Aaron Rodgers fired back after his former Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur said current Packers quarterback, Jordan Love, is “the best I’ve been around in terms of protections and adjustments.”
“He’s probably still mad I changed too many of his plays,” Rodgers, 42, told ESPN Madison in an interview posted on Thursday, September 10. “Big statement when you had a guy win back-to-back MVPs. Guess I wasn’t doing too much at the LOS [line of scrimmage]. Matt is a clown, man.”
Rodgers and LaFleur, 46, were together in Green Bay from 2019 to 2022.
“He says some things from time to time that are funny, and then he’s like, ‘Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have said that!’” Rodgers said of his former coach. “He’s backing up his quarterback. I’m sure J. Love is real good at the line of scrimmage. But come on, man.”
LaFleur heaped the praise on Love, 27, during an appearance on NFL Network last month.
“Rarely does he get out-schemed,” LaFleur said. “It’s pretty remarkable. That was all foreign to him coming into the league.”
The Packers drafted Love in 2020, effectively making him their quarterback of the future while Rodgers was still on the roster.
“Honestly it really just made me know that the end was going to come at some point, probably before I wanted it to in Green Bay,” Rodgers said to ESPN Madison about the team drafting Love. “I always talked about playing my entire career there, like Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan and Derek Jeter. You know, some iconic players. I realized at that point that I was probably going to have to play somewhere else, at least a year or two.”
He continued, “I’ve always felt like you can bring almost anybody in and I’d love to compete with them. I haven’t seen anybody that’s been clearly better than me in the quarterback room since 2007 [with the Packers’ Brett Favre]. It wasn’t like I was worried for my job or anything.”
Rodgers was traded to the New York Jets in April 2023, where he ruptured his Achilles tendon on just his fourth snap in green-and-white. He returned and played all 17 games of the 2024 season for the Jets before signing with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2025.
The upcoming 2026 season will be Rodgers’ last, which he has definitively stated on multiple occasions.
“I’m hopefully going to be supporting my pregnant wife [Brittani] because we’re going to start a family and I am not going to be making a lot of appearances or statements,” he told SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio in an interview that aired on Tuesday, September 8. “And I’m looking forward to a life of quiet after 22 years in the pros and three in college and getting my body healed up and working on a family. That’s what I’m looking forward to.”
The Steelers open the season at home against the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday, September 13.
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