Seven months later, the Pittsburgh Steelers‘ 30-6 wild-card loss to the Houston Texans finally makes a little more sense. Aaron Rodgers played one of the ugliest playoff games of his 21-year career that day, and nobody inside the building ever offered much of an explanation as to why that happened.
Did the veteran finally hit a wall? Was Father Time simply giving him his clarification to hang it up after the game?
Finally, Rodgers has spoken about that game at training camp at Saint Vincent College, where the quarterback revealed he battled flu-like symptoms, including a fever and repeated vomiting, in the hours leading up to the game. It got bad enough that the Steelers’ staff took one look at him at the team hotel and sent him home.
Aaron Rodgers Reveals He Had the Flu Before Steelers’ Playoff Loss
“I wasn’t feeling good, and I actually came over to the team hotel, and they sent me home — probably because I was pale and looked like s—,” Rodgers said, per The Athletic’s Michael Silver.
Some teammates held out hope Rodgers would channel Michael Jordan’s famous 1997 Flu Game, Silver wrote. That didn’t happen. Pittsburgh scored six points, Houston scored 30, and the season ended in an afternoon.
Rodgers insisted he had recovered by kickoff. The man calling his plays that day wasn’t buying it, and former Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith saw the whole thing up close.
“He’s definitely downplaying it,” Smith said. “There was never a question he was gonna play, and he’s never one to complain, but he looked terrible (before the game).”
None of it erases the loss. But it does put things in a better perspective. It also may relieve Steelers fans worries about their 42-year-old quarterback being too old to play the position.
Mike McCarthy Embraces ‘Final Lap’ With Rodgers in Pittsburgh
Rodgers is back for his 22nd and final NFL season, and the ending comes somewhat full circle. Mike McCarthy, his head coach for 13 seasons in Green Bay, now runs the show in Pittsburgh as just the fourth head coach the franchise has hired since 1969.
Rodgers had a hand in that. After the season ended, he sat down with general manager Omar Khan and made a suggestion on his way out the door.
“I just left him with one thing that I thought was kind of a throwaway,” Rodgers said. “I said, ‘I don’t think it would hurt anything to just interview Mike McCarthy. I think you need to get the perspective of an older coach.’”
Khan listened. The two men who won Super Bowl XLV together — against the Steelers, of all teams — are now trying to win one for them. McCarthy hasn’t hidden what that means to him.
“Just to be able to take this final lap with him, it’s awesome,” McCarthy said. “You always want to do a great job, but now to do it with him in his last chapter, it’s special.”
Hopefully this last chapter will be without much flu-like symptoms and more playoff wins.
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