Black people, you once thought you had found that rare White quarterback honest enough to express the obvious in how NFL owners had blackballed Colin Kaepernick.

Nerds at heart and fun-loving weirdos, you tripped over yourselves in unearthing similarities with the most popular athlete in America’s most popular game, a real-life jock invited to sit at your lunch table who also had a passion for Wes Anderson flicks, “Halo 3,” “Game of Thrones” and the spiral dynamics theory.

Libertarians, you believed you had a peer who happened to star in an egalitarian game for a living but also thumbed through “Atlas Shrugged” and raged against governmental overreach, especially as it related to personal freedoms.

Religious “nones,” in a league saturated with Christian evangelical overtones, you related with football’s secular maverick, whose life motto is to “question everything.”

And Everybody Else Everywhere, you thought you could get behind this A-list celebrity who had a beating heart for children living with cancer and for kids who had lost a loved one in combat. A rich and famous guy but a well-meaning human being just like the rest of us.

Over the past several years, Rodgers has offered himself as a champion of both counterculture ideals and conventional wisdom. Appearing as if he had that special ability to be a friend to marginalized groups that could use an established name as a more accepted voice over their megaphones. But be careful of the allies you choose because a man sequestered on an island where only his own opinion matters can never stand as anyone’s advocate.

These days, when Rodgers wakes up in the morning with that weaselly smirk on his face, he seems intent on fanning more chaos into the world. His message no longer connects with the general population — or at least the demographic of sports fans who will tune in to “The Pat McAfee Show” for some low-consequence entertainment. Instead, Rodgers has chosen the side that would rather criminalize the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert and casually accuse a late-night talk show host of being linked to 𝑠e𝑥 trafficking.

During his weekly paid appearance with McAfee on Tuesday, a show sidekick teed up Rodgers to say something inflammatory regarding a list of associates tied to Jeffrey Epstein, and Rodgers obliged.

“There’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, really hoping that doesn’t come out,” Rodgers said, dropping Kimmel’s name from out of nowhere.

It’s a sad commentary on our world that anyone can say anything about a person — just throwing unsubstantiated nonsense against the wall — and someone somewhere will actually believe it. Yet it’s even more jarring when that loose-lipped accuser used to speak with the recognition that his platform came with a certain responsibility.

In 2016, Rodgers made an appearance on comedian Pete Holmes’s podcast “You Made It Weird,” and in that nearly two-hour conversation, the topics ranged from the existence of UFOs to gluten-free soap, whether God also loves the team that loses, Rodgers’s favorite shooter video game and much, much more. Though he had won a Super Bowl, even as he lifted the Lombardi Trophy, he said, he questioned whether that was all there was to life. In the years that followed, he would turn inward, seeking a larger meaning. Although other men might allow a Super Bowl triumph to define them, not Rodgers.

“Honestly, I think the root of it is this: You get to a point where I think you just desire to be looked at as more than just what you’re known for. Trying to change the narrative a little bit. When they think about you, what’s the first thing they think about?” Rodgers told Holmes, and went on to say: “I just believe that there’s more going on in what we see and there’s more going on in what we’re told and there’s more going on in what we know. And that hope for me [spurs] me on to use my influence in better ways, to connect more with people, to love better, to judge less, so that works for me.”

Contrast those words to his Tuesday appearance with McAfee: “We’ve got to take back our country from these f—ing monsters,” Rodgers said.

He has become a crusader for his own fringe beliefs, such a far cry from someone who at least had been a provocateur with a purpose. Though his support for Kaepernick in 2017 could have been more substantive, at least he was the White man who actually got it, understanding how critics focused solely on the method of Black NFL player protests (taking a knee) but overlooked the reasons behind them. Rodgers was the representative from the other side who stepped up and said something. He was an ally.

Now it’s hard to imagine Rodgers as anything but a man unmoored in his mission.

Rodgers finds it appealing to make people uncomfortable. Which explains why he will show up to McAfee’s show, a format that intends to mimic the bro vibes of a locker room, and announce with glee: “Fauci’s a criminal!” It’s stunning to watch Rodgers’s spiral into polarization, especially when McAfee, just by being relatable, has created a brand in retirement that dwarfs his NFL career and when the Mannings, Peyton and Eli, can dominate media without fatiguing the public.

Instead of building a bridge that would connect his playing career to a lucrative life in the mainstream after retiring, Rodgers would rather wall himself behind conspiracy theories and retreat into the darkness of his own warped beliefs. He no longer sides with the masses who thought they had found a likable companion inside the mighty NFL. He no longer represents you — us. And maybe he never did.