In last year\u2019s Wild Card game, the Pittsburgh Steelers\u2019 offense played the way Aaron Rodgers felt. Sick. Pittsburgh\u2019s offense did little against the Houston Texans\u2019 vaunted defense, managing just six points in another ugly postseason loss. Rodgers was miserable, completing barely half his passes with his final throw pick-sixed the other way.<\/p>\n
Monday, Michael Silver shared that Rodgers said he was ill ahead of the game<\/a> with flu-like symptoms. Pittsburgh never listed Rodgers on the injury report, leading some like reporter Aditi Kinkhabwala to wonder if the NFL will take action.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s go back to what you said about the whole flu thing,\u201d Kinkhabwala told 93.7 The Fan\u2019s Andrew Fillipponi and Chris Mueller. <\/a>\u201cThe Steelers could get in trouble for not reporting that. So I don\u2019t think that that would be manufactured, right?\u201d<\/p>\n Her comments came in response to Fillipponi\u2019s skepticism that Rodgers was telling the truth. In Silver\u2019s article, the then-offensive coordinator confirmed Rodgers was sick, though also joked Rodgers might have been playing up the angle.<\/p>\n Mike Florio reached out to the league<\/a> for comment about Pittsburgh not reporting Rodgers\u2019 illness. The league declined to offer a statement. It\u2019s true the league can and has punished teams for omitting injury or illness information on team reports under the idea that it robs opposing teams of relevant information and can create inside information for the gambling world.<\/p>\n In 2023, the Atlanta Falcons were fined for not reporting RB Bijan Robinson\u2019s illness<\/a>. In fact, the Steelers were even fined in 2019 for omitting QB Ben Roethlisberger\u2019s elbow injury.<\/a><\/p>\n However, it seems doubtful another punishment is coming Pittsburgh\u2019s way despite Kinkhabwala\u2019s, and to a greater degree Florio\u2019s, belief. The league generally only fines when an injury or illness has a material impact on the game. In 2023, Robinson barely played. In 2019, Roethlisberger exited before halftime. Rodgers didn\u2019t miss a single snap, aside from bowing out on the final drive when the game was effectively over.<\/p>\n Players are sick every week. Patrick Queen had terrible food poisoning<\/a> ahead of Pittsburgh\u2019s 2024 Wild Card Game against the Baltimore Ravens but was absent from the final injury report<\/a>. Queen played his normal snaps, and the team wasn\u2019t fined.<\/p>\n It\u2019s fair to say teams take a risk when they don\u2019t list players with an illness. If that player is unable to finish the game, the team could be at risk of a fine, which seems to run $75,000 for the team and $25,000 for the head coach. Of course, if Pittsburgh was punished, Mike McCarthy shouldn\u2019t and wouldn\u2019t receive the penalty. And there\u2019s no history of the league punishing a team months after the fact for injury report omissions.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a story and angle that is likely much ado about nothing. But if Rodgers comes down with the flu sometime during 2026, the Steelers would be safe to note it on their report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In last year\u2019s Wild Card game, the Pittsburgh Steelers\u2019 offense played the way Aaron Rodgers felt. Sick. Pittsburgh\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[27473,59071,110372,110373,73,75,74,1833,995],"class_list":["post-260113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-93-7-the-fan","tag-aditi-kinkhabwala","tag-andrew-fillipponi","tag-chris-mueller","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-trending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}