With Aaron Rodgers coming off what was, arguably, his best two-game stretch of the season, it’s been largely forgotten that Tuesday marked one month since the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback suffered fractures in his left wrist.

Rodgers said after practice Wednesday his non-throwing (left) hand “is still not 100%.”

“I’m still not without some pain with certain movements,” Rodgers said, “but I’m trying to get the strength back in all those little muscles that have been unused for a number of weeks. So it’s a work in progress.”

Rodgers suffered the injury just before halftime of a Nov. 16 win against the Cincinnati Bengals. He missed the next week’s game in Chicago but has played the past three games with padding/bracing on his on his left hand.

Though his outing in his return Nov. 30 against the Buffalo Bills was shaky, Rodgers, over the past two games, has completed 75.4% of his passes for 508 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions for a 116.0 passer rating. He also rushed for a score.

Rodgers joked Wednesday that he’s “having battles with the training staff” about how to practice and play unencumbered by any brace or padding on his wrist. Rodgers, at times, has taken the practice field with nothing on his wrist, as he did Wednesday, albeit during what was a mere glorified walkthrough.

“Last week was, obviously, just a little pad on top of it,” Rodgers said of Monday night’s win against the Miami Dolphins. “Not sure what this week’s going to be, but, hopefully, at some point, there’s not going to be anything on my wrist (for games).”

The Steelers (8-6) play the Detroit Lions (8-6) on Sunday at Ford Field, a site where Rodgers is 8-5 as a starter. All of those meetings came during Rodgers’ 18-season tenure with the Green Bay Packers, whose fans had more bitter rivalries with the other NFC North foes.

“I would say compared to Chicago, it’s much less hostile, I would like to think,” Rodgers said. “Green Bay fans, it was always … I feel like they borderline hate Minnesota, and they just have a complex with Chicago because it was always ‘big Chicago, little Green Bay.’

“Detroit was always battles, but there wasn’t maybe the hatred that they have for Minnesota or Chicago.”

As an interconference matchup, the biggest connections Steelers fans have with the Lions are the Steelers’ Super Bowl XL victory at Ford Field (against the Seattle Seahawks) and the 1998 Thanksgiving game that featured the infamous Phil Luckett/Jerome Bettis botched coin-toss call.

Though Rodgers lost his most recent two starts in Detroit, the 42-year-old is a combined 52-21 in December and January regular-season games. Those months provide his best career winning percentages for any calendar month. He’s 2-0 with the Steelers since the calendar flipped to December.

“Aaron has been doing his thing all year,” running back Kenneth Gainwell said. “We know what it takes in December ball to get in the playoffs. You just go one game at a time.”

The league’s second-oldest player, Rodgers downplays his status as a late-season sage by flatly saying, “I’ve been a part of a lot of meaningful football games down the stretch of my career.”

So has 12-year veteran receiver Adam Thielen, who joined the Steelers two weeks ago but quickly recognized that Rodgers’ reputation as a meticulous worker was well-earned.

“It’s just been fun to see how he approaches the game, how he sees it, his process,” Thielen said. “He doesn’t just show up on Sundays or Mondays and have success.

“You know that it takes more than just showing up for guys to have success, but it’s fun to be around guys and to see their process and to see what it takes for them to have success.”

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