2019 NFL Free Agency/A Busy Day for Green Bay

[JimH5]

The problem is, it's a lot harder to enforce in sports. Someone like Rodgers wins most battles in the court of public opinion. The Packers are afforded the same treatment by the fans. When it's a politician, the expectation is that they answer to the media. Athletes aren't held to that standard.

 

If fans want to ignore any bad thing about the Packers, that's on them. The media shouldn't have to.

 

There has been a lot of bad stuff that has happened in sports. The Falcons doctors dispensing painkillers in quantities that were unlawful. Players commiting domestic violence. Dave Kingman being abusive to a female reporter. Ben Roethlisberger's history with women. Ryan Braun's PED suspension and the details around that. The list is very long.

 

Teams shouldn't get to freeze out reporters who choose to write unflattering things about them.

[PeaveyFury]

I thought Dunne's article painted Murphy in a fairly positive light, or at least in regards to the recent happenings. Of course McCarthy's view of his handling of the 2018 season is poor, but this seems to shed some light on what Murphy's motivations are/were.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

The problem is, it's a lot harder to enforce in sports. Someone like Rodgers wins most battles in the court of public opinion. The Packers are afforded the same treatment by the fans. When it's a politician, the expectation is that they answer to the media. Athletes aren't held to that standard.

 

If fans want to ignore any bad thing about the Packers, that's on them. The media shouldn't have to.

 

There has been a lot of bad stuff that has happened in sports. The Falcons doctors dispensing painkillers in quantities that were unlawful. Players commiting domestic violence. Dave Kingman being abusive to a female reporter. Ben Roethlisberger's history with women. Ryan Braun's PED suspension and the details around that. The list is very long.

 

Teams shouldn't get to freeze out reporters who choose to write unflattering things about them.

 

They shouldn't get to, but they do. I don't see a really clear alternative. The Packers rule Green Bay. Michael Cohen did write some pretty potent stuff about signing Letroy Guion. I happened to be on a bus that day and heard a group of guys talking about how much they hate Cohen. Just kind of how it rolls in GB. The Gunslinger book gets into this quite a bit about how far some guys went to deify Favre.

[HiAndTight]

Rodgers doesn't make throwaway jokes. Up and down the line of people who've personally known him, they'll tell you that everything the guy says is pointed. If he's giving someone doodoo, there's a reason he is doing so. I think it's pretty apparent those two had soured by 2012. You think Rodgers never saw his sister's remarks? And where do you think Rodgers thought she got those ideas?

 

Is GJ petty? Yeah, it sounds like it. But so is Rodgers. Two petty, insensitive guys who couldn't co-exist.

 

 

 

That all comes after this comment. And this is the SINGLE issue that Jennings had with Rodgers. And I agree he doesn't make throwaway comments....in public. When he's speaking to the media, he's very deliberate. That is what everyone who talks about him says. I don't agree that's the case when he's in the middle of a football game and Jennings, who as you mentioned, is very similar to Rodgers makes a comment about how he's running short routes because it's a contract year. I just don't think that's the context people who know Rodgers is talking about. It's more about how he presents himself to the world via interviews or press conferences.

 

I certainly don't believe the comment was meant to be a jab at Jennings about not wanting him back. Hell, you can't be that deliberate between plays in the NFL. Jennings lays out the timeline really clearly. THAT was when their relationship fractured and that is the only thing he's brought up specifically.

 

 

And they absolutely could co-exist. They did Jennings entire career in Green Bay until that absolute end(which turned out to be that comment). And at that point, the Packers weren't bringing him back anyway as he only had probably 2, MAYBE 3 good years left and he was fielding 6 or 7 year offers from teams like the Vikes with more guaranteed money.

 

So they co-existed just fine for 7 years and in Rodgers first 4 years as a starter were Jennings best years by far. The only years he was over 1,000 yards.

 

 

I think the take away is how pathetic it is that a comment like THAT is something that would be enough for Jennings to still be holding onto this many years later(and it appears it's the same with Rodgers). I don't think I'd have a friend in the world of a meaningful relationship if it was that easily broken.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Jennings is the guy that heard the joke so the fact it stuck with him makes me think it was a lot more pointed than you seem to think it was.

