Breaking down the Xs and Os of Aaron Rodgers' years-long family feud

Originally appeared on E! Online

Can we steal you for a sec?

Because while Aaron Rodgers hasn't yet reported to training camp ahead of his 22nd and final NFL season, he's already run a major play.

"Another bonding week," the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback captioned a July 20 carousel of Instagram pics. "#fam."

At first glance, the collection appears innocuous: The 42-year-old athlete posing with his arm wrapped around mom Darla Rodgers, embracing dad Ed Rodgers, helping older brother Luke Rodgers, 44, put together a unicorn toy and suiting up as Uncle Aaron to Jack, 4, and Evie, 2.

Youngest brother Jordan Rodgers, 37, wasn't pictured in the starting lineup, but he and wife of four years, former Bachelorette JoJo Fletcher, gave the post a double tap and Luke commented with a series of heart emojis.

All together, it was a pretty standard fare for most families.

But as Aaron hasn't huddled up with his hometown squad since 2014, well, it felt very much like his most dramatic Instagram post ever.

PHOTOS Aaron Rodgers' Relationship History

As Ed explained to The New York Times in 2017, Aaron—who revealed last June that he'd found an MVP in Brittani, a woman he described as "the most incredible wife"—began running his own route a "few months" after he began dating Olivia Munn in 2014.

But it wasn't until Jordan signed on for The Bachelorette two years later that it became clear Aaron wasn't interested in making friends with his fam.

As Jordan cemented his frontrunner status, he revealed to JoJo that he and Aaron "don’t really have that much of a relationship. It’s just kind of the way he’s chosen to do life."

The 2011 Super Bowl champion wasn't on hand for the couple's hometown date later that season, but Jordan's parents did set out two empty chairs, presumably making space for Aaron and Olivia.

"We miss our brother," Luke explained of the symbolism. "We just are trusting that God brings things full circle. And just wish that everything would just get back to us being a family."

While Ed cryptically suggested to The New York Times "fame can change things," the family's issues had first kicked off when Aaron began leading his University of California, Berkeley squad to victory back in 2003.

"It goes back to stuff from high school that kind of made me feel distant," Aaron explained in his 2024 Netflix docuseries Aaron Rodgers: Enigma. "Stuff in college, stuff post-college."

Among those fractures: Aaron's decision to distance himself from the "white, dogmatic church" he frequented growing up in his California hometown's "really conservative, small-town environment."

Leaning into the teachings of What Is the Bible? author Rob Bell, "I found a courage to speak my feelings better," he continued in his Netflix docuseries. "So I started to stand up to institutions of my youth, and that was everything from organized religion, my parents, dogma, ideology. That definitely changed the dynamics of my family."

By the time the NFL draft first-round pick "became real famous," he outlined in Enigma, "family members said, 'Your life is too big. We need you to be smaller. Be smaller, like, don’t talk about your life.' It always hurt me because I just feel like, you don’t see me."

Still, he wasn't interested in opening everything up for public debate.

"I was quiet about it," he explained, "'cause I thought the best way to do it was, just don’t talk about it publicly."

His family, however, was running a whole different play.

"They go on a bulls--t show and leave two empty chairs," Aaron reflected of the 2016 Bachelorette date. "They all agreed this was like a good thing to do, to leave two empty chairs at a stupid dating show that my brother just went on to get famous—his words, not mine—that he ended up winning."

For the record, he continued, "I was never asked to go. Not that I would have gone."

Nor did he suit up for Jordan and JoJo's 2022 California vows.

But when he spied his father at the American Century Championship celebrity golf tourney a year later, "I just thought, 'What's best in this moment and what kind of gift could I give him,'" Aaron recounted to biographer Ian O'Connor's in 2024's Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers. "Because I do love him. I don't have animosity toward him, even with all the stuff that's been said and done."

So, he threw up a bit of a Hail Mary, father and son meeting for a quick embrace. As Aaron later put it to a friend, "I think that was what needed to happen."

For once, he and his family were all working from the same playbook.

"We're all about forgiving and forgetting," Darla told Ian in his book. "Maybe we don't see him all the time. We're OK with however it's framed."

While they weren't all on the same team just yet, Aaron suggested during Enigma that he was still rooting them on.

"People ask me, 'Is there hope for a reconciliation?'" he shared. "I say, 'Yeah, of course.'" Bottom line, he summed up, "I don't want them to fail, to struggle, to have any strife or issues. I don't wish any ill will on them at all. It's more like this: We're just different steps on the timeline of our journeys."

But now at least they seem to be back on the same field of play.

Back in 2011, Luke explained to Madison.com how seriously he took his job as protective older brother while Aaron began weathering hits in the public eye.

Because, "at some point, we're all going to be done playing and have quasi-normal lives," he noted. "And I'm going to have my brothers forever. That's really the reality of it."

As for the rest of the stats, keep reading to see what Aaron has shared about their decade-long estrangement.