Aaron Rodgers tested positive for COVID-19 and is out for Green Bay’s showdown with the Kansas City Chiefs, NFL Network‘s Tom Pelissero reported. Rodgers was placed on the reserve/COVID-19 record and 2020 first-round choose Jordan Love will begin in place of Rodgers.
Despite telling reporters in August he’d “been immunized,” Rodgers is just not vaccinated towards COVID-19, NFL Community Insider Ian Rapoport and NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo reported. Rodgers should spend a compulsory 10 days away from the team, based on the league’s COVID-19 protocol, ruling him out for the Packers’ Week 9 sport towards the Chiefs. The earliest Rodgers can rejoin the staff is Nov. 13 — the day before their Week 10 matchup towards the Seahawks.
Rodgers beforehand had sought and was denied an exemption from the NFL-NFL Players Association COVID-19 protocols based on his antibody ranges this summer, which left his standing as unvaccinated, NFL Media reported Wednesday.
Rodgers received homeopathic treatment from his private doctor to boost his antibody levels and requested the NFLPA to review his standing. The gamers’ union, the NFL-NFLPA jointly designated infectious illness guide and the league agreed that Rodgers’ treatment didn’t provide any documented safety from the coronavirus.
Accordingly, Rodgers didn’t qualify for an exemption, and he remained topic to quite a lot of restrictions, together with each day testing, mask-wearing, and high-risk shut contact protocol that may pressure him to isolate for 5 days primarily based on interplay with a positive particular person, even if he tested negative.
If his antibody ranges are high sufficient, Rodgers might be considered fully vaccinated with only one shot. The NFL-NFLPA regular-season COVID protocols permit for an individual to change into totally vaccinated through “a quantitative antibody check (taken on the club facility and administered by BioReference Laboratory personnel after Aug. 26, 2021, and earlier than the person has acquired any dose of a COVID vaccine) demonstrating COVID complete antibody ranges (IgG, IgA, IgM) to the spike protein of 100 U/mL or better, and a positive antibody test to the COVID IgG nucleocapsid protein, and 14 days have handed since the individual acquired one dose of any COVID vaccine (Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer or Moderna).”
Sources, however, advised NFL Media that Rodgers has not acquired one of the COVID-19 vaccines.
After telling reporters the Packers are “all arms on deck” with Rodgers out, coach Matt LaFleur was requested if the QB’s August remark could have been deceptive, to which he replied, “It is an ideal query for Aaron, I am not going to touch upon it,” per the Green Bay Press-Gazette.
When requested if he’d consider Rodgers to be egocentric for electing to not get the vaccine, LaFleur replied: “I think everybody has to make their very own personal decision, and that is just is what it’s.”
The Packers should look towards Week 9 with Love as their man. The second-year passer noticed his most motion in the course of the preseason and impressed in a restricted quantity of snaps, teaming with Devin Funchess and Kylin Hill to move the ball effectively in Weeks 1 and three of the exhibition slate. Love additionally entered throughout garbage time of Green Bay’s Week 1 loss — the Packers’ lone defeat this season — completing 5 of seven passes for 68 yards.
Love’s substitute of Rodgers ought to lower expectations for offensive production for the Packers, but that may not change the minds of these expecting Inexperienced Bay to win. Kansas City has found itself in an offensive rut for a lot of the season and wanted a late subject aim to beat the now 2-6 Giants at Arrowhead Stadium on Monday night time. A much stronger Packers staff should present a better challenge to the Chiefs, even when Rodgers is not concerned.
Love can have the rest of the week to arrange to make his first regular-season begin of his career within the hostile confines of Arrowhead. Rodgers, in the meantime, will spend it recuperating at home.
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