 

I think it's case of, in and of itself, he wouldn't be talking about it 7 years later, but it was more likely one of many things that points at those two not really getting along. I think if Rodgers deadpans a comment like that and walks back to the huddle, there's a little more to it than it just being a joke. Maybe Jennings is petty, but Rodgers definitely is. There's only one type of person who's upset about not being picked #1 overall 15 years after the fact, after $200 million and a championship. There's no reason for Rodgers to still care about Alex Smith, and yet he does. This is a person that needed self reflection probably 20 years ago and instead of confronting it has been getting angry at people since.

 

There's something wrong with a person who won't talk to their parents unless they killed somebody or are meth addicts or something. One of these sour relationships is one thing. The amount of scorned people in Rodgers's past speaks for itself. You don't burn that many bridges by being reasonable.

[pacopete4]

The worst part of the whole stuff is that guys like Jennings and Finley finally get the attention they've been craving since they played for the Packers. Rodgers is probably a prick. It shouldn't shock anyone. But he's far from the first great QB to be one. McCarthy had his faults as well. He was a good football coach that doesn't deserve this utter crap that is being aired out right now. Could they have won more SB's? Sure, maybe. But so many things have to go right for them to happen. Saying they should have been NE over the past 15 years is just stupid. There is a reason that there has only been one team to have the success that NE is having.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Finley is a dope that I think has some kind of vendetta. But I've listened to Greg Jennings speak on this stuff numerous times now, and his comments just don't come off with a lot of animosity or even really all that harshly critical. He's just a guy talking about what his experience was in GB. I think it hurts people that he has anything to say besides all roses. The way Packers fans react to him is more off-putting to me. He wasn't best pals with Rodgers and so the knee-jerk reaction is for nearly everybody to think he has some ax to grind. I just don't see it. He repeats over and over that Rodgers is incredible and even now, is saying he pins more of this on McCarthy than Rodgers.

 

And at least his sticks his name on the stuff he says. The worst thing he says about Rodgers is basically that his head got big and he's too sensitive.

[xisxisxis]

I certainly don't believe the comment was meant to be a jab at Jennings about not wanting him back. Hell, you can't be that deliberate between plays in the NFL. Jennings lays out the timeline really clearly. THAT was when their relationship fractured and that is the only thing he's brought up specifically.

Yeah... Seven years of crap from Rogers... Years of abuse and disrespect heaped on Jennings... and that's the smoking gun of their relationship? And he had time to think about it, yet that is the clearest example of how Rogers disrespected Jennings?... Watch out Columbo... Watch out Perry Mason... You've met your match in Greg Jennings.... Poirot? A fool compared to the systematic case laid out by Greg Jennings...

[HiAndTight]

The problem is, it's a lot harder to enforce in sports. Someone like Rodgers wins most battles in the court of public opinion. The Packers are afforded the same treatment by the fans. When it's a politician, the expectation is that they answer to the media. Athletes aren't held to that standard.

 

If fans want to ignore any bad thing about the Packers, that's on them. The media shouldn't have to.

 

There has been a lot of bad stuff that has happened in sports. The Falcons doctors dispensing painkillers in quantities that were unlawful. Players commiting domestic violence. Dave Kingman being abusive to a female reporter. Ben Roethlisberger's history with women. Ryan Braun's PED suspension and the details around that. The list is very long.

 

Teams shouldn't get to freeze out reporters who choose to write unflattering things about them.

 

 

You are just totally conflating totally different issues here.

 

You're comparing what was presented to us as a feud and some issues with personalities within a business to people breaking the law, rape accusations, domestic violence and the like. That's a ridiculous comparison.

 

First of all, any business has every right in the world to simply decline to speak with a reporter who has negative things to say about that business and can cause financial harm that business. This isn't politics. As I said, the Brewers have done this with a large personality in the Milwaukee media market due to comments he made about a couple of players on the team.

 

 

And both things CAN be true. The reporter has every right to REPORT what he finds and what he knows or believes to be true. And the business has every right to then simply refuse to grant him interviews.

