Last spring, Jordan Rodgers — the younger brother of Green Bay Packers Quarterback Aaron Rodgers — competed for JoJo Fletcher's hand on "The Bachelorette." He won, they got engaged in August of last year and celebrated with a surprise party thrown by Jordan's friends and family. Jordan's brother Aaron, however, appeared not to have been there. Five months later, JoJo has reportedly still not met her future brother-in-law, Aaron, or Aaron's longtime girlfriend, Olivia Munn, because of a rift in the family.
As the Packers prepare to take on the Atlanta Falcons this weekend, the Rodgers' family tension has made headlines again in large part because of a New York Times story claiming "Aaron Rodgers connects with his hometown, but the family huddle is broken."
In the feature, Aaron and Jordan's dad, Ed Rodgers, reflects on Aaron's high-profile 2011 Super Bowl win and the start of his equally high-profile relationship with Olivia, saying, "one [son] in the news is enough for us … fame can change things."
While Aaron told the Times he doesn't "think it's appropriate talking about family stuff publicly," insiders soon speculated on the reasons why Aaron and Jordan's relationship has become so strained.
A source told Us Weekly, "Aaron is the one that has pulled away from the family, not the reverse," and blamed the quarterback's devotion to Olivia for his subsequent family problems.
"When he got together with Olivia Munn, his family told him they didn't trust her and thought she wasn't with him for the right reasons. That made him furious, and he ended up choosing Olivia over his family," said the source.
People's sources say that's not the case.
"Olivia doesn't really have anything to do with it. This is not her issue; this is the Rodgers family issue," said one insider. "If and when it comes time for the family to mend fences, Olivia will be supportive of anything that Aaron chooses to do."
On "The Bachelorette" in 2016, Jordan told JoJo he was close with his brother Luke. Aaron, he said, had become estranged from the family by his own doing.
"… Me and Aaron don't really have that much of a relationship," Jordan said at the time. "It's just kind of the way he's chosen to do life, and I chose to stay close with my family and my parents and my brother [Luke]."
Jordan, who started out as a football player before becoming a sports commentator, also admitted he'd always felt inferior to Aaron, both in football and other aspects of their lives.
"No matter what I did, it was never good enough … I was being compared to someone who did it the best," he said. "I could've kept playing, but football didn't define me. Not having a great relationship with my brother Aaron … didn't define me."
Whether it was those early comparisons between Jordan and Aaron or, as some of have suggested, Aaron's prioritization of Olivia above his family that caused the rift to continue through the years is still unclear.
"Obviously Jordan hates the tension with his brother Aaron," a source tells Us Weekly. "But the thing is nobody knows what really happened – Olivia, money, fame, all of it?"
The Packers take on the Falcons Sunday, Jan. 22; Aaron told the Times he didn't know if his brother would be present at the game.