{"id":465939,"date":"2025-10-22T05:59:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T05:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/465939\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T05:59:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T05:59:18","slug":"the-aaron-rodgers-bowl-while-matt-lafleur-downplays-that-storyline-these-packers-defensive-players-cant-wait-to-share-the-same-field-with-one-of-the-goats-on-sunday-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/465939\/","title":{"rendered":"The Aaron Rodgers Bowl? While Matt LaFleur downplays that storyline, these Packers defensive players can\u2019t wait to share the same field with \u2018one of the GOATs\u2019 on Sunday night | Top Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

GREEN BAY \u2014 Keisean Nixon grabbed his iPhone from his stall inside the luxe home locker room at Lambeau Field and quickly scanned his messages. One stood out immediately.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Green Bay Packers veteran cornerback had just broken up five passes during the team\u2019s Week 2 win over the visiting Washington Commanders on \u201cThursday Night Football\u201d \u2014 a Sept. 11 game that had been nationally streamed on Amazon Prime \u2014 and found a familiar name among the well-wishers.<\/p>\n

Aaron Rodgers.<\/p>\n

A few Thursday nights later, Nixon was at home streaming Rodgers and his new team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, in a back-and-forth tussle with the Cincinnati Bengals. While the Bengals escaped with the victory, the 41-year-old Rodgers had delivered a turn-back-the-clock performance, completing 23 of 34 passes for 249 yards with four touchdowns (103.7 rating) on the night.<\/p>\n

Nixon\u2019s first thought? \u201cHe\u2019s still got it,\u201d Nixon replied with a smirk.<\/p>\n

Although Packers head coach Matt LaFleur started the week by downplaying the Rodgers-against-his-old-team storyline for Sunday night\u2019s matchup between the Packers (4-1-1) and the Steelers (4-2) at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh \u2014 \u201cWe\u2019re playing the Pittsburgh Steelers, who happen to have Aaron Rodgers<\/a>,\u201d LaFleur had said on Monday \u2014 the players who\u2019ll be tasked with defending against Rodgers know it\u2019s not just another game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a blessing to be able to share the field with a guy of that caliber \u2014 one of the GOATs, if not the GOAT, a future Hall of Famer,\u201d said Packers All-Pro safety Xavier McKinney, who faced Rodgers once before, as a member of the New York Giants when the Giants beat the Packers in London during the 2022 season.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust to be able to share the field with him and be able to compete against him, it gives me that same feel as when I played Tom Brady [in 2021]. You go into the game, you know who you\u2019re facing, you know the type of player that he is and the career he\u2019s established, so it just gives you chills being able to go out there and compete against him. And obviously it\u2019s probably his last hurrah, so it\u2019ll be fun for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Nixon, the vibe is slightly different. He and Rodgers were teammates for that 2022 season, with Nixon having come over from the Las Vegas Raiders in free agency.<\/p>\n

After growing up in Compton, Calif., and playing in Vegas, Nixon didn\u2019t exactly embrace the idea of playing in small-town Green Bay upon his arrival.<\/p>\n

Rodgers noticed \u2014 and took action, in an unorthodox way.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe gave me a hug,\u201d Nixon said. \u201cHe wanted me to give him a hug. He always said I was angry. And I was. He opened me up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was angry. Because I didn\u2019t want to be here \u2014 for real. But it really was him that calmed me down about being here, so I\u2019ve got a lot of love for him. We still talk.\u201d<\/p>\n

The talk between the two will be different, though, on Sunday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, he knows what\u2019s up with me. I\u2019m going to talk a lot of [expletive] to him, I am,\u201d Nixon said. \u201cI\u2019m going to make him angry, get him to throw the ball my way a lot and try to pick his ass off.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He won\u2019t be the only one trying to do that against a quarterback who, in his 21st NFL season, has thrown 8,417 passes and been intercepted only 121 times \u2014 a 1.4% interception rate, the lowest in NFL history.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is hard to get interceptions off him. He knows the game, studies the game, has seen every coverage there is, so it\u2019s going to be challenging to get one,\u201d McKinney said. \u201cBut [the ball], I\u2019m going to have to frame that one some type of way, if I\u2019m able to get one off of him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Second-year safety Evan Williams would love to pick Rodgers off, too \u2014 but for a slightly different reason. Like Rodgers, who spent two college seasons at Cal-Berkeley before the Packers took him with the 24th overall pick in the first round of the 2005 NFL Draft, Williams\u2019 father, Garey, played for the Golden Bears.<\/p>\n

