Former NFL quarterback Cam Newton says he agrees with Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ claim that players, coaches and team staff bought fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination cards during the league’s 2021 protocols rather than get the shot.
Newton made the remarks Monday on his “4th & 1” podcast, where he discussed the NFL’s 2021 rules that required most coaches and other team staff to be vaccinated while subjecting unvaccinated players to daily testing, masking and other restrictions.
“If we’re being honest, going back to 2020, there were multiple players, coaches and executives that fraudulently got their COVID shot,” Newton said, according to OutKick, which first reported his comments.
Newton, who was cut by the New England Patriots in 2021 after a testing-protocol dispute, said he personally knew unvaccinated teammates who obtained cards for a price.
“But they got a card that they paid for,” Newton said. “Boy, nurses was making big bank.”
His comments echo what Rodgers told “The Pat McAfee Show” last week, when the four-time MVP said he’d seen fake cards that looked “written in crayon” and blasted the league’s protocols as performative.
Rodgers made the remarks in the middle of a broader tirade against Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom he called an “absolute criminal” for invoking the Fifth Amendment 111 times before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Neither man has offered documentation to support the broader scale of fraud they described. One confirmed case from that era involved former Tampa Bay Buccaneers receiver Antonio Brown, who was suspended three games in December 2021 after the league found he had misrepresented his vaccination status; two teammates were suspended alongside him.
Newton, who was unvaccinated at the time and later received the vaccine in October 2021 to ease his path back into the league, has previously said he felt “bamboozled” by the Patriots’ handling of his COVID-19 testing status that season.
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