Aaron Rodgers took a positive step forward Tuesday, practicing with Green Bay Packers teammates for the first time since breaking his clavicle early this month.
Rodgers has yet to be cleared by doctors to return to game action. Still, the quarterback was happy to move forward.
"I felt like I was back on the team today," Rodgers said on his weekly radio show on WAUK-AM in Milwaukee. "I felt like I was an actual football player so it was fun. It's fun to be back out there with the guys in a walk-through type practice. I felt like that was something I could manage."
Rodgers said he doesn't have any pain when throwing, but he's going through a process that's more complicated than others might believe.
"We're 22 days out from the injury today, so expectations have been high," he said. "Obviously we've been trying to push it as much as has been reasonable. But, it's a waiting game with broken bones."
"I know my body better than everybody and it's just a matter of combining the strength, the flexibility, the lack of pain and the risk," he added. "And when all those align, I'll be back on the field."
Rodgers calls himself an "optimist," but he explained that Packers coach Mike McCarthy recently told him the fable of an optimist, pessimist and realist each falling down a hole.
"I don't know where he got it, if it was some sort of proverb or something," Rodgers said. "The optimist didn't make it, the pessimist didn't make it and then the realist, he made it."
The optimist will get out of the hole in Green Bay. It just probably won't happen until Week 14.
The latest "Around The League Podcast" previewed all three of the big Thanksgiving games on the schedule.
