They faced off on multiple occasions during their time with the Vikings and Packers. During the 2020 Collective Bargaining Agreement talks, quarterback Kirk Cousins and quarterback Aaron Rodgers engaged in a different kind of interaction.
Former NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith tells the tale in his upcoming book, Turf Wars: The Fight for the Soul of America's Game, of an "intense conversation" between Cousins and Rodgers regarding the voting process for the current CBA.
Rodgers (who wasn't the Packers' union representative at the time) wanted the team-elected representatives to vote against sending the proposed deal to the players. That would have killed the CBA. Cousins "passionately" argued, per Smith, that not allowing all players to vote on a nearly $200,000 annual increase in minimum salaries impacting nearly 70 percent of the NFL's rosters was wrong.
As Smith puts it in the book, Cousins was the only one who stood up to Rodgers. The move was instrumental in the eventual vote to send the deal to the players. Which resulted in a vote by the players to accept the new CBA, on the brink of the start of the COVID pandemic.
Smith also explains that Panthers owner David Tepper later said the owners should have pulled the offer from the table, given the looming pandemic. Which means the players got a better deal by moving when they did than they would have gotten if the reps had listened to Rodgers and killed the proposed CBA.
Turf Wars can be preordered here. It will be released on June 10.
