Packers to be fined for Covid violations

Aaron Rodgers and Allen Lazard will also be fined. 

Per ESPN, the NFL’s investigation into whether or not the Packers broke COVID-19 protocols has come to an end. 

Rob Demovsky reports that the Packers will  be fined $300,000 for violations of the NFL and NFL Players Association protocols, while Aaron Rodgers and Allen Lazard will each be fined $14,650.

Rodgers admitted during Friday’s interview on the “Pat McAfee Show” that he went against NFL safety guidelines by not wearing a mask during press conferences with reporters. He also attended a Halloween party with many teammates, which violates league rules for unvaccinated players. 

Mark Murphy gave ESPN the following statement:

We respect the League's findings and we recognize the importance of adherence to the COVID protocols to keep our team and organization safe and healthy. We will continue to educate the team regarding the importance of the protocols and remain committed to operating within the protocols. 

 

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Comments (43)

Fan-Friendly This filter will hide comments which have ratio of 5 to 1 down-vote to up-vote.
LeotisHarris's picture

November 09, 2021 at 08:58 pm

Damn! Looks like employees at 1265 won't be getting those sweet new travel tumblers and fleece blankets for Christmas this year. $300K is $300K, after all.

Since the NFL distributes revenue from fines "to organizations committed to character education, anti-bullying, healthy relationships and related topics,” could the Packers be awarded funds to better educate their players?

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GBPDAN1's picture

November 09, 2021 at 09:50 pm

I was worried about losing a draft pick. We got off easy, let's move on

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Minniman's picture

November 09, 2021 at 10:43 pm

I'm with you. If this is the extent of it, then the Packers haven't even got a smack on the wrist. I was thinking suspensions or loss of draft picks cold be on the table.

Interestingly re comments made on the Pat McAfee show, today Pat said, "well Aaron, you can pretty much kiss ever getting voted league MVP again!"........... which possibly isn't far off the mark!

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jurp's picture

November 10, 2021 at 08:35 am

Yeah, I think we got off VERY easy. And the player fines are quite low, too. I thought for sure we'd lose at least one Day 3 pick.

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4thand1's picture

November 09, 2021 at 10:01 pm

I wonder if AR gets hurt on the field if he'll call joe rogan for medical advice.

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jannes bjornson's picture

November 09, 2021 at 10:24 pm

Or James Heriot

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Harold Drake's picture

November 10, 2021 at 05:36 am

Hi JB!

I posted a long comment below which I originally wrote for a major newspaper. I hope you enjoy it. I value your opinion amidst the vast wasteland.

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jannes bjornson's picture

November 10, 2021 at 05:53 pm

Drake, the missive is worthy of a Pulitzer Prize. The real terror in the antivax messaging is not the Dogma or willingness to be mislead, it is the Selfish Attitude of this 80's to 2011 crowd. Where is their sense of patriotism to preserve and protect the whole? Where is their sense of duty while others have given their all?

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Lphill's picture

November 09, 2021 at 10:31 pm

The guy who schooled Dr Gupta ?

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4thand1's picture

November 09, 2021 at 10:21 pm

Rodgers says on the Mcaphee show that there's a small posibility hewon't be playing on Sunday against the seahags.

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jurp's picture

November 10, 2021 at 08:37 am

Depends on how bad his covid is - one of the primary symptoms is fatigue, so he may want to play, but his body may not let him. I'd rather he sit than play at his NO-game level.

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SwedeBayPacker's picture

November 09, 2021 at 10:55 pm

$14,650? Take that, multi-millionaires! Now hold my beer while we fine a player $10,000 for taunting.

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Tex49's picture

November 09, 2021 at 11:55 pm

Pretty sure the NFL was willfully ignorant of Rodgers not wearing a mask for 8 straight post game press conferences. Not going to do much to help the divide in opinion on the protocols.

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Irish_Cheesehead's picture

November 10, 2021 at 01:07 am

$14K? That’ll do nothing to change Rodgers’ smug attitude over this whole situation. At least we didn’t lose any draft picks. Get ready for the media outrage over the slap on the wrist.