 

In this particular case, we're also making the giant assumption that this information would have been available at the time it was going on. There's a reason this didn't come out until after McCarthy was gone. Because people felt free to speak about it. Everyone heard about rumblings inside the organization, but that was it. He almost certainly wasn't going to get people to go on record and provide detailed anecdotes and rebuttals as Dunne does in this article(he does a good job in my opinion of trying to tell the whole story in so much as a reporter writing a piece like this can).

 

 

But at the end of the day, there were no players put in harm's way here, there were no women abused or raped, there was no PED suspension that was already made public because the league announced it. It was an article based entirely on the opinions of people involved in the 4 most prominent people in an organization and how they interacted.

 

Again, if that reflects badly on the business and hurts their reputation or finances or performance on the field as this almost certainly would have had it been written 4 years ago, then how are the Packers or the people directly involved at fault in any way for simply NOT speaking with the reporter who wrote an article in which almost all of his sources were anonymous and that caused harm to the organization?

 

Wanting to know something doesn't mean you're entitled to know it and I just can't understand how you can compare rape allegations of domestic violence allegations, things that are public by the very fact that we're entitled to know when a crime has been committed or when someone is accused of a crime by an opens records act. You're comparing those things to a QB and a Head Coach not liking each other. And that's primarily what this article was about. They didn't like each other, the QB may not have respected each other. It may have been sensationalized or it may not have. But it's still got absolutely nothing in common with ANY of the issues you listed.

 

Not only is there nothing that says you have to talk to a reporter after he writes an extremely negative article about you, it's every bit their right to simply refuse to talk to him after that and it's human nature to not talk to him anymore.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Kind of a straw man there. Jennings never claimed he was abused and disrespected. His last comments, from yesterday, include him specifically saying he loved his time in Green Bay and it was one of the best times of his life. People seem to ignore when he says that stuff...

[FVBrewerFan]

The worst part of the whole stuff is that guys like Jennings and Finley finally get the attention they've been craving since they played for the Packers. Rodgers is probably a prick. It shouldn't shock anyone. But he's far from the first great QB to be one. McCarthy had his faults as well. He was a good football coach that doesn't deserve this utter crap that is being aired out right now. Could they have won more SB's? Sure, maybe. But so many things have to go right for them to happen. Saying they should have been NE over the past 15 years is just stupid. There is a reason that there has only been one team to have the success that NE is having.

 

First, I just wanted to say Rodgers and MM both deserve some kudos for keeping all this private. Even after MM firing Rodgers didn't throw him under the bus. Publicly, they supported each other. For that matter, all their coaches, players, etc. did a great job of keeping it in the locker room.

 

Regarding McCarthy, there's plenty of evidence to suggest he's not (and wasn't) a very good football coach. Coaching is managing people, and he failed miserably managing the team's most important player. Even putting that aside, he passed himself off as an offensive guru when he really had nothing to add to the WCO.

 

I've heard these stories over the last few years about opponents knowing the plays, routes, etc. Poor at adjusting as the game goes on, no interest in the defensive side of the ball or ST. Now we hear he skipped meeting before a game. (I'll even give him the benefit of a doubt on that one, as we don't know the details.)

 

Can we really blame Rodgers if all this is true? Look at your own job. If you knew what needs to be done in your company or dept, but you have a boss that has no clue how does that make you feel? Yea, Rodgers is an odd duck, and I believe he is sensitive, driven by past slights, etc. but so what? If that's what motivates him, fine by me.

[HiAndTight]

I certainly don't believe the comment was meant to be a jab at Jennings about not wanting him back. Hell, you can't be that deliberate between plays in the NFL. Jennings lays out the timeline really clearly. THAT was when their relationship fractured and that is the only thing he's brought up specifically.

Yeah... Seven years of crap from Rogers... Years of abuse and disrespect heaped on Jennings... and that's the smoking gun of their relationship? And he had time to think about it, yet that is the clearest example of how Rogers disrespected Jennings?... Watch out Columbo... Watch out Perry Mason... You've met your match in Greg Jennings.... Poirot? A fool compared to the systematic case laid out by Greg Jennings...

