Aaron Rodgers and his younger brother Jordan were photographed together Friday at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh, ending years of public estrangement between the two.
Aaron, 42, the Steelers quarterback, posed arm-in-arm with Jordan, 38, who was working the stadium as a college football analyst for ESPN during Pitt’s game against Florida State. Aaron wore a gray sweater, black pants and a baseball cap. Jordan wore a black blazer and blue tie.
Aaron posted the photo to Instagram with the caption: “Great to see little bro @jrodgers11 in his element tonight @acrisurestadium. Really proud of how hard he’s worked to get to where he is now.”
The family rift became public in 2016, when Jordan appeared on his now-wife JoJo Fletcher’s season of “The Bachelorette” and said Aaron would skip his hometown visit because the two were estranged. Aaron pushed back that July, saying it was “a little inappropriate [for Jordan] to talk publicly about some family matter.”
Aaron skipped Jordan and Fletcher’s 2022 wedding in Mexico despite being invited.
Signs of a thaw emerged this year. On Nov. 4, Jordan appeared on ESPN’s “First Take” and, when asked which AFC quarterback he’d trust most in the playoffs, picked his brother Aaron.
Aaron has been working to rebuild family ties more broadly. He reunited with his parents, Ed and Darla Rodgers, and older brother Luke in July, posting photos and describing the family as “bonding.” Jordan was absent from those pictures, and the following month Aaron appeared to take another jab at Jordan over the 2016 “Bachelorette” comments.
By September, Aaron confirmed on the “Not Just Football” podcast that he and Jordan had reconciled, tying it to his parents’ move from California to Nashville earlier this year.
“A couple weeks after that, I went out to Nashville and met with my older brother. A couple weeks after that, I met with my little brother. It was cool. There were tough conversations for sure, but I’m just in a much better headspace,” Aaron said.
“Now, full circle, [we’re] back together. It’s amazing. It’s been great to have all those people — my little brother, my older brother and his family, my parents — that’s been really, really special,” he added.
Aaron credited his wife, Brittani, with helping push the reconciliation forward. “My wife deserves a lot of the credit for that just to be able to get to that point to think about having the conversations, she was a big part of that,” he said.
