Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is pushing back on actress Shailene Woodley’s version of why their engagement collapsed in 2022, addressing her directly during an appearance on Not Just Football with Cam Heyward, teammate Cam Heyward’s weekly podcast.
Mr. Rodgers said he proposed to Ms. Woodley in December 2020 and that she accepted, but that within days she told him she needed to be with someone else before the wedding. He said she had taken the ring off by that March.
“There’s just a lot of narrative out there that isn’t true,” Mr. Rodgers said, addressing Ms. Woodley directly on the show.
Ms. Woodley has not responded publicly to Mr. Rodgers’ latest comments.
The pair first sparked dating rumors in the summer of 2020 and confirmed their engagement publicly in February 2021. They called it off the following February, briefly reconciled, then split for good that April.
Ms. Woodley has previously described the breakup in emotional terms without directly blaming Mr. Rodgers. In a 2024 conversation with Outside magazine, she said, “I had a really awful, traumatic thing happen in early 2022,” describing a period of depression she worked through with the help of a close friend.
Around the same time, Ms. Woodley told Bustle that her disillusionment with performative behavior traced back to the split, saying, “I’m very uninterested in the performance of people at this moment in life.” A separate 2024 Fox News report framed those comments as alluding to Mr. Rodgers’ “unavailability,” though Ms. Woodley’s own words described a broader pattern of falling for unavailable partners rather than naming him specifically.
The Woodley segment aired alongside another candid exchange on the same podcast, in which Mr. Rodgers revisited his earlier relationship with retired race car driver Danica Patrick. He told Mr. Heyward that Ms. Patrick, who has called him “emotionally abusive,” had her own version of events that didn’t match his.
“She was depressed and not fun to be around,” Mr. Rodgers said of the tail end of that relationship, which ended in 2020.
Mr. Rodgers, 42, confirmed in June 2025 that he had gotten married, without naming his wife at the time. He later identified her as Brittani, saying they first met in 2017 and reconnected after his relationships with Ms. Patrick and Ms. Woodley ended.
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