Garey, in fact, was on the field for the Bears on their iconic game-winning, five-lateral kickoff return for a touchdown in the 1982 Cal-Stanford game (https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=O-JD4o-Y5Aw<\/a>), although he didn\u2019t touch the ball.<\/p>\n

But decades later, Garey would take his young sons, Evan and Bennett, to Cal games. Little Evan was a precocious 3-year-old during the 2004 season, when Rodgers led the Bears to a 10-2 record and finished ninth in the Heisman Trophy balloting.<\/p>\n

And by the time Evan played high-school ball at St. Francis High School in Campbell, Calif., and played in college at Fresno State and Oregon, he was a full-fledged Rodgers fan \u2014 even when his buddies were more enamored with Brady, Ben Roethlisberger or others.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up, I was always a Rodgers guy. Like, everybody was Brady, Big Ben, whoever else, and Rodgers always [the guy] to me,\u201d Williams explained. \u201cJust the way he approached the game, he just commanded the offense. It seemed like he had completely command and understanding of what was going on on the defensive side of the ball and could get to whatever he needed to. That was always impressive. And then obviously his arm talent was just different.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd, he went to Cal. I first went to a game in probably 2004. [So] I was a baby boy, so I wouldn\u2019t have any real memories of him. But that was just more reason to root for the guy, because he was a Cal guy.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo yeah, I\u2019m excited to go against him. Anytime you get to go against people that have cemented their legacy in the game, it\u2019s always an exciting thing. To be able to compete against that level of talent, with his r\u00e9sum\u00e9? As much as I respect him, I\u2019m with X \u2014 I\u2019ll be looking to snag one off of him, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then there’s edge rusher Micah Parsons, who will be aiming to take Rodgers down for a sack and has his own Rodgers story.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t get to Rodgers when the Packers played Parsons’ Dallas Cowboys in November 2022 at Lambeau Field, but Parsons didn\u2019t wind up completely empty-handed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited to play him. He\u2019s one of my favorite quarterbacks of all time,\u201d Parsons said after his three-sack performance in last Sunday\u2019s win at Arizona. \u201cAnd what\u2019s neat about Rodgers is, when I came down to Lambeau in my second year, after the game, he was like, \u2018I want to trade jerseys with you.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I\u2019m like, \u2018The GOAT, Rodgers, wants to trade jerseys with me? I\u2019m coming off my rookie year.\u2019 To me, it\u2019s a great sign of respect, just the type of guy he is, that he could recognize such a young player in the league. So I have nothing but respect for him and he\u2019s become one of my favorite players just because of that moment. He didn\u2019t have to do that.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd. he [actually] sent me that jersey. I thought he was just messing me. [But] he sent me that game-worn jersey when they came back and beat us, so the loss was bitter, but the jersey was sweet, and it\u2019s in my man cave right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the football side, I\u2019m ready to get my rematch, but the personal side, I appreciate Rodg for that because that gave me a boost of confidence. He just said \u2018keep going\u2019 and how much he believed in me. So that was big. He didn\u2019t have to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bCOPYRIGHT 2025 BY CHANNEL 3000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GREEN BAY \u2014 Keisean Nixon grabbed his iPhone from his stall inside the luxe home locker room at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2072],"tags":[1586,15200,6594,257,5391,7,41,345,2514,2513,9761,3031,491,122,6,428,1369,5582],"class_list":{"0":"post-465939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-green-bay-packers","8":"tag-aaron-rodgers","9":"tag-acrisure-stadium","10":"tag-ben-roethlisberger","11":"tag-dallas-cowboys","12":"tag-evan-williams","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-green-bay","15":"tag-green-bay-packers","16":"tag-greenbay","17":"tag-greenbaypackers","18":"tag-keisean-nixon","19":"tag-matt-lafleur","20":"tag-micah-parsons","21":"tag-national-football-league","22":"tag-nfl","23":"tag-packers","24":"tag-tom-brady","25":"tag-xavier-mckinney"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115416293200548933","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}