Aaron Rodgers said surgery is still possible for his toe during bye, but he vows he won't miss time

In his weekly appearance on the "Pat McAfee Show" on Tuesday, Green Bay Packers star quarterback Aaron Rodgers said surgery remained an option on his broken toe, even before the team's next game in two weeks.

"We're hoping to avoid surgery, obviously, but the surgery would be such a minor one, it wouldn't be something that I'd have to miss any time with," Rodgers said. "We'll kind of reassess early next week and make a decision, but ... I could have surgery on a Monday or Tuesday and play on Sunday."

So why not have it now, still 12 days before the Packers return to the field against the Chicago Bears on Dec. 12? Rodgers said he'd still prefer to avoid it altogether and that it feels better this week than it did last week.

"The surgery would immobilize the toe, so that would be an issue the entire season that we're dealing with," he said. "It can avoid further displacement but it would immobilize the toe. We're hoping with a couple weeks here we can get enough healing and maybe we can avoid doing that. ... The ultimate goal is to not have to do surgery, this thing heals up a little bit better and we kind of make it through a few more weeks and it doesn't bother you the last few weeks of the season."

The Packers head into the bye week at 9-3, with five games remaining in the 2021 season. In terms of passing yardage, Rodgers has had two of his three best 2021 games over the past two weeks, a 385-yard, four-touchdown performance in a loss against Minnesota and a 307-yard, two-touchdown (plus one rushing) effort in a win Sunday over the Los Angeles Rams. He has thrown only one interception since Week 5 against Cincinnati.

Rodgers admitted relief that the Packers finally have reached their Week 13 bye and remarked that he didn't even realize four teams must still wait until Week 14 for their bye.

"That may need to get looked at at some point," Rodgers said. "That's a long stretch of football without any type of break."

Rodgers also spoke at length about a Wall Street Journal article that misunderstood the sincerity of his comments on last week's McAfee show about "COVID toe," initially indicating that Rodgers was afflicted with the unusual ailment that accompanies some positive COVID-19 diagnoses. Rodgers said he spoke to the reporter on the phone and had a productive conversation. It was the article that served as a catalyst for Rodgers showing off his toes at a now-infamous Zoom news conference to point out that his toe doesn't have any discoloration associated with COVID toe and is merely fractured.

Packers-Ravens game time moved

The Packers' Dec. 19 game at Baltimore has been shifted to a 3:25 p.m. start on Fox.

The game originally was scheduled to start at noon.

The Ravens' 8-3 record is the best in the AFC.