The injury comeback by Aaron Rodgers basically ended before it ever began -- the Packers brought the quarterback off injured reserve ahead of their Week 15 game against the Panthers, lost the game, got eliminated from the playoffs and promptly put Rodgers back on injured reserve. But that's not the end of the drama, as multiple teams reportedly complained to the NFL about the Packers' usage of the injured reserve designation.
In even wilder news, these teams, according to Adam Schefter of ESPN, want the NFL to force the Packers to release Rodgers.
The Packers are probably not going to do that. But there's a decent argument here, because of the way that things transpired in Green Bay.
NFL injured reserve rules allow a team to use a temporary IR slot on a player and have him return, as the Packers did with Rodgers. However, in order to be placed back on injured reserve, the player needs to suffer a new injury.
Rodgers left the game against Carolina because he was "sore" at one point, but he was not placed on injured reserve until Tuesday, when the Packers had been eliminated from the playoffs courtesy of the Falcons beating the Buccaneers on Monday night.
When they placed Rodgers back on injured reserve, they did not provide an injury-specific reason for placing him on IR. Everyone just sort of assumed the Packers were placing him on IR with the same collarbone injury that had kept him out since Week 7 when he hurt it against the Vikings. The plan was obvious all along: bring him back in Week 15, make a Hail Mary run to the playoffs and hope to just catch fire.
The plan didn't work out of the gate, so the Packers put him back on injured reserve. The problem? If a team places a player on injured reserve with the same injury, the team who places him on injured reserve is required to release him.
From Schefter:
It is not believed that Rodgers suffered any type of new injury last Sunday against Carolina. If Rodgers didn't suffer a new injury but was placed back on IR anyway, NFL rules stipulate that the Packers would have to release him -- which nobody expects will happen. It is why multiple teams raised the issue. Teams wanted to know why the Packers were being granted immunity.
Per Schefter, Rodgers was not going to be medically cleared to return for Saturday night's matchup against the Vikings, which ended up being a scoreless effort for the Packers offense.
But just not being cleared for the next week does not equate to "suffering a new injury" and there is a good reason why the other teams in question would want to get some answers.
Ultimately, it probably doesn't matter much, because there is a zero-percent chance the Packers are releasing Rodgers and it would be hard to imagine the NFL forcing them to do so.