 

 

 

That actually had me laughing pretty good. What's most annoying is how he's STILL talking about it regularly. He goes on that moron Collin Cowherd's show, the wannabe Skip Bayless, tells that single story where Rodges says, "hey, you guys should sign him," and people are just shocked, acting as if it's on par with the Delonte West-LeBron James "issues" in Cleveland. Even Jennings talks about how he had Rodgers over before that and had an open door policy with him and spent holidays with him. That's why I said part of what I got out of all this is how pathetic some of this stuff is as well. If that was really a relationship killer....that's sad. How can you go through life being that sensitive? "He told a Redskins CB that they should sign me, so I knew I was done in Green Bay." Really? I just can't imagine cutting friends out of my life for what I perceive to be a small slight and something that they may not have ever given a second thought to. Imagine how long Jennings was angry about that. It's entirely possible Rodgers never once thought about that exchange. But after Jennings and his 'lil Sis start talking, then that bridge with Rodger IS permanently burned. And that's almost as sad on Rodgers part.

 

Then the discussion turns to Rodgers sensitivity. At this point, I think people understand he's a bit sensitive. But I don't think the players who are speaking out against Rodgers are really saying anything of consequence. All Finley cared about was that 200 million dollars(which is not what he got as we all know). He just kept harping on that...and then the guy who hasn't been around in years has the nerve to talk about how Rodgers is the GM now BECAUSE they gave him that money. It's just hypocrisy. Jennings is obviously every bit as sensitive as Rodgers and Finley, who is calling Rodgers entitled, came into the league and couldn't' get on the field early on because he was too entitled and then was worried about getting more balls so he could get a big contract. So as much as I liked him as a player, he's the last guy I want to hear about from with regard to a player feeling entitled or talking about money.

[xisxisxis]

Kind of a straw man there. Jennings never claimed he was abused and disrespected. His last comments, from yesterday, include him specifically saying he loved his time in Green Bay and it was one of the best times of his life. People seem to ignore when he says that stuff...

 

I think all of this is straw man stuff. People are complex. Even in an extended article like the BR one, you don't even touch on that complexity. Everything that we hear/see is filtered through someone else's comments. Supposed comments from "people close to Rogers" always sets off a bell in my head as every one of my friends would never speak to a reporter about me and I wouldn't discuss anything with a reporter about them. People I now somewhat, would probably say something, but that's why they aren't close to me. While there's a hint of a lot of things, we really can't get the full picture with the information we will ever have. I just think Jennings is letting his feelings cloud his overall judgment. I get he was upset that the had a lot of good years with the Packers and they moved on... But that's how they do Business, it's not a statement on his value or level of respect.

 

It's clear from all the BR article and others that there is a culture problem with the Packers and has been since Rogers/McCarthy. The issue to me is not whose to blame as it will always be everyone, but how do they move forward. Clearly Murphy telling Rogers was a clue to him that he's part of the team, not in charge. LaFleur has his work cut out for him, but most people will buy into positive moves to build team unity and the more players buy in, the less likely 1 (even a critical one, like Rogers) can derail the process. If Rogers was a significant part of the problem when the coaches push on team building, and other players buy in, there's nowhere to hide, either you join or you're the problem.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

The first time Jennings said anything it came off as sour grapes. Almost everybody thought that. Now more things continue leaking out that are lending quite a bit of credibility to the stuff he says. I basically never see anyone say he's wrong either. They just say something about how he's salty. That strategy is usually used when you know there's truth in what someone's saying.

 

I think you're missing the point of the 49ers story. That was the impetus for him as far as the moment he knew he wasn't being re-signed by GB. Which is the root of his beef with Rodgers, that he didn't fight to keep him in GB. He has admitted that publicly, which is a pretty transparent thing of him to do. The other weight of the story is that Rodgers would never allow such a joke to be made about him. Which is most likely 100% true.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I've thought Rodgers was a bit of a nut for a few years now. The thing that swayed me was, I can't remember what it was, some kind of charity event where a fan shook his hand and said something like "Wow you look so much taller on TV" and Rodgers replied "I don't appreciate that." I just thought, god, this guy is really insecure and just kind of a twerp.

[HiAndTight]

The worst part of the whole stuff is that guys like Jennings and Finley finally get the attention they've been craving since they played for the Packers. Rodgers is probably a prick. It shouldn't shock anyone. But he's far from the first great QB to be one. McCarthy had his faults as well. He was a good football coach that doesn't deserve this utter crap that is being aired out right now. Could they have won more SB's? Sure, maybe. But so many things have to go right for them to happen. Saying they should have been NE over the past 15 years is just stupid. There is a reason that there has only been one team to have the success that NE is having.

 

First, I just wanted to say Rodgers and MM both deserve some kudos for keeping all this private. Even after MM firing Rodgers didn't throw him under the bus. Publicly, they supported each other. For that matter, all their coaches, players, etc. did a great job of keeping it in the locker room.

 

Regarding McCarthy, there's plenty of evidence to suggest he's not (and wasn't) a very good football coach. Coaching is managing people, and he failed miserably managing the team's most important player. Even putting that aside, he passed himself off as an offensive guru when he really had nothing to add to the WCO.

 

I've heard these stories over the last few years about opponents knowing the plays, routes, etc. Poor at adjusting as the game goes on, no interest in the defensive side of the ball or ST. Now we hear he skipped meeting before a game. (I'll even give him the benefit of a doubt on that one, as we don't know the details.)

 

Can we really blame Rodgers if all this is true? Look at your own job. If you knew what needs to be done in your company or dept, but you have a boss that has no clue how does that make you feel? Yea, Rodgers is an odd duck, and I believe he is sensitive, driven by past slights, etc. but so what? If that's what motivates him, fine by me.

 

 

I think there's a pretty substantial list of counterpoints to the ones you made, examples of him being innovative earlier, different examples players pointed to of him motivating them, the whole getting measured for SB rings the day before for example, moving Cobb into the backfield and then Montgomery on a more regular basis.

 

 

And then if Rodgers isn't running what you're calling...

 

I really don't know the whole, objective story, nor does anyone else. I would say though I think the things you mentioned weren't really applicable the first 8 or so years in GB. Particularly when he came in, took over a 4 win team, and had them a Favre special away from a trip to the Super Bowl.

 

 

He's gone now, Rodgers is gonna have to show up big this year. If it falls apart again without McCarthy, he's gonna look bad. If he can get back on top the year after McCarthy leaves...well, that alone shold motivate him more than enough this year.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Boy do I have sympathy for Matt LaFleur. If this team starts 0-2 he is going to feel the heat of Death Valley.

[HiAndTight]

Kind of a straw man there. Jennings never claimed he was abused and disrespected. His last comments, from yesterday, include him specifically saying he loved his time in Green Bay and it was one of the best times of his life. People seem to ignore when he says that stuff...

 

I think all of this is straw man stuff. People are complex. Even in an extended article like the BR one, you don't even touch on that complexity. Everything that we hear/see is filtered through someone else's comments. Supposed comments from "people close to Rogers" always sets off a bell in my head as every one of my friends would never speak to a reporter about me and I wouldn't discuss anything with a reporter about them. People I now somewhat, would probably say something, but that's why they aren't close to me. While there's a hint of a lot of things, we really can't get the full picture with the information we will ever have. I just think Jennings is letting his feelings cloud his overall judgment. I get he was upset that the had a lot of good years with the Packers and they moved on... But that's how they do Business, it's not a statement on his value or level of respect.

 

It's clear from all the BR article and others that there is a culture problem with the Packers and has been since Rogers/McCarthy. The issue to me is not whose to blame as it will always be everyone, but how do they move forward. Clearly Murphy telling Rogers was a clue to him that he's part of the team, not in charge. LaFleur has his work cut out for him, but most people will buy into positive moves to build team unity and the more players buy in, the less likely 1 (even a critical one, like Rogers) can derail the process. If Rogers was a significant part of the problem when the coaches push on team building, and other players buy in, there's nowhere to hide, either you join or you're the problem.

 

 

This thread will go on much longer, but really...we could just cut it right there. I agree with everything you said in here.

 

 

The "a source who used to be close to Rodgers, but has now been cut out of his life," makes you raise an eye brow, but the overall portrait on top of what we already knew, it doesn't matter if all those things were exactly right, enough of it was right enough that they had to make some drastic changes.

 

They've overhauled the front office bringing in some extremely highly regarded people from teams like the Ravens, they brought back a coach Rodgers has a good relationship with and they brought back a guy who sounds like a hard arse to be their OC, all moves that should make things work better with Rodgers moving forward.

[HiAndTight]

I've thought Rodgers was a bit of a nut for a few years now. The thing that swayed me was, I can't remember what it was, some kind of charity event where a fan shook his hand and said something like "Wow you look so much taller on TV" and Rodgers replied "I don't appreciate that." I just thought, god, this guy is really insecure and just kind of a twerp.

 

 

Where was this(if you happen to recall)? I remember Rodgers actually saying on I think the Mike McCarthy show that he doesn't like it when people say that to him, but I never actually knew if or when that happened. In fact, I thought there was a segment where guys talked about Aaron and they talked about how sensitive he was and they even brought this up. I'm thinking it was Clay and another guy, but I don't remember exactly.

 

What a stupid thing to worry about though. You're regarded as the most physically gifted person to play the position. Who cares if Bar guy #3 thinks you look taller on TV. Get over it.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I saw him say that as well on likely the same show. But either shortly before or after, I saw it happen on a recording of one of those MACC fund events or something. The guy who said it was totally just a deer in headlights fan, he didn't mean anything insulting, and it really bothered Rodgers.

 

I used to really prefer Rodgers to Favre because I thought he was a better guy. Over time I've just sort of accepted they're both different kinds of jerks. I love watching both play but I don't really like either guy.

[pacopete4]

Boy do I have sympathy for Matt LaFleur. If this team starts 0-2 he is going to feel the heat of Death Valley.

 

For me, it will be how they look on the field. If they're getting smack around with an 0-2 start, yeah, he should feel the heat.

[pacopete4]

The worst part of the whole stuff is that guys like Jennings and Finley finally get the attention they've been craving since they played for the Packers. Rodgers is probably a prick. It shouldn't shock anyone. But he's far from the first great QB to be one. McCarthy had his faults as well. He was a good football coach that doesn't deserve this utter crap that is being aired out right now. Could they have won more SB's? Sure, maybe. But so many things have to go right for them to happen. Saying they should have been NE over the past 15 years is just stupid. There is a reason that there has only been one team to have the success that NE is having.

 

First, I just wanted to say Rodgers and MM both deserve some kudos for keeping all this private. Even after MM firing Rodgers didn't throw him under the bus. Publicly, they supported each other. For that matter, all their coaches, players, etc. did a great job of keeping it in the locker room.

 

Regarding McCarthy, there's plenty of evidence to suggest he's not (and wasn't) a very good football coach. Coaching is managing people, and he failed miserably managing the team's most important player. Even putting that aside, he passed himself off as an offensive guru when he really had nothing to add to the WCO.

 

I've heard these stories over the last few years about opponents knowing the plays, routes, etc. Poor at adjusting as the game goes on, no interest in the defensive side of the ball or ST. Now we hear he skipped meeting before a game. (I'll even give him the benefit of a doubt on that one, as we don't know the details.)

 

Can we really blame Rodgers if all this is true? Look at your own job. If you knew what needs to be done in your company or dept, but you have a boss that has no clue how does that make you feel? Yea, Rodgers is an odd duck, and I believe he is sensitive, driven by past slights, etc. but so what? If that's what motivates him, fine by me.

 

No matter what is said, the people who feel MM wasn't a good coach will still feel that way. I just don't believe you have the success he had without being a good head coach in the NFL. It just doesn't add up to me. For the rest of your stuff on Rodgers, all you are doing is giving him a pass in his part of this entire mess of shenanigans.

[JimH5]

You are just totally conflating totally different issues here.

 

You're comparing what was presented to us as a feud and some issues with personalities within a business to people breaking the law, rape accusations, domestic violence and the like. That's a ridiculous comparison.

 

First of all, any business has every right in the world to simply decline to speak with a reporter who has negative things to say about that business and can cause financial harm that business. This isn't politics. As I said, the Brewers have done this with a large personality in the Milwaukee media market due to comments he made about a couple of players on the team.

 

 

And both things CAN be true. The reporter has every right to REPORT what he finds and what he knows or believes to be true. And the business has every right to then simply refuse to grant him interviews.