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Harold Drake's picture

November 10, 2021 at 03:00 am

The lament of Aaron Rodgers, the poster boy for quack Covid-19 "immunization" treatments, knows no bounds. Today our world is beset by famine, pestilence, death, and destruction. And now AR12, our postmodern horseman of the apocalypse, has made another appearance on McAfee to express some limited remorse for having "misled" the public, however unintentionally. It was only last week that he revealed the extent of his humiliation and the discrimination he has endured as one of the NFL's untouchables - the six percent of players who remain unvaccinated and unbowed. Who knew that you Aaron, our gridiron philosopher king, thought of yourself not as a leader but as a martyr who felt compelled to quote Martin Luther King Jr. to justify his mantra, "my body, my choice".

Until last week we had no idea of the terrible shame that came with wearing a yellow wristband in the Packers' facility. (Thank God it wasn't a yellow star.) But now, thanks to Brother Aaron's revelations, we can fully grasp the trauma of being outed as an anti-vaxxer and how he feels demonised by the millennial thought police.

I shudder to think of Aaron cowering at home, hooked up to an ivermectin drip, and savouring his glass of Macallam Fine and Rare 60 year old single malt, all the while dreading the day that the wokist millennial mob is about to surround his Buddhist monastery with burning crosses while he tries to centre himself and take solace in the sanskrit phrase that T.S. Eliot famously cited, "Shantih, Shantih, Shantih."

But as the dust continues to settle, there is no escaping the fact that you, Brother Aaron, have disappointed your legions of true believers when you doubled down on your claim to be immunized when in fact you were following a quack science regimen of hydroxy, zinc, and other potions recommended by homeopaths with no benefit of double blind clinical trials to prove their efficacy. And this putative Covid cure is so secret, so personal, and so unique that the formula must be kept under wraps and whose groundbreaking medical properties are somehow too sacred to be revealed to the masses. Shame, Brother Aaron, shame.

Further, when you went full McAfee and delivered your condemnation of Big Pharma, Big Brother, and the conspiracy to deprive you and others of body autonomy, you misstated the problem.

There is no Deep State plot conspiring to tar and feather you - blame your own players' union for agreeing to the protocols you feel are beneath your status as a quarterback God. Try to remember, no one was trying to place you in solitary confinement, we just wanted to enforce six feet of separation.

In light of your recent declarations, many of your fans, myself included, feel betrayed not by your freedom to choose but the way you have chosen to exercise your freedom. Remember, many of us gave you the benefit of the doubt during your six month war of nerves against the Packers' front office. We trusted you to be an honest broker, a rebel iconoclast staring down an unfeeling, grey bureaucracy that betrayed your wish to remain a Packer for life. Even Mr. Nagler confessed to being "disappointed."

Brother Aaron, you were our hero, the man with the golden arm who threw passes that other quarterbacks could only dream of attempting. We had come to see you as an eccentric Zen Master, an autodidact with a man bun who likes to preach mindfulness and wellness.

For Packers' fans and millions of others who worshipped at your altar, you were the pigskin equivalent of Socrates. Galileo, Thomas More, and Mozart. You were our guide to the Yaqui Way of Knowledge, our John Coltrane playing jazz amid the dreary melody of the No Fun League. You were the gunslinger who rode into Chicago, gunned down Al Capone and the Bears Gang and owned the city.

But now, alas, your word is mud and one has the growing suspicion that your passive-aggressive angst should now properly be understood as a cover two scheme hiding a deeper case of narcissism. Sadly, our heroes often come up short on third down, much less the fourth down you never got to play. A few weeks ago, we went to bed thinking your were football's answer to Deepak Chopra or David Foster Wallace and now we find ourselves waking up next to Tucker Carlson.

