GREEN BAY, Wis. — Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers says his toe injury is a fracture — not COVID toe — and added that he doesn’t expect the situation to cause him to miss any games.
Rodgers has been playing with the toe injury each of the past two games after missing a 13-7 loss at Kansas City because of a positive COVID-19 test. The reigning MVP said the injury occurred while working out at home during his quarantine.
“I’m going to deal with the pain,” Rodgers said Wednesday. “It’s all about pain management. I’m going to deal with the pain as this goes on, and hopefully we get some healing during the weeks with limited practice reps. I’ll try to be on the practice field as much as I can, deal with the pain, and the goal is to play every single week.”
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While discussing his health Tuesday on “The Pat McAfee Show” on YouTube and SiriusXM, Rodgers said he “didn’t have any lingering effects other than the COVID toe,” a name that’s been given to a condition causing lesions among some people who test positive for COVID-19. He was smirking as he made that comment.
He offered more details Wednesday to dispute the notion that he had COVID toe.
During a Zoom session, he revealed his bare left foot to reporters.
“Oh, there’s no lesions whatsoever,” Rodgers said. “Oh, what a surprise. No, that’s actually called disinformation, when you perpetuate false information about an individual.”
Rodgers has been in hot water recently for misleading the public about this vaccination status.
Rodgers initially said he’d been “immunized” in August but later admitted that he had not been vaccinated against COVID-19 after testing positive earlier this month.
A week after he tested positive, Rodgers was fined $14,650 by the National Football League for failure to follow COVID protocols, potentially exposing his teammates and Green Bay staffers to the virus.
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The Packers quarterback said he consulted with podcaster Joe Rogan after testing positive, and has followed the same practice Rogan did after he tested positive, including taking monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, zinc, and vitamins C and D. The FDA has warned against the use of ivermectin, an anti-parasite medicine, to treat the virus.
The 8-3 Packers play the 7-3 Rams in Green Bay on Sunday, then have the next week off. Rodgers said Wednesday there are options to treat his fractured toe that would not involve him missing any games.
“I’ll definitely look at all options over the bye and decide what would be best to make sure that I get to the finish line,” Rodgers said.
Rodgers said after a 34-31 loss Sunday at Minnesota that the toe injury was “very, very painful” and “a little worse than turf toe”, but didn’t go into specifics.