Charles Barkley criticized Aaron Rodgers this week for the way the Steelers quarterback has talked publicly about his past relationships, contrasting it with how Barkley says he plans to handle his own exit from television.
Speaking with Adam Schein on Mad Dog Sports Radio Wednesday, Barkley made clear he has no interest in settling scores on his way out the door.
“But I tell you what though, I’m not gonna bury everybody going out the door like Aaron,” Barkley said. “I’m not gonna burn every bridge and talk bad about all my exes on my way out the door like he’s doing.”
Barkley’s comment referenced remarks Rodgers made in September on Pittsburgh teammate Cam Heyward’s “Not Just Football” podcast, where the quarterback discussed his split from ex-fiancée Shailene Woodley and addressed his history with ex-girlfriend Danica Patrick.
Rodgers told Heyward that Woodley left him for another man in 2022, pushing back on the idea that he was responsible for how the relationship ended.
“I proposed to Shailene and she said yes. Now, she maybe felt like she was forced to make a decision. She could have said no,” Rodgers said. “A couple days after that she tells me, ‘Before we get married, I gotta go f–k this guy,’ and I’m like — because her story is that I ruined her life and gave her crazy depression because I left her. But in actuality, she told me that and then she took off the ring by March — I proposed in December — and we had a couple of times where we tried to get reunited and nothing ever happened. There wasn’t even a relationship in 2022 to break off.”
Rodgers added that Woodley had rejected reconciliation attempts.
“She literally told me, ‘I don’t want to be with you’ after we tried some reconciliation in 2021. There’s just a lot of narrative out there that isn’t true.”
The 42-year-old quarterback also took aim at two former Green Bay Packers teammates, Greg Jennings and Jermichael Finley, players he caught passes to and won a Super Bowl with earlier in his career.
Barkley, for his part, has not shied away from public criticism of his own, having repeatedly slammed TNT Sports executives after the network lost its NBA media rights and “Inside the NBA” moved to ESPN. He maintains that situation was handled poorly by the league and the network.
When Schein pressed Barkley on whether this season would truly be his last on “Inside the NBA,” given his past reversals on retirement, Barkley repeated that this will be his final year on the show.
