Aaron Rodgers posted a rare photo with his estranged younger brother Jordan on Friday, signaling a dramatic thaw in their years-long family feud.
The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, 42, shared an arm-in-arm snapshot with Jordan, 38, at Acrisure Stadium, where Jordan was working as a college football analyst for ESPN covering Pitt’s game against Florida State. “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 👊🏻,” Aaron captioned the Instagram post.
The casual meeting showed Aaron in a gray sweater, black pants and a baseball cap while Jordan wore a black blazer and blue tie for his broadcast duties. The brothers’ rift first became public in 2016 when Jordan appeared on JoJo Fletcher’s season of “The Bachelorette” and revealed Aaron would skip the hometown visit because they were estranged.
Aaron later bristled at his brother airing family business on television. “A little inappropriate [for Jordan] to talk publicly about some family matter,” he said in July 2016. The NFL star also declined an invitation to Jordan and Fletcher’s 2022 wedding in Mexico.
Signs of progress emerged this year when Jordan made a rare public show of support for Aaron during a Nov. 4 appearance on ESPN’s “First Take.” Asked which AFC quarterback he would trust most in the playoffs, the analyst surprisingly picked his big-name brother.
Aaron had already begun rebuilding ties with other family members. He reunited with parents Ed and Darla Rodgers and older brother Luke in July, sharing photos of the gathering on social media and describing the family as “bonding.” Jordan was notably absent from those pictures.
The following month, Aaron appeared to take a swipe at Jordan by referencing his “Bachelorette” disclosure nearly a decade earlier. But by September, Aaron was publicly confirming the brothers had reconnected while discussing family repairs ahead of his parents’ move from California to Nashville.
“A couple weeks after that, I went out to Nashville and met with my older brother,” Aaron told the “Not Just Football” podcast, referring to Luke, who lives in Tennessee with wife Aimee and their three children. “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.”
“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,” Aaron continued. He also credited his wife, Brittani, for helping him reach a point where reconciliation felt possible. “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.
The Steelers face the Baltimore Ravens in a key AFC North matchup on Saturday in Pittsburgh.