Veteran sportswriter Ian O'Connor has authored several notable biographies on major figures such as Bill Belichick, Mike Krzyzewski, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Derek Jeter. His next subject may be the most fascinating of all, as teased by the title:
Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers . Obviously there's some cheekiness to that pre-colon line, alluding to the darkness retreat Rodgers took last offseason when he was seriously pondering retirement. Once he emerged, Rodgers opted to play for the New York Jets, only to tear his Achilles on the fourth play of the season in front of maybe the most devastated sports-going crowd to ever assemble. But for all the, ahem... unconventional opinion Rodgers blasts out into the public sphere, he's kept most people in the dark about his personal life, specifically when it comes to his family. While he is indeed estranged from his parents and immediate family, O'Connor unearthed a fascinating nugget for the book that he spoke about on
The Colin Cowherd Podcast to promote its August 20 release. That would be the fact that Edward Rodgers, Aaron's grandfather, was a B-24 pilot in World War II — and a god-tier one at that. Edward completed 43 successful missions before getting shot down on the 44th and being taken in as a prisoner of war. He would later testify to war crimes investigators about the beating and mistreatment he underwent as a POW, so he managed to make it out of that situation, too. One of the most daring missions Edward flew was on St. Patrick's Day in 1944. His plane got hit multiple times over Nazi Germany, one of his engines caught fire, and he had 10 men aboard his plane with all their lives in his hands. Here's the rest from O'Connor:
"[Edward] said, 'I felt like the loneliest man in the world, flying over Nazi Germany.' And so the story is, he somehow flew that plane back to the American base in Italy, they got down safely. So effectively, he saved 11 lives including his own. And I wanted to open the book with that chapter, because there's so much negativity about his family, that I wanted to write a positive story about his family." https://youtu.be/s-n_gxBH-HI?si=dihCz0oaW9JJ7959&t=1173 O'Connor credits getting a lot of the information about the elder Rodgers from a Minneapolis-based military records expert named Dan Matthews (Mathews? SP? Couldn't find him for certain on the Google Machine). Bless that man, because my goodness, what a riveting story this is. It'll be interesting to see what else O'Connor has in this biography, which Aaron was initially reticent to be interviewed for, but in the end, he gave some of his time to fact-check some things and provide a little more context. Given the limited time with the subject himself, I'm not sure how illuminating the rest of the biography will be re: getting a genuinely closer look at the mystery of Aaron Rodgers. I'm personally hoping for more on his
abandoned run for vice president and how serious that was. Nevertheless, there should be enough juiciness in there to make it a compelling read — and what a banger of a start with the Edward Rodgers World War II storyline.
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