GREEN BAY — Matt LaFleur heard an opening, and the Green Bay Packers head coach burst through it like running back Josh Jacobs when he sees his offensive linemen create a crease that leads directly to the end zone.

Early in LaFleur’s usual day-after-the-game Q&A session with reporters on Monday, following a 27-23 victory at Arizona, one of the local television reporters asked a largely innocuous question about how the coach was going to make sure he limited any distractions that could be caused by “playing Aaron Rodgers” on Sunday Night Football.

And LaFleur pounced.

“We’re playing the Pittsburgh Steelers, who happen to have Aaron Rodgers,” LaFleur interjected. “It’s as simple as that.”

To be clear, the Packers will indeed face the Steelers at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh on Sunday night. And the Steelers’ starting quarterback is indeed the 41-year-old Rodgers, who spent his first 18 NFL seasons in Green Bay, where he led the 2010 team to the Super Bowl XLV championship and earned four NFL MVP awards.

And while the matchup between the Packers (4-1-1) and the Steelers (4-2) might not be as acrimonious and emotionally supercharged as the last time an iconic Green Bay signal-caller faced the green and gold wearing a different uniform — in 2009, when Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings beat the Packers twice, and did so quite handily — that doesn’t mean the storyline of Rodgers facing the Packers after being the face of their franchise is some sort of nothingburger.

It’s just LaFleur’s job to keep the potential distractions of the matchup to a minimum.

“That is for you guys to talk about,” LaFleur continued. “Granted, I mean, we’ve got a lot of love and respect for Aaron. What he’s done here, I mean, he’s a Hall of Famer. And I know [in] our past together, we had a lot of great moments.

“But this game is not about that. It’s about going to Pittsburgh. ‘Sunday Night Football.’ Our guys will be jacked up. Their guys will be jacked up. It’s about the Green Bay Packers versus the Pittsburgh Steelers, and that’s for you guys to talk about all those other storylines.”

After riding the bench behind Favre in 2005 as a rookie first-round draft pick with Mike Sherman as his coach, Rodgers had Mike McCarthy for the next 12-plus seasons, until now-retired team president/CEO Mark Murphy fired McCarthy with four games left in the 2018 regular season. Offensive coordinator Joe Philbin served as the interim head coach to finish out the year.

The Packers then hired LaFleur in January 2019, and in their four seasons together, Rodgers and LaFleur led the Packers to a 47-18 regular-season record, two NFC Championship Game berths and the 2021 No. 1 seed for the NFC playoffs.

But despite Rodgers winning his third and fourth NFL MVP awards in 2020 and 2021, he never reached another Super Bowl before being traded to the New York Jets on April 23, 2023.

After his first season with the Jets ended with a ruptured Achilles’ tendon suffered on his fourth play from scrimmage, Rodgers started all 17 games last year for the Jets and threw for 3,897 yards with 28 touchdowns and 11 interceptions (90.5 passer rating) during a 5-12 season.

With a new head coach and general manager, the Jets released Rodgers after the season and he landed in Pittsburgh, where he has completed 68.6% of his passes this season for 1,270 yards with 14 TDs and five INTs (105.0 rating) entering Sunday.

The Steelers are coming off a mini-bye following a 33-31 loss at Cincinnati last Thursday, a game in which Rodgers went 23 for 34 for 249 yards with four touchdowns and two interceptions (103.7 rating) — and impressed some of his former teammates who watched the game.

“He looked real good,” said Packers center Elgton Jenkins, who played four seasons with Rodgers (2019-’22). “Getting the ball out, making plays, getting the ball out, scrambling. He’s playing well.

“Old teammates, you obviously want them to do well — just not against us. So hopefully he’ll throw a couple up and our guys will get picks on Sunday night. He’s playing well, though.”

Added cornerback Keisean Nixon, who played only one season with Rodgers (2022) but became good friends with him: “He’s still got it.”

In an interview with Sports Illustrated in August, Rodgers said that he had thought about the Packers-Steelers matchup on the Week 8 calendar but pointed out how few players remain on the roster from his final season in 2022 and how there isn’t the same vitriol or hatred that fueled the Packers’ 2009 and 2010 matchups with Favre.

He also mused about how it might be different to play the game in Green Bay instead of at his new football home.

“I was thinking maybe coming to Lambeau [instead] would be amazing,” Rodgers told SI. “It’d be strange because I was on the other side of ’09 and ’10 [facing Favre]. It won’t be as energized, I would say, if we were coming back to Lambeau instead of having the Packers out to Pittsburgh. The thing is, and you know this, not many guys that I’ve played with are still there.”

Indeed, only 14 players are on the roster who were on it for Rodgers’ final game, a 20-16 loss to the Detroit Lions at Lambeau Field on Jan. 8, 2023, a defeat that kept the Packers out of the playoffs when they were in a win-and-we’re-in scenario.

“So, it’s not like it’s the exact same team that I left and I’m coming back,” Rodgers continued. “Obviously, I know Matt [LaFleur] and I know a lot of the guys over there, so it’ll be fun to see them. I still have a lot of friends that I talk to over there. But I think it would be more of a charge if we were playing at Lambeau this year.”

Because so few of his players actually shared the field with Rodgers, LaFleur said he didn’t think he needed to spend too much time talking about the matchup beyond focusing on how the Green Bay defense can corral the Packers icon and prevent him from turning back the clock even further with a renaissance performance against his former club.

“I don’t even know if many of these guys played with him. There’s a few guys but … I think that [story] is for you guys,” LaFleur reiterated.

“I’m going to talk about — just like we do every week —  what is our blueprint? And what are our keys in order to go to Pittsburgh, which is a damn good football team and a really tough, hostile environment, and try to play our best?

“Because we haven’t put our best [out there] yet to date. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

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