aaron on TV.
Aaron, 33, allegedly stopped talking to his family members at the end of 2014, shortly after he began dating model-actress Olivia Munn.
“Airing public laundry is not what I would have chosen,” Ed said, adding that it “hard to tell” if there had been a thaw in the chilly relationship.
On Sunday, before he led Green Bay to victory over the Cowboys, Aaron said he was not sure if Jordan would make it to the game.
Jordan Rodgers and JoJo Fletcher live in Dallas, The Bachelorette star’s hometown, a fact that further rekindled interest in this story.
“I just don’t think it’s appropriate talking about family stuff publicly,” he said at the Packers’ practice facility, declining to delve into this.
The circumstances in which the family’s private business became a national story were “weird,” Ed acknowledged, but he’s not upset.
“It’s good to have it all come out,” in a sense, he said, after The Bachelorette episode in which the family’s home, and life, were in focus.
The show even went so far as to dramatize a family dinner in which two empty chairs were set aside for Aaron Rodgers and Olivia Munn.
“It’s complicated,” Ed Rodgers said regarding responding to people who inquire about his estranged son. “We’re all hoping for the best.”
Meanwhile, Jordan has moved in with JoJo and describes himself as “happier than ever” since the reality show’s finale aired last summer.
“With all the craziness that comes along with the media and the show,” he said, “it would have been much harder to do it not living together.”
Jordan, a former college quarterback at Vanderbilt who never found pro success like his brother, will always live in Aaron’s shadow.
That’s inevitable in any situation like this, but it still doesn’t explain why the brothers aren’t on speaking terms, or completely estranged.
One theory is the relationship between Munn, Aaron’s actress girlfriend, and Brittany Farrar, her friend who used to date Jordan Rodgers.
Farrar does not have kind words for Jordan, and as a result, Aaron and Olivia iced Jordan out … or so the speculation would indicate.
Truthfully, we have no idea, because the siblings have one thing in common: Aaron and Jordan are both too polite to really go there.
Even as it became a storyline of Jordan’s reality TV tenure, he seemed reluctant to get into it, and still hasn’t offered many specifics.
Don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
