Aaron Rodgers “could roll out of bed and create a news cycle. He’s unbelievable. He’s a content machine”. It’s true and it’s why the bestselling sportswriter Ian O’Connor is talking to the Guardian from his home in the New York area, where Rodgers, a Green Bay Packers great, now plays quarterback for the Jets. O’Connor’s new book, Out of the Darkness, tells Rodgers’ story from childhood in California through college stardom at Berkeley to Super Bowl glory and on to something beyond fame – a sort of infamy, even.
Rodgers, O’Connor says, “was not this polarizing figure until really about three years ago when Covid hit and he was in the middle of a press conference in August ’21, and when he was asked if he was vaccinated, he said, ‘Yeah, I’ve been immunized.’ Up until that point, he was not a villain at all.