We beseech thee, Brother Aaron, stop playing the pity card, stop consulting Dr. Joe Rogan for medical advice, and stop playing the victim looking for a taunting penalty from your persecutors. And don't worry about being hated by the woke left or being embraced by the Trumpist right. The left is too busy waging tribal warfare against itself and you're far too Kumbaya and complicated for the MAGA crowd. Even the Fox Football crew called you out as a liar as did 94% of TV sports analysts and commentators. Howie Long put it best: "[Choosing not to get vaccinated] ceases to be a personal decision when you take part in being a part of a football team in a building with coaches, players, trainers… and you run the risk of taking something home to your wife, children, grandchildren.”

We hope it is not too late for you Brother Aaron to stop tilting at windmills and spouting fake science. Please return to your better self as our Zen Master and live in harmony, foraging for wild flowers and drinking Jasmine tea. And please stop drinking drano and hydroxy and promoting ivermectin as a covid treatment. You may be a stud on the football field, but you ain't no damn horse.

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marpag1's picture

November 10, 2021 at 05:18 am

LOL. No way in heck that I'm reading all this.

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Harold Drake's picture

November 10, 2021 at 05:33 am

No one is suggesting or otherwise compelling you to do so. I hope you have a wonderful day.

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jannes bjornson's picture

November 10, 2021 at 06:03 pm

Your Ignorance provides no bliss...

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Gforcetrivers's picture

November 11, 2021 at 08:14 am

The Leaky Vaccine doesn't work, masks do not work to stop viral spread and 6 ft distancing is an arbitrary number that also does not impact viral spread. Rodgers did nothing wrong.

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Gforcetrivers's picture

November 11, 2021 at 08:18 am

The Leaky Vaccine doesn't work, masks do not work to stop viral spread and 6 ft distancing is an arbitrary number that also does not impact viral spread. Rodgers did nothing wrong.

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edp1959's picture

November 10, 2021 at 06:40 am

And this is your opinion which you are entitled too just like everyone is when choosing whether to get the shot or not. But your ignorance and repetition of a known lie is astounding. This can only mean one thing.

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Bearmeat's picture

November 10, 2021 at 06:27 am

😂🤣😂🤣👍🏻👏🏻💯

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4thand1's picture

November 10, 2021 at 07:29 am

HD, another well written and informative read. Hopefully if it changes one person's mind to get vaccinated and not die, great. But I gave up months ago, there's no getting through to the bleaching drinking, maga cult followers. When you see what the "Q" crowd believes and the lies the far right believes, feerrrgetabaaadit.

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Harold Drake's picture

November 10, 2021 at 09:15 am

Thank you for the kind words. It's interesting to see how there are still so many anti-vaxxers and luddites who continue to raise objections to being vaccinated. It's similar to the great divide between Dems and GOP supporters across the country. And you're quite right to point out how it's impossible to reason with those still believe that vaccines are inherently evil and represent an attempt by the government to exert some sort of mysterious "control" over people. (Why bother, since you still have to pay taxes, you're required to have a license to drive a car, carry auto insurance, etc.)

Futher, the anti-vaxxers are deliberately choosing to believe in alt-right rubbish arguments and GOP talking points when it comes to vaccinations. Just look at the lunatic ravings of Fla. Gov. DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott who are simply catering to the worst instincts of uneducated voters.

Pew Research recently conducted a poll which revealed that approximately 80% of college educated individuals in the U.S. are vaccinated. That figure jumps to over 90% with respect to individuals with a post-graduate degree. That is a highly illuminating statistic which explains why people who are unaccustomed to reading mainstream news sources - and not the Fox propaganda channel and YouTube gurus like ivermectin proponent Joe Rogan - believe in so many absurd myths regarding vaccinations.

I was honestly shocked to learn that Aaron Rodgers is an anti-vaxxer and subscribes to YouTube garbage science and really believes that homeopathic remedies somehow confer "immunity" which involves a fundamental misunderstanding of what causes people to develop immunity to the novel coronavirus Covid-19.

A Texas health board study has just been published which confirms the efficacy of the vaccines and how the vaccinated are far, far less likely to get infected and also far, far less likely to either get hospitalized or die!

