Lions' Aaron Rodgers memories: Fake birthday wishes to the Hail Mary
If you’ve played against Aaron Rodgers, you have a story.
Detroit Lions defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard remembers the game-winning touchdown Rodgers threw to beat his Miami Dolphins back in 2014.
“I think it was on Philip Wheeler,” Sheppard said of the defensive player who got beat on the play. “I think he hit Phil in the end zone towards the end of the game (with 3 seconds left) on like a back pylon or something.”
Marcus Davenport remembers sacking Rodgers a few days after his birthday in 2021. Rodgers told Davenport, “Happy birthday,” after the play, and it only dawned on Davenport later that Rodgers had no clue he just turned 25 and was actually trash-talking the defensive end, telling him he got lucky.
For Avonte Maddox, the memories started before he competed against Rodgers on the field.
“I was a kid and they played the Lions and he was making them Hail Mary passes,” Maddox said.
A Lions fan growing up in Detroit, Maddox remembers thinking, “Oh my (expletive) gosh,” when Rodgers beat the Lions with a skyscraping 61-yard Hail Mary to tight end Richard Rodgers on the final play of a 2015 game at Ford Field.
When Maddox was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in 2018, Richard Rodgers was an Eagles tight end and Maddox still hadn’t gotten over the play.
“I said, ‘I don’t like you,’” Maddox said he told Richard Rodgers, now one of his close friends. “I remember when he came in there, I had to needle him a little bit about it.”
At 42 years old, Aaron Rodgers isn’t the same gunslinger he was when he was piling up wins (147 of them, including 18 against the Lions) and MVP awards (four) in 18 seasons with the Green Bay Packers.
Now on his third team and nearing retirement, Rodgers leads the Pittsburgh Steelers into what could be his final game at Ford Field today against the Lions in a matchup brimming with playoff implications for both teams.
The Steelers (8-6) have a one-game lead on the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC North with three games to play, while the Lions (8-6) are 1½ games out of the NFC’s final wild-card spot.
The Lions played spoiler to Rodgers the last time they met in the final game of the 2022 season, when they beat the Packers at Lambeau Field to keep Green Bay out of the playoffs. Kerby Joseph intercepted Rodgers’ last pass as a Packer, and Green Bay traded Rodgers a few months later to the New York Jets.
The Lions swept the season series from the Packers in 2022; their first win against Green Bay that year ended a five-game losing streak and helped transform them into NFC contenders – a fact that wasn’t lost on Rodgers this week.
“We were there when kind of their run started going,” Rodgers told Pittsburgh reporters. “We could have buried them, and they beat us and kind of went on a run there and finished the season hot. Then next year, they were in the NFC championship, I believe. So, Dan [Campbell] has obviously created a good culture there, and the fans are believing and showing up early and really loud. So, it’s a really good environment to play in.”
Rodgers doesn’t have the same mobility he did when he was young, but a few more grays in his beard aside, Maddox said the perennial Pro Bowler still looks like the same player who tortured the Lions for most of his nearly two decades in Green Bay.
Rodgers is completing 66.8% of his passes despite playing the past month with multiple fractures in his left (non-throwing) wrist. He’s thrown for 2,594 yards and 22 touchdowns against seven interceptions and the Steelers have played four of their highest-scoring games of the season in the past five weeks.
“He plays fast and he’s accurate,” Campbell said. “He’s always had the accuracy. He’s got such a quick release. I mean, he can process it like that and it’s with a flick of the wrist that thing, it’s into the receiver’s hands at a perfect location to where they can do damage once they get it into their hands. So, that has gone nowhere, his ability to get it out and play fast is still there – very much there.”
The Lions still are very much in the playoff hunt despite alternating wins and losses the past 10 weeks.
They’ve lost to most of NFC’s top playoff contenders – they’re 0-4 against the Packers, Eagles and Los Angeles Rams – but fattened their record early this season against the Steelers’ AFC North brethren (going 3-0 against the Baltimore Ravens, Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals, the last time they won successive games).
The Lions likely need to win out to make the playoffs, but also still have a chance to be the No. 2 seed and win their third straight division title.
After playing Saturday, the Chicago Bears and the Packers both have difficult games next week – the Bears visit a San Francisco 49ers (10-4) team still in the mix for the NFC’s top seed; the Packers host a Ravens (7-7) team fighting for its playoff life – and the Lions close the season in Chicago after playing the Minnesota Vikings on Christmas Day.
Maddox said everyone in the locker room is aware of how slim the Lions’ margin for error is to make the playoffs, but no one is looking beyond this week.
“This is the only thing that matters,” he said. “[If you lose] this week, then ahead don’t matter. So we need to just focus on our games, the games we win and at the end of it all, if we win them all, now it’s up to however other teams go. But that comes into play after we win our last game.”
Dave Birkett covers the Lions for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on Bluesky, X and Instagram at @davebirkett.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Lions need win vs Steelers in Aaron Rodgers’ last game at Ford Field
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