New book on Aaron Rodgers details his family dispute, Olivia Munn relationship, introduction to ayahuasca and, yes, his football career
Aaron Rodgers with the Jets, left, and with Olivia Munn, right. Credit: Getty Images
Aaron Rodgers was, is and always will be an enigma, one of the most intriguing and at times infuriating personalities in professional sports.
He also is very good at throwing footballs.
It’s all there, in greater detail than ever before, in Ian O’Connor’s new book, “Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers,” due out next Tuesday.
The challenge for O’Connor was mining new ground for a person whose life has been well-documented in real time — and whose story still is unfolding.
There is a lot of background material here, including more-detail-than-necessary accounts of long-ago football games he played at every level.
But for those with a keen interest in the Jets quarterback, there is a lot to chew on, an account that tells a story relevant to readers in 2024 that likely also will be an important resource for historians of the sport for decades to come.
That is what O’Connor does, as in previous well-regarded books on the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Mike Krzyzewski, Derek Jeter and Bill Belichick.
About the juicy stuff: The most anticipated part of the book is its account of the bitter, decade-long rift between Rodgers and his family, including his parents, Ed and Darla, and his brothers, Luke and Jordan.
The contours of the drama are here, and O’Connor fleshes them out more fully than anyone has before. But the precise problem remains just out of reach.
That’s the way it usually is for outsiders trying to decipher family dynamics.
To oversimplify: Rodgers’ parents draw a straight line from his past relationship with actress Olivia Munn to their estrangement from their son.
It began, O’Connor reports, in 2014, when Rodgers still was with the Packers and Munn tried to prevent Ed and Darla from attending any more of his games.
What was the problem? Munn declined an interview for the book, but she suggested to Andy Cohen on SiriusXM in 2018 that Rodgers had friends and relatives who were relying too heavily on his success for their own pursuits. Munn also claimed Rodgers and his family had stopped speaking months before they started dating. Ed called that “a lie.”
Meanwhile, the devoutly religious Darla “did not appreciate” Munn discussing the sex life between her and Rodgers.
But as O’Connor points out, Rodgers had a history of abruptly cutting off people in his life, so blaming Munn was too convenient. (The two broke up in 2017.)
“So perhaps too many people close to the quarterback were too quick to finger a convenient fall guy, or fall gal, rather than hold him fully responsible for his own choices,” O’Connor writes.
Over time, O’Connor bonded with Ed and Darla to the point that he drove them to and from the fateful 2023 Jets opener in which Rodgers tore an Achilles tendon. (They did not get their tickets from Rodgers; they bought them from the Jets.)
Luke and Jordan declined to be interviewed for the book.
The book does open on a hopeful note, with Rodgers running into Ed at last summer’s American Century golf tournament in Lake Tahoe and them sharing an embrace. They said they loved each other. The silence resumed after that.
O’Connor’s book officially is unauthorized, but Rodgers agreed to host the author for an interview at his Malibu home in February, which adds an important dimension.
Rodgers is interesting, as always, and difficult to pin down, as always, from his relationships with teammates to his controversial views on off-the-field matters to this simple question: Is he just smart, or just too smart for his own good?
Among the reporting tidbits O’Connor offers are Rodgers lamenting what he should have done on the play on which he was hurt last September (throw the ball to Garrett Wilson), a detailed account of the measures he took to return from the injury and admitting he could have better handled how he spoke about his COVID-19 immunization (or lack thereof).
Another nugget: Whether it was intentional or not, Chris Johnson, the brother of Jets owner Woody and the more comfortable people person of the two, arrived before the rest of the Jets entourage on the team’s recruiting visit to Malibu.
“It’s genius if it was their grand plan,” Rodgers said. The two bonded quickly.
Jordan Russell, Rodgers’ best friend — who at one point was banished from his life, then reinstated — talks about the trip to Peru in 2019 on which he experienced the plant-based psychedelic ayahuasca and later turned Rodgers onto it.
“I saw [Rodgers] for exactly who he is and it brought me to tears,” Russell says of an epiphany he had one night in Peru.
“I stand in awe of him as a man, and in so many ways he’s trapped inside of his own archetype, trapped inside this shell, this ego of a famous football player, when really what he is, is a warrior of a man who has an absolutely gigantic heart and who just wants to love and be loved.”
Opening night is Sept. 9. To be continued.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
