Aaron Rodgers is back in the public eye — and on Instagram.
After the Jets quarterback attended UFC 303 on Saturday in his first public appearance since skipping the team’s mandatory minicamp for a reported trip to Egypt, he shared a photo on Instagram of him sitting with former Packers teammate Marcedes Lewis at the event in Las Vegas.
“Me and Big Dog #UFC303,” Rodgers said in a picture he posted of the two on Instagram while octagon-side at the event.
Rodgers was seen throughout the event, being put on the broadcast multiple times and getting a loud pop from the crowd, while the promotion also showed him walking backstage.
Lewis and Rodgers consistently attend UFC events together, including UFC 302 in Newark last month.
Rodgers missed the Jets’ mandatory minicamp from June 11-13 for an event head coach Robert Saleh said was important to the quarterback.
The absence was unexcused, though the coach said he and Rodgers are on the same page.
Some former and current players crushed Rodgers for missing mandatory practices.
“I think it’s a bad look for your leader, for whatever reason, to go and miss an unexcused absence,” ex-Patriots receiver Julian Edelman said to Collin Cowherd on “The Herd,” noting that Tom Brady wasn’t missing these events at the back-end of his career.
Rodgers was also apparently in Los Angeles in the week leading up to fight night, as ex-Packer receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling told “The Herd” co-host Jason McIntyre that Rodgers had texted him about doing drills together.
“Me and Aaron have been great friends since I had been in Green Bay. I hit him up, told him I was coming out to LA, and said, ‘Let’s run some routes,’” Valdes-Scantling said.
“So, we got it in. Went out to some high school and ran some routes together. We’re good. It was good.”
Rodgers told reporters after the Jets’ season ended that the team needed to “get bulls–t out of the building,” before this latest distraction.
“If you want to be a winning organization and put yourself in a position to win championships and be competitive, everything that you do matters,” Rodgers said in January. “The bull—t that has nothing to do with winning needs to get out of the building. That will be the focus moving forward.”
