TAMPA (WFLA) – Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers who tested positive for COVID-19 and missed Sunday’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs wasn’t the only thing missing over the weekend.
Rodgers has appeared in commercials for the State Farm insurance company for roughly a decade from the “discount double-check” campaign to the recent “Rodgers rate” spots and was notably missing on Sunday.
Despite the apparent support for Rodgers after his controversial comments, State Farm does appear to have removed the quarterback from most of its adds on Sunday, according to Apex Marketing Group, a company that evaluates sponsorship and marketing analytics.
Only 1.5% of State Farm ads featured Rodgers during football games this past Sunday, the company found, compared to 25% during the previous two Sundays.
“It appears that State Farm has reduced the number of national spots, dropping off considerably as of Friday,” Apex president Eric Smallwood told Action Network, who first reported the news. “Our monitoring indicates that this wasn’t a planned reduction and more reactionary because there wasn’t any new significant ads put in its place.”
“Aaron Rodgers has been a great ambassador for our company for much of the past decade,” a company spokesperson told Nexstar in a statement. “We don’t support some of the statements that he has made, but we respect his right to have his own personal point of view.”
Prevea Health, a Wisconsin health care organization, announced Friday that it ended a nine-year partnership with Rodgers, effective Saturday. The decision was mutual, Prevea said in a message on Twitter.
In an interview Friday on the Pat McAfee Show, Rodgers discussed his reasoning for being unvaccinated and his issues with the backlash he has received.
“I realize I’m in the crosshairs of the woke mob right now,” Rodgers said. “So, before my final nail gets put in my cancel culture casket, I think I would like to set the record straight on so many of the blatant lies that are out there about myself.”
Rodgers claimed to have done his own research and that he has an allergy to an ingredient in the mRNA Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, and sought alternative treatments for “what was best for my body.”
“I’m not an anti-vax, flat-earther. I have an allergy to an ingredient that’s in the mRNA vaccines. I found a long-term immunization protocol to protect myself and I’m very proud of the research that went into that,” Rodgers said.
He said with some of the public issues involving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine — clotting issues and his “hearing of multiple people who had had adverse events around getting the J&J … the J&J shot was not even an option at that point.”
His research led him to a treatment he did not detail, and he said the NFL was aware of the treatment protocol he was using, which took “multiple months.”
Rodgers, who has been tested daily as part of NFL protocols for unvaccinated players, found out he contracted COVID-19 on Wednesday. He can’t rejoin the Packers for 10 days and must have a negative test to return to the team on Nov. 13.