The Texas study found that unvaccinated people were 20 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than the fully vaccinated throughout most of September, providing further evidence backing the vaccines.

The findinfs showed that 81.3 percent of COVID-19-related deaths between Sept. 4 and Oct. 1 occurred among unvaccinated people. In comparison, 5 percent of these fatalities occurred among the partially vaccinated, and 13.7 percent involved fully vaccinated patients.

In that time period, unvaccinated individuals in their 40s were 55 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than others who were the same age and fully vaccinated. Among those aged 75 and older, the unvaccinated were 12 times more likely to die.

Unvaccinated people were also 13 times more likely to contract COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated. More than 7 in 10 infected people were unvaccinated, compared to 19.3 percent who were partially vaccinated and 8.4 percent who were fully vaccinated.

The Texas data further validates CDC data released last month which showed unvaccinated individuals were 11 times more likely to die from COVID-19 and six times more likely to test positive for the virus than the fully vaccinated.

But try explaining these numbers to those who simply do not want to believe in the science and the statistics. Aaron Rodgers considers himself to be a "critical thinker." But what does this bankrupt phrase mean? If he truly did his research of the data, he would have concluded that he was far likely to get sick from Covid-19 than any allergic reaction to the mysterious ingredients that his "medical" team told him that he might suffer.

But I give up. CHTV does not want anyone to discuss real issues lest that irritate the 50-60% of its followers that refuse to believe in facts. Nagler does not want to accept the reality that the entire sports world and even regular news departments have all come down hard on Aaron Rodgers and that this has been the most urgent issue discussed by every major sports network and the leading commentators. Let's just stick to football and allow Rodgers' disinformation to stand and possibly cause people to avoid vaccinations and take ivermectin and zinc potions.

Who cares if AR12 is the face of the Green Bay Packers franchise and the man who is supposed to "carry the G?" Of course, had Rodgers killed someone by driving drunk a la former Las Vegas Raiders WR Ruggs, then that would be a legitimate topic for discussion. But if you encourage people to go unvaccinated, which may well result in people being hospitalized or dying as a result, that somehow is not important. Let's move on to the next game and forget about everything else. It's much simpler. I can understand that desire to move past the issue and just talk about how many times the Packers should run the ball vs passing it, but is that really an honest way of handling this issue?

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jannes bjornson's picture

November 10, 2021 at 06:42 pm

As (i) said, how much will the Fans be Fined? I will not step foot in Lambeau until a vaccination card is required for entry and/or people wear a suitable face covering.

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Thegreatreynoldo's picture

November 11, 2021 at 05:19 am

The Luddites had a point. The new technology was threatening the economic livelihoods of skilled craftsmen, particularly in the wool industries, at a time when there was no social safety net, no minimum wage, no unions as we know them, and no safety rules.

The introduction of technology no doubt eventually raised standards of living in England, but it was hard on various segments of society in the short term.

We shall see this play out again with the introduction of more and more AI technology, and the war on fossil fuels. Are the skills of coal miners and workers at natural gas and oil production fields really translatable to clean energy industries?

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BigZ's picture

November 10, 2021 at 06:44 pm

I mean I voted for trump and still got my shot... and I don't think I've ever ingested bleach before!

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Gforcetrivers's picture

November 11, 2021 at 08:17 am

Bleach is in just about every glass of tap water you have ever drank.

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marpag1's picture

November 10, 2021 at 05:27 am

This decision feels like when the refs get it wrong on the field, but the mistake is in your favor: "Snap the ball! Snap the ball, dammit! Before they can throw the red flag and challenge the decision..."

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Harold Drake's picture

November 10, 2021 at 05:45 am

The NFL knew that Rodgers was violating protocols simply by virtue of his unmasked press conference appearances. It's hypocritical of the NFL to fine the Packers and Rodgers retroactively. I hate Rodgers' smug and mendacious attitude, but it's absurd that he gets fined ONLY because things became public because he contracted Covid and was effectively "outed" as an unvaccinated player because of the mandatory 10-day quarantine. But of course Rodgers had the choice of getting vaccinated or simply responding truthfully in August that he had NOT been vaccinated instead of using the "immunized" to deliberately mislead the press and the public. I think people would have respected his decision not to get vaccinated had he simply admitted as much at the outset and stated the reasons for his decision. Certainly the media, woke or otherwise, would not have condemned him the way he is being trashed today. But this is what happens when you're a highly paid athlete who had no one in his entourage willing to tell him (assuming he would listen) that he was risking tremendous backlash with his August lie/misleading statement should it eventually leak that he is in fact unvaccinated. Lastly, a Texas state health board study has just come out stating how unvaccinated people are far, far more likely to get infected and die from Covid-19 than those who do get the jab. I believe that people have the right to choose not to get vaccinated, but if you look at the statistics it makes no sense to me.

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4thand1's picture

November 10, 2021 at 07:35 am

Real republicans are scared because maga is dying at 5+ times the rate in red counties and states.

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edp1959's picture

November 10, 2021 at 08:55 am

Virginia disagrees with you.

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4thand1's picture

November 10, 2021 at 12:17 pm

Independents carried Virginia. Virginia has changed parties 10 out of the last 11 guvernatorial races. Nothing to see here, McCacalstiff sucked , made dumbass comments.

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jannes bjornson's picture

November 10, 2021 at 06:08 pm

One of the original Slave States, by the way...

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Irish_Cheesehead's picture

November 10, 2021 at 07:45 am

The big joke here is the NFL. Is Cousins also being fined his lunch money for not wearing a mask at pressers? Maybe he will be. The Saints were fined $700K and had to forfeit a 6th-round pick for COVID-19 violations. Payton may throw the challenge flag on this call. I think we got off easy.

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flackcatcher's picture

November 10, 2021 at 11:56 am

Yeah, I bet at the end of the season the fines go POOF, when the NLFPA points out overreach on the league's office part. I am so tired of Covid theater...

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Thegreatreynoldo's picture

November 11, 2021 at 05:23 am

Unlikely. The Halloween party violation is clear.

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flackcatcher's picture

November 11, 2021 at 02:54 pm

Maybe. But with how the league office has handled this there is an equally good chance that the owners will press Goodell to make this go away.

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NitschkeFromTheGrave's picture

November 10, 2021 at 10:16 am

It's a sad day when shitty ((( POLITICS ))) of a pandemic along with Self Appointed Social Elitism overruns our sanctuary outlet or temporary escape from the weeks real woes.

I don't care if you think you are RIGHT about it on either side of the argument.
Just STOP! - Return the sanctuary.

It's OK to keep your own thoughts inside... to yourself.

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Irish_Cheesehead's picture

November 10, 2021 at 07:48 am

Maybe you want to follow your own advice? Just sayin’

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Harold Drake's picture

November 10, 2021 at 09:17 am

Kindly return to your grave and lie very still. Your lack of understanding is deeply disturbing. You don't have to read comments or opinions that upset your tiny bubble world.

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gpt999's picture

November 10, 2021 at 10:18 am

I think we all can agree that from a player perspective that a $14K fine to a multi multi millionaire is a slap on the wrist. And who can disagree that his last Friday Pat McAfee interview could have been the single worse PR stunt of all time? The public backlash he has received since must have shocked him. But to his credit, he has since apologized within the context of his personal choice of non-vaccination. For Rodgers, I think that was hard for him but absolutely necessary for his football future and integrity. Hopefully, he will apply the adage that "less is more" in the future when it comes to oversharing his personal beliefs. Like he said - he's a football player first...

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amandarivera's picture

November 30, 2021 at 03:22 pm

I think the discrimination is not acceptable for any matter and the covid violations are too aggressive in the current times. I have found the site https://writingbros.com/essay-examples/discrimination/ that changed my view on this problem, and now I am making the psychological research for the college project. Likewise, I think that it is the right decision to implement fines for the people who implement the violence for people.

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