By Jimmy Carlton Sportswriter Published Dec 12, 2017 at 10:03 PM

Heee’s baaaaccckkk.

After almost all of Tuesday went by without any news on the status of Aaron Rodgers, the Green Bay Packers quarterback, who’s been out since Oct. 15 with a broken right collarbone, took to Instagram to make his own announcement, posting that he’d been medically cleared to play.

Rodgers missed eight weeks after breaking his collarbone against the Minnesota Vikings. Head coach Mike McCarthy said Monday that Rodgers had undergone a CT scan and other tests, and the decision was in team doctors' hands. Apparently, they give No. 12 the go-ahead to return to action on Tuesday.

Green Bay, which went 3-4 with Brett Hundley at quarterback in Rodgers’ absence, faces the Panthers in Carolina on Sunday. After back-to-back overtime victories, the Packers are 7-6 with their faint playoff hopes still alive, and Rodgers’ return is expected to give the team a major emotional boost.

Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.

After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.

Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.