The rivalry between the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears, one of pro football’s oldest, appears to have followed former Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers all the way to the New Jersey Meadowlands — and, regrettably, even to the physio’s examining table.
Rodgers, of course, was felled by a season-ending Achilles injury on Monday night in his fourth regular-season play from scrimmage as a member of the New York Jets.
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In Chicago, where the home team had suffered a lopsided loss to their northern archrival a day earlier, empathy for Rodgers — career record vs. Chicago: 25-5 — was not on the menu.
Far from it, as the legendarily antagonistic hot-dog stand the Wieners Circle quickly tossed up a message to Rodgers, who had courted controversy in 2021 by reportedly misleading the public and the Packers organization regarding his vaccination status and then doubled down by appearing to cast doubt on vaccines against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 more generally — even as he insisted he was no “anti-vaxx flat-Earther.”
The Wieners Circle, in keeping with its reputation, did not shy from “@”-ing the wounded signal caller:
From the archives (November 2021): Packers QB Aaron Rodgers tests positive for COVID, is revealed to have been unvaccinated
Several miles south — and a mile or so west of Soldier Field — a neighborhood tavern was mixing ingredients into an $8 cocktail called the Torn Achilles:
Arguably beating both to the punch, a comedian weighed in minutes after the fateful Rodgers sack (recall that the front page of the tabloid New York Post dated the Jets’ Rodgers Era to 8:17-8:28 p.m. on Monday), even as he lamented his tardiness:
Even Rodgers’s former longtime backers across the Wisconsin state line were stingy with their sympathy, according to a social-media post from a Milwaukee bar: