Former NFL quarterback Cam Newton is backing Aaron Rodgers' claim that fake COVID-19 vaccination cards were widespread across the league, and says he personally knew teammates who paid for them.
Newton went on his "4th & 1" podcast Monday and laid out what he says he witnessed during the 2021 NFL season, when the league's COVID-19 protocols divided locker rooms into vaccinated and unvaccinated tiers. His account adds firsthand detail to allegations Rodgers made on "The Pat McAfee Show" days earlier, and together, the two quarterbacks are painting a picture of an NFL compliance system that punished honest holdouts while letting fraud slide.
Newton did not hold back. OutKick senior NFL writer Armando Salguero reported Newton's claim that the deception cut across every level of team operations, not just players, but coaches and front-office executives.
"If we're being honest, Going back to 2020, there were multiple players, coaches, and executives that fraudulently got their COVID shot. Yes, I said it."
Newton pushed further, describing a black market for vaccination cards inside NFL facilities. He said nurses profited and that the cards came complete with stamps to look legitimate.
"You're like, Cam, what do you know? It's like, man, I knew multiple people in that locker room didn't get the Covid shot. But they got a card that they paid for."
He added: "Boy, nurses was making big bank. But that card and that little [stamp].... Man, folks was trying to get in that club."
Newton's allegations land on top of Rodgers' own account from the prior week. Rodgers, now a quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, told Pat McAfee he remembered seeing vaccination cards that barely passed a visual test.
"A lot of people had probably fake vax cards back in the day. I remember seeing some of the vax cards. It was like written in crayon."
Rodgers went further, describing the two-tier system that the NFL imposed on its workforce in 2021. Players who refused the shot faced daily COVID testing, mandatory masking inside team facilities, and strict distancing rules during meals, meetings, and workouts. Vaccinated players, or those who presented a card, faced none of it.
"I'm like, alright, so we're going to pass that off [as legitimate], but we [unvaccinated] are going to be second-rate citizens over here. I got to wear a yellow armband, train in the back, can't be around more than three people."
Rodgers called the entire arrangement "a crock of [expletive]."
The personal cost for Newton makes his allegations sharper. During the 2021 season, Newton was the presumptive starting quarterback for the New England Patriots. He was unvaccinated. He traveled away from the team for a medical appointment and was gone for three days, testing negative for COVID-19 each day.
It did not matter. The Patriots said Newton's absence triggered a five-day re-entry protocol because of what the team called a "misunderstanding about tests conducted away from NFL facilities." Newton lost critical practice time. Rookie Mac Jones seized the opportunity, took over the starting job, and Newton was eventually released.
Newton later said he felt "bamboozled" by the entire situation.
So a player who followed the rules, who disclosed his vaccination status honestly and submitted to every protocol the league demanded, lost his job. Meanwhile, if Newton's account is accurate, teammates in the same locker room sidestepped the whole system with a purchased card and a stamp.
Rodgers did not limit his criticism to the NFL. He also took aim at Anthony Fauci, one of the leading members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in 2020 under President Donald Trump and a strong proponent of the vaccines during President Joe Biden's administration. Rodgers claimed Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times during Senate testimony, a figure that, if accurate, would represent an extraordinary level of refusal to answer under oath from a former senior public-health official.
Neither Newton nor Rodgers named specific individuals who allegedly used fake cards. No NFL investigation into the claims has been reported. No law-enforcement inquiry has been disclosed. The league itself has not publicly responded to either quarterback's allegations.
Salguero, the OutKick writer, noted that Newton placed the start of fake vaccination cards in 2020, but that the practice actually began in 2021, when the NFL's vaccination protocols took effect and created the incentive structure Newton described. Salguero also characterized the league's masking protocols as "performative," a framing that tracks with both quarterbacks' descriptions of a system more concerned with the appearance of compliance than its reality.
The NFL's 2021 rules required all team employees, players, coaches, and staff, to receive COVID-19 shots or face stringent daily testing and facility restrictions. That policy created a clear divide: get the shot, or live under a separate and more burdensome set of rules. For anyone unwilling to get vaccinated but also unwilling to accept the consequences, a fake card was the path of least resistance.
And according to two former MVP-caliber quarterbacks, plenty of people took that path.
The NFL built a system that sorted its workforce into compliant and non-compliant, then apparently never checked whether the compliant group was telling the truth. The honest holdouts got punished. The liars got a free pass. That is not a health policy. That is a loyalty test with an answer key for sale.