 

In this particular case, we're also making the giant assumption that this information would have been available at the time it was going on. There's a reason this didn't come out until after McCarthy was gone. Because people felt free to speak about it. Everyone heard about rumblings inside the organization, but that was it. He almost certainly wasn't going to get people to go on record and provide detailed anecdotes and rebuttals as Dunne does in this article(he does a good job in my opinion of trying to tell the whole story in so much as a reporter writing a piece like this can).

 

 

But at the end of the day, there were no players put in harm's way here, there were no women abused or raped, there was no PED suspension that was already made public because the league announced it. It was an article based entirely on the opinions of people involved in the 4 most prominent people in an organization and how they interacted.

 

Again, if that reflects badly on the business and hurts their reputation or finances or performance on the field as this almost certainly would have had it been written 4 years ago, then how are the Packers or the people directly involved at fault in any way for simply NOT speaking with the reporter who wrote an article in which almost all of his sources were anonymous and that caused harm to the organization?

 

Wanting to know something doesn't mean you're entitled to know it and I just can't understand how you can compare rape allegations of domestic violence allegations, things that are public by the very fact that we're entitled to know when a crime has been committed or when someone is accused of a crime by an opens records act. You're comparing those things to a QB and a Head Coach not liking each other. And that's primarily what this article was about. They didn't like each other, the QB may not have respected each other. It may have been sensationalized or it may not have. But it's still got absolutely nothing in common with ANY of the issues you listed.

 

Not only is there nothing that says you have to talk to a reporter after he writes an extremely negative article about you, it's every bit their right to simply refuse to talk to him after that and it's human nature to not talk to him anymore.

 

This is the biggest Packers story of the offseason. It's on every talk show, tv station, news site. It's being discussed in offices all around the state, and is the subject of several posts in this string.

 

And it was reported by a respected guy who used to work the beat, next to colleagues from the Press Gazette and Journal Sentinel. And with the local tv sports men and women who deliver us the "news".

 

I just find it disturbing that he wouldn't have been allowed to write this story if he worked locally, but since he has the distance of working for Bleacher Report, that gave him the freedom to write it. Presumably, the toxic relationship between Rodgers and McCarthy was known by other reporters. But they couldn't dare write it, for fear of angering the team they are supposed to write about. This story would have driven traffic to whichever news organization published it, but locals apparently aren't allowed to.

 

The Packers are treated like royalty in this state, and we're all treated like the kids who let them ride their bikes after practice. Again, read how James Dolan, Woody Johnson, the Wilpons, etc. are treated by the NY media. When those guys deserve to be taken to task, they are taken to task.

 

And until yesterday, the Packers mostly hadn't been. And it took the safety of a national sports website to do it.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

The reason for that is cultural. You can burn some coach in NYC - he is small fish, not royalty. There are a hundred other things to write about that day about maybe 7% of the population cares. That is obviously not the case in Green Bay. Like I said, I think some of that is just life in GB. It's never going to change because that team is life. You can walk outside in NYC while the Yankees are playing in the World Series and have no idea it's even going on.

 

I don't see any realistic way that stops being the case.

[PeaveyFury]

I've thought Rodgers was a bit of a nut for a few years now. The thing that swayed me was, I can't remember what it was, some kind of charity event where a fan shook his hand and said something like "Wow you look so much taller on TV" and Rodgers replied "I don't appreciate that." I just thought, god, this guy is really insecure and just kind of a twerp.

 

 

Where was this(if you happen to recall)? I remember Rodgers actually saying on I think the Mike McCarthy show that he doesn't like it when people say that to him, but I never actually knew if or when that happened. In fact, I thought there was a segment where guys talked about Aaron and they talked about how sensitive he was and they even brought this up. I'm thinking it was Clay and another guy, but I don't remember exactly.

 

What a stupid thing to worry about though. You're regarded as the most physically gifted person to play the position. Who cares if Bar guy #3 thinks you look taller on TV. Get over it.

 

And I guess I'd counter with, why do you care that he cares? If somebody came up to you on the street and commented on something regarding your appearance or the way you look, do you have a right to react negatively to that? Yep. Does he lose that right because he's an athlete? I don't think so. He didn't slug the guy, he politely told him that he didn't appreciate it. Couldn't be less of an issue, IMO.