Mike McCarthy isn’t letting Aaron Rodgers’ off-field antics interfere with football.
Asked about Rodgers torching Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday, the Steelers head coach defended his quarterback but stressed the importance of focusing on just football.
“You know, these are grown men,” McCarthy told reporters Tuesday. “They all have different opinions. There’s no question about that. But at the end of the day, my job is to keep it about football, keep the focus on winning. That’s why we’re here. We have a good locker room. We have a player council that’s in place and we had our second meeting (Monday), and so I think we’re in a good spot.”
McCarthy’s response comes after Rodgers’ appearance on “The Pat McAfee show” in which he lambasted Fauci for invoking the Fifth Amendment regarding COVID-19 questions and the government’s pandemic response at a recent hearing.
When asked about his final NFL season, Rodgers joked he’d “plead the fifth” before taking a shot at Fauci.
“I’m going to plead the fifth … like that absolute coward, Tony Fauci,” Rodgers said. “Are you kidding me? You got a pardon and you pleaded [the fifth] over 100 times. What are you scared of Tony?
“I thought you were the science, and he gets up there and can’t answer a question.”
The leader of the U.S. government response to COVID-19, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment over 100 times at a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill about the pandemic.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, attends a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on July 29, 2026. Michael Brochstein/ZUMA / SplashNews.com
Rodgers also called out mainstream media over its lack of coverage on the hearing, and accused them of focusing more on his COVID-19 comments.
“How much time did they spend on my responses every week, on my vaccination status, on Taylor and Travis’s wedding?” Rodgers said. “Did they do even a minute? Did they do even a minute on Tony Fauci?”
Rodgers, who had COVID-19 during the 2021 NFL season, said he was “immunized” but lied and later said he was allergic to certain ingredients in the vaccine, prompting controversy.
