Aaron Rodgers Barely Got Out of Peru Before Coronavirus Lockdown

The Packers QB says he only made it home because he flew private, not commercial

Aaron Rodgers in 2020
Aaron Rodgers reacts during the NFC Championship game at Levi's Stadium on January 19, 2020.
Harry How/Getty Images

While some athletes have already been confirmed to have the coronavirus, one NFL player was nearly stranded thousands of miles from home due to the ongoing pandemic. Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers jumped on Pat McAfee and A.J. Hawk’s radio show on Friday to share a story of how he was almost stranded in Peru on March 18th.

To summarize, Rodgers said he and the three other members of his party were trying to fly back from Cusco, Peru right before the airport was shut down due to the coronavirus outbreak. He compared his final minutes in the airport before taking off to the Ben Affleck movie Argo, though with less chasing:

Have you seen the movie Argo? The scene at the end where they’re racing to the airport. Nobody was chasing us, thankfully, or holding us. We didn’t have to speak Farsi to get back into the country, but there were some moments where we worried we were not going to get out. It was absolute pandemonium at the airport.

Luckily for Rodgers and his crew, they were flying on a private jet, which he credits for getting them in the air just before the whole thing shut down.

Somehow we made it down, and then they shut the airport down because it was really bad weather. They had a drop-dead time where they were going to shut the entire airport down. We made it by about 15 minutes.

Since returning to the United States, Rodgers and his party have all been self-isolating, and no one is showing any symptoms of the virus yet